Hey all,

It's been a while since I posted a clip, and this is something new for me. I wanted to practice camera movement in after effects a bit, so I did a 3D photo wall montage for an upcoming wedding.

Any comments welcome as always. Clip is in Quicktime7 format.

www.romanhurko.com/vito/tara.mov

Thanks,
Vito

Hey Vito,
Looked very good. Watched the first 3mins of your video and really like what I see. Only bugger is the flash. Was that to cover up, so you can start new frames?

interesting. i felt there were afew things lacking.. if youre going to create a 3d enviornment, i would sugget running a background clip (instead of plan black) as to me, the show seems to go "nowhere"
If however there was somethign like a star cascade in teh background, the images woudnt feel as though theyre in a void..

Thats not a bad thing (not having a background) , but i just saw a bunch of pics for about 5 monutes floating around.. and not much kept my attention. After a minute, the wowness of the 3d started to wane, and i was searching for something different... a change or a twist on the theme..
Sometimes less is more, but in this case, it was just "there" and i expected it to change a lil every now and then

Also, i would recomend softening or framing the image edges.

I liked it, but it felt as thoguh it dragged on a bit.
I would say this would work great if it didnt go on for such a long time

Vito,

that's probably one of the best 3D montages i've personally seen on this site, but as Peter says, sort-of seems to go for on for far too long (unless of course, that's what the B+G were after?)

u've got the depth of field, the motion blur, the movement, it's very good, and shows u spent a long time on it! (and i quite like the plain black background - it suits your packed collage.)

on a similar theme, here's something i've been working on (using motion backgrounds, and different shapes), in the 3D environment:

http://www.fxfilms.co.uk/downloads.htm

see teh thing is, teh bride and groom will love it becuase its THEM.. but i persoanlly wopuldnt go this far for a slideshow unless its being presented at the reception, to which i try to turn the show into a story of their lives.
Paul Ngyuen has seen some recent slideshows ive done, but i try to break teh images up using parallaxed animation, particle animation and reanimation. I also layer clouds and manipulate in 3d space to mimic the perspective etc etc

This is great, but i think there is something missing and i cant put my finger on it.. :(

Enjoyed your show ,maybe you or someone can help me. I'm looking for a 3d slideshow software program ,easy to use, used or new . Which program did you use .
thanks
Michael

Hey Vito,
Only bugger is the flash. Was that to cover up, so you can start new frames?

Hi Monday. I did use one of the flashes to jump to a new spot. The others were there to add a bit of punch and to remind us that it is, indeed, photos. Thanks for the comments.

interesting. i felt there were afew things lacking.. I liked it, but it felt as thoguh it dragged on a bit.
I would say this would work great if it didnt go on for such a long time

Peter. I completely agree with you. I usually do my photo montages on the timeline in AVID, and it's takes me an hour or so. This time, I wanted to practice in After Effects a bit, because I don't use it much. But it took me forever, so I gave up eventually. I like your ideas, and will steal them for next time!

Thanks,
Vito

that's probably one of the best 3D montages i've personally seen on this site, but as Peter says, sort-of seems to go for on for far too long (unless of course, that's what the B+G were after?)

That's partially it. The bride wanted it to be 5-10 minutes long. I wanted it to stay the length of the original song (about 4min), but lengthened it to her minimum. At least I was able to talk her down to that length. Don't know if you caught the repeat in the song. 10 minutes would have been brutal.


u've got the depth of field, the motion blur, the movement, it's very good, and shows u spent a long time on it!

I'm glad you caught those things. No one mentioned the four photos that had the figure extracted from the background and animated separately. Guess I should have made it more obvious. And I lost track of blurring photos that were in the background here and there. It was just too tedious. I also used the wiggler a lot to randomize the camera movement a bit. Worked pretty well.

And I did spend a lot of time on it. Too much time! There's no way I can do that for every client.


on a similar theme, here's something i've been working on (using motion backgrounds, and different shapes), in the 3D environment:


Okay. You're not messing around! I love it so far. 1979....I was already nearly finished high school.... Is that After Effects as well?

Thanks for the encouragement.

it's so easy to spend hours and hours in AE isn't it...
u clearly spent a long time on it, i know from having use it myself...best not show that as a demo then, coz they'll all want it!

and cheers for the mention of camera wiggler...i must remember to use that!

oh yes, 1979, i don't remember it too well but then it was the year i was born :)

Hi Vito,

I really liked the idea behind your montage. I would agree with Peter that the background doesn't really match how good the rest of it is. I also think that your quick camera movements create tension in the viewer as you have soft and slow music sent to childhood photos with an erratic camera. As I'm sure switching the camera aruond would take quite a hile, I might try dropping in a slightly faster song, which would sync well with your camra speed.

Thanks for sharing.

