Filmmaking
HitFilm tutorial: Disrupted waveform
I made my first HitFilm tutorial for about 10 months! It was all based around an image I made for an article header over on the International Literature Showcase website. Hopefully I’ll find the time to do more stuff like this.
Filmmaking
Heads Up: Riffing on Iron Man
Something I don’t think I’ve blogged about is my recent work at FXHOME on a Marvel-inspired campaign called Heads Up, designed to launch the new HitFilm 4 Express product. I ended up writing and editing a ton of videos, which have already nabbed over 204,000 views. A truly mind-bending stat.
Here’s the main sketch that everything hangs off:
Filmmaking
Steam Controller is a great jog/shuttle editing device
I’ve had a Steam Controller for about six months. As a gaming device it’s excellent, especially if you’re not already an expert with another gamepad. What hadn’t occurred to me until this week is that its unusual design makes it perfectly suited to serving as a jog/shuttle device for video Read more…
Filmmaking
Feeling the chill: summoning the trolls
A recent video I produced and presented for the HitFilm channel was all about editing gaming videos. Pretty simple but useful stuff, presented in a nicely relaxed manner. Given the channel has a fairly diverse viewership, I wanted to have a brief overview that established the culture of online gaming videos for anybody unfamiliar with the concept. Here’s the finished video:
When scripting the episode I had a moment of weakness and it’s been irritating me ever since. (more…)
Filmmaking
DIY spaceships in 2016
I made a new video for the HitFilm YouTube channel. Check it out:
Two things to note:
- I need a haircut.
- The spaceship shot I created for that tutorial is better than any of the effects in my favourite sci-fi shows of the 1990s. It’s getting towards being acceptable for a mid-2000s show, at least with a bit more work.
Filmmaking
Co-teaching a FutureLearn course is fun
The VFX for Guerilla Filmmakers course is at the end of its 4-week run over on FutureLearn. There’s still time to sign up (after which you can go through it at your own pace), so do so now if you don’t want to miss out on free learning.
Having worked on the course for months prior to its launch, along with the mastermind Saint Walker, it was exciting to see it finally go live at the start of February. Each week unlocked new content and saw a massive flow of students sweep through the lessons. (more…)
Filmmaking
I’m teaching VFX on FutureLearn!
Two exciting things are happening in February, the first of which is a free, four week course called Visual Effects for Guerrilla Filmmakers. I’ve written about FutureLearn in the past and have done a handful of their courses, so a VFX course is of course great news.
What’s even more thrilling, for me at least, is that I’m one of the educators on the course. To go from an eager FutureLearn student to co-designing a course has been a real privilege. The course goes live on February 8th and runs for four weeks. You can sign up any time between now and the end of the final week. (more…)
Filmmaking
This Day and Age – Colchester 60 Hour Film Festival 2015
Over the weekend I worked on a short film for the Colchester 60 Hour Film Festival. It’s called This Day And Age and you can watch it here:
Aside from a single VFX shot I contributed to The Splinter Cell last year (some BTS on that here), this is pretty much the first film project I’ve been part of since my son was born three years ago. Which is fine – I’ve had far too much fun helping him grow into something awesome to dilly-dally with making films. (more…)
Filmmaking
Kramer-style star
An occasional hobby is taking Andrew Kramer’s fantastic tutorials for After Effects and transposing them into HitFilm, to see how close I can get ’em. Most of the time it works out pretty damn well. So, his latest tutorial is a beautiful star close-up, and this is my own version, Read more…