Neat! Though I'd have to admit that the lightning strike looked a little naff :).

I've been looking at some of the tutorials for Fusion 5 (the effects package I have), and their snow and rainstorm effects looked pretty good too. I'm quite amazed at what you can do with a moderately-priced PC and software these days, particularly things that sky replacement which has gone from a big-budget Hollywood technique to something that can be done pretty much for free.

It is awesome we have software we can afford today. The lightning strike was just for fun. If I was going to really use this clip, I would have had the lightning go behind the house or I would have reviewed real strike footage and then spent many hours getting that look .:-). I just wanted to have fun and experiment with some different effects like "The Wiggler" and "Advanced Lightning". Thanks for the feedback!

Matthew Sconce

Incidentally, was that a real stormy sky, or did you create it yourself?

The sky was a normal looking light gray shot of time lapse stock footage I own. I darkened it, adjusted brightness and contrast, put a mask on the right side of the screen to keep it dark, and added the lightning flash at the beginning and later on to help with the atmosphere.

Matthew Sconce

What did you use to create the rain?

--QD Jones

I used after effects 6.5 pro and the effect Simulation/ Rain
I set the rain amount to about 200 and the speed to about.7.
I also set a guassian blur on the rain to give it the blurred effect.

Matthew Sconce

That was impressive

<b>Mark Malekpour
Beatsuite.com - Royalty Free Production Music & Flash Loop Packs & Sounds</b>

thats pretty awesome

Now could you make that in after effects then import it into Final Cut?

and would you be willing to make a intro for my short? By this I mean a production company animation (like your Aftershock) and maybe create a title sequence for me?

"Anyone who has ever been privileged to direct a film also knows that, although it can be like trying to write 'War and Peace' in a bumper car in an amusement park, when you finally get it right, there are not many joys in life that can equal the feeling." - Stanley Kubrick

You could definitely import it to Final Cut. It is nice with AVID because you can export as an OMF file and go directly into AVID. On the Mac, you would export it as a quicktime file and then into FCP. I would be interested in seeing what I could do for your logo. Send me an e-mail at www.theperfectvideo.net and let me know the specifics of what you want. I will guestimate how much time that will take and see if I could do it for free. It depends on what other projects I am working on, but sometimes, I like to do projects like this.

Matthew Sconce

Oops! www.theperfectvideo.net is my website! email me at
theperfectvideo?hotmail.com

Matthew Sconce

Really nice stuff - I'm impressed.

On a technical-kind of note: I know this was primarily an experiment, and could be pushed a lot further. So, (theoretically), if you wanted to get some animation into the trees, and have them blowing and heaving about in the wind, how would you do it? I imagine it's probably a LOT harder than the static matte for the sky replacement, but I'd be interested to know how you would approach it. I assume, like any effect, that it CAN be done, given enough time and money....

Thanks for your time

ST

In order to get the blowing trees, I would do two things. I would either use a high defintion Digital video camera to capture their actual movement on a windy day and then key out the sky with Luma Key, or I would do the same process and then matte around each leaf and branch and rotoscope their movement to separate them from the sky. That would take forever! Another way is to create trees in a #D composition program, animate them there, and then composite them into the scene.

Matthew Sconce