Patrick

Enjoyed your show ,maybe you or someone can help me. I'm looking for a 3d slideshow software program ,easy to use, used or new . Which program did you use .
thanks
Michael

Hi Michael. I used After Effects, which is not easy to use by any stretch of the imagination. Sorry, I don't know any montage programs specifically.

Thanks for watching,
Vito

I also think that your quick camera movements create tension in the viewer as you have soft and slow music sent to childhood photos with an erratic camera. As I'm sure switching the camera aruond would take quite a hile, I might try dropping in a slightly faster song, which would sync well with your camra speed.
Patrick

Hey Patrick,

The camera movement was a tough call, and a lot of it was just my inexperience with this kind of thing in AE. I found it frustrating and tedious to try and adjust keyframe speed, and especially interpolation, which seems to be a kind of black art to guess what the result may be sometimes.

To be honest, I tried to make the moves less obvious and smooth, so perhaps I disagree a bit. But there are moments that exhibit jerkiness that I despaired of fixing, so your comments certainly have some validity!

Thanks for the great feedback. I appreciate all you guys checking it out and taking the time to comment. It helps a lot....

best not show that as a demo then, coz they'll all want it!Ain't that the truth... I priced my montages so far out of reach I don't have to do them anymore. (Which is what I really wanted in the first place).

I hear you Rick. I can't imagine many people paying me what I would charge to repeat this montage. Especially since I would probably put even more time into it for someone who asked for this kind of thing. This particular client just got lucky I wanted to practice a bit in AE.

possible suggestion: ask clients for 'exactly 30 photos' for example, then just resize and replace all the photos in your AE animation..that shouldn't take too long at all and you still get mega $$$!

Dang, Richard, if I were still young like you, I wouldn't need you to fix my brain. That's a great suggestion!

You know how to replace footage like that? Took me forever to find out:

Alt drag footage onto an existing layer, and it replaces just the footage, and all keyframes stay the same.

LOL! is 28 young? cheers matey

i haven't tried that method - is that as quick as right clicking on each photo in the media list, and 'replacing' with your new photo? cheers, there's always something new to learn with AE!

LOL! is 28 young? cheers matey

If you try and tell me that 28 is old, I will personally fly to England and smack you in the head with one of my 1-year-old son's milk bottles...

i haven't tried that method - is that as quick as right clicking on each photo in the media list, and 'replacing' with your new photo?

Either one works. Depends on how you want to work, I guess.

cheers, there's always something new to learn with AE!

Tell me about it...

I thought the montage was really nice, thank you for sharing the clip. Any tips on how you set up a project like this an AE.

I got the idea from a few tutorials floating around the web. It's a pretty common montage techniques, I think.

This one explains the concept very well:

http://www.wrigleyvideo.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=17413&pid=123867&mode=threaded&start=

I had a third wall, and added a few more wrinkles, but the tutorial gets you going.

This particular client just got lucky I wanted to practice a bit in AE.Yeah... I "practiced" once. I think I spent a month in AE my first time just "practicing" and only stopped long enough to sober up for a client meeting.

It does get easier and the results really bring life to still images but geez... when one bride sees it they all want something similar. I finally quit showing the stuff and just encourage my clients to get uncle Bob to do a powerpoint or something.

Thanks a lot.

Yeah... I "practiced" once. I think I spent a month in AE my first time just "practicing" and only stopped long enough to sober up for a client meeting.

I know what you mean. But really, I could 'practice' on my own time for nothing, or at least get paid a little doing something special for a client here and there. It's a technique I wanted to get better at anyway....

It does get easier and the results really bring life to still images but geez...

Yeah. I find working in AE about as fun as going to the dentist. It's just incredibly tedious. You really have to enjoy animation (which I don't) to want to work a lot in AE.

when one bride sees it they all want something similar. I finally quit showing the stuff and just encourage my clients to get uncle Bob to do a powerpoint or something.

You think it's impossible to charge a realistic price for it? I think I would charge min $300CAN for the montage I did, including time spent working in Photoshop and scanning. With a full wedding video, a quick montage on the timeline is another story. Takes maybe two hours tops of my time, including scanning and Photoshop. This thing in AE took five times that.

I don't see many brides going for it...

May be a dumb question, but what did you use to make that? It's really cool. I usually use imovie and have some themes, but that's really neat.


If I were to use that, I'd probably start the montage out with that and then go into a more traditional montage. Or ending with it would be effective. I'd use it as an effect. That's just me.

And while we're at it, waht do you consider to be the best programs for making montages in general? Imovie is juvenile, but I have a ton of bells and whistles, and since I do mostly bat mitzvahs, it's what I need.

Hi,

I used After Effects.

Usually I do montages in my video editing program with basic animation. I use Avid Xpress Pro usually.

I don't know any programs that are designed for just doing montages. If you started a new thread with that question, you might get some input from others that use programs like that.

Ciao,
Vito