Visual Effects
Review:
Ribbit Films Pre-Keyed Assets, Pg. 3
While there’s a lot that’s good about the quality of these clips, there are some strange issues that need to be addressed.
The first issue is that there are not very many full body shots available. Considering how difficult it is for most low budget filmmakers to shoot full body shots of extras, I would have thought that most of the clips in the collections would be full body shots, specifically to reach that need. Instead, most of them are medium shots, or, in certain cases, close ups. If you buy the collections, which is where your greatest cost-savings come in, you will usually only find 3-5 full body shot clips, with 17-20 clips that are MS or above.
The second issue is that the actors will sometimes walk off the camera, which makes them look like they’ve just vanished into the ether. This is one of those things that should have been more clearly planned and choreographed, because you normally want your keyed extra to be readily visible.
The third issue I noticed is that, when full body shots were used, there were often fairly harsh shadows around the feet. While you could create an artificially “thrown” shadow for your digital extra to obscure this issue or you can tweak and rotoscope to make it less noticeable, this is something that should have been corrected by Ribbit Films. If one of the big selling points of this pack is convenience, then any necessary rotoscoping should be done by Ribbit Films so that the filmmakers don’t have to do so after they buy them.
Adding dancers to music videos can be a great way to expand your music video budget. Just remember to softly defocus them if they are standing in front of your talent to cheat a shallow depth of field.
In addition to soft focus, Boris Continuum Complete's Lightwrap helps make it look like they were part of the original scene.
Value
For most microfilmmakers, $299 for a single 15-25 second clip is going to seem expensive. While this is true, the main thing you’re getting with Ribbit Films clips is convenience and speed. Sometimes you need to get a cut-to of a festival and you’re out of time. In these sorts of situations, Ribbit Films’ clips can be a total lifesaver. As we mentioned before, the best deals come in the form of their collections, since most of the collections include 18-25 clips. At $1499, if your film could make use of more than 5 clips in a collection, you’ll save money. With general themes like Dance, Musicians, Walking, Crowds, Business, and many others, you may find a collection that fits multiple needs you have in a certain film. For example, to return to the problem we started this review about, with the missing crowd and rhythm guitarist, which could be solved with the Musicians pack (which features about as many crowd scenes as it does actual musicians). Still, I think Ribbit Films would do more business if they would consider reducing the price for clips to $299 and the price for collections to $999. (Of course, consolidating collections to more tightly tie into the theme they were created for would also likely increase business for low-budget filmmakers.)
Final Comments
For convenience and power, Ribbit Films stock film collections are definitely ones that can bail you out of a jam. Unfortunately, some rather scattered collections, small groups of people, and repeated actors wearing the same clothes can limit their usefulness. However, so long as you check out the previews online to make sure what you’re ordering is what you need, you should be good to go.
Ease
of Use
7.5
Variety
7.1
Quality
7.5
Value
7.5
Overall
Score
7.4
The
director of two feature length films and half a dozen short films,
Jeremy Hanke
founded Microfilmmaker Magazine to help all no-budget filmmakers make
better films. His first book on low-budget special effects techniques, GreenScreen Made Easy, (which he co-wrote with Michele Yamazaki) was released by MWP to very favorable reviews. He's curently working on the sci-fi film franchise, World of Depleted through Depleted: Day 419 and the feature film, Depleted.
