To say that you’re a microfilmmaker who’s a fan of effects prodigy Andrew Kramer and his Video Copilot company is like saying that you’re a human that’s a fan of oxygen or water. Kramer’s website has been offering a plethora of training and purchasable products for filmmakers who want to use action elements in low-budget films and trailers for as long MFM has been in business. Besides the reams of free training Video Copilot offers, they offer special plugin packages, artistic background asset packs, and score and sound effects collections for arresting film trailers.
Most recently, Kramer has released his most ambitious asset collection to date: Action Essentials 2. Realizing that the best special effects on the planet are the ones that are recorded from live action components, Kramer decided to grab a REDOne camera and record these assets. While some effects weren’t possible to be acquired in this manner and had to be rendered, 92.6% of the assets were filmed live with the REDOne. That’s incredible.
The damage done to this garage as a still asset for the upcoming film Depleted all came from Action Essentials 2, including bullet holes in the wall, water damage to the bricks, burns on the bricks, and cracks and holes in the floor. (Photography by Nate Eckelbarger.)
Now, before I continue with the review, I have to tell you that the name “Action Essentials 2” is a bit of a misnomer, much as Adobe’s “Soundbooth CS3” was a misnomer. There wasn’t an Action Essentials 1 that you missed out on. Action Essentials 2 is the first in the set. [Note: As I found out after the review, Andrew Kramer created an initial beta action assets package that was loosely referred to as "Action Essentials." However, it was never officially released due to the fact that Kramer started working on the super-high rez REDOne assets that would become AE2 and abandoned the earlier project because its quality wasn't as high as the new set was. -JH]
So, let’s break it down on how it functions.
The high rez bullet casings included in this set is one thing that really sets it apart from other FX sets. The options include rifle casings (like this one) and handgun casings.
Ease of Use
Readers of MFM know that we’ve got a massive sci-fi action film that we’re undertaking in 2011 called Depleted, so we’ve been testing out all sorts of effects and asset packages in preparation for this. One of the things we’ve noticed with some other manufacturers’ asset packages is that their organization isn’t spectacular. This results in a lot of looking through different folders to find the right asset. Additionally, many of these assets are not pre-keyed, but are filmed in front of a black or white background. This requires you to have to play around with ‘screen’ or ‘overlay’ transfer modes to lay in the assets in your compositing program.
Well, with Video Copilot’s Action Essentials 2, these issues aren’t the case. First off, the effects are meticulously organized to make it very easy to find things. (Obviously, as psychiatrists and Rorschach tests have known for years, what one person perceives is not always what another person perceives. As such, what may be labeled as a smoke burst by Kramer may look more like muzzle smoke to the end user, so don’t be surprised. . Kramer brings that up in his training overview of the set.)
To say that you’re a microfilmmaker who’s a fan of effects prodigy Andrew Kramer and his Video Copilot company is like saying that you’re a human that’s a fan of oxygen or water. Kramer’s website has been offering a plethora of training and purchasable products for filmmakers who want to use action elements in low-budget films and trailers for as long MFM has been in business. Besides the reams of free training Video Copilot offers, they offer special plugin packages, artistic background asset packs, and score and sound effects collections for arresting film trailers.
