Sitting in the movie theater, watching the surreal bullets flying by in The Matrix or the sublimely impossible arching trajectories in Wanted! We secretly hunger to be able to add this sort of polished Hollywood magic to our low-budget films, even as we publicly decry these Hollywood spectacles as "all flash and no substance." (More so with Wanted than The Matrix, but you know what I mean!)
The Bullet training will let you create complex effects for gunfights.
Fortunately, for those of us who hunger for the big budget tricks of old school John Woo or Michael Bay, there exists a strange sort of prodigy that teaches himself to do amazing things in special effects, yet somehow understands how to pass on this information to others and, even more rarely, has a desire to do so! Andrew Kramer is the sort of brilliant lunatic who watches trailers with the most sophisticated effects out there and then figures out how to do it himself in After Effects with the help of one of his favorite 3D programs. (He got inspired by the complex effects sequence in the most recent Resident Evil movie in which one of the mutant monsters throws a glittering axe in beautiful slow motion over the head of Milla Jovovich and has published pictures on his blog showing the steps he's taken to recreate it. Unfortunately, he hasn't yet posted the training on it. Maybe he intends to make it the follow up training to "The Bullet"...if so, I'm extremely excited!) Because of Kramer's lust for knowledge and constant push to make himself and others better, he's widely regarded as one of the top After Effects trainers out there for special effects. (Because of his skills, when he's not training low-budget filmmakers around the globe, he's creating title sequences for television series like the newest J.J. Abram's show, Under Covers.)
Fortunately for us, Kramer got fascinated by "Bullet Time" effects and decided to go to the trouble of making one of the most in-depth training programs for a single project that I've seen! Packed with over 5 hours of training, he shows you how to create an immersive 3D world inside of After Effects, how to create 3D objects in Cinema 4D, 3D Studio Max, or Blender (the latter of which is free and included with the training), bring them into After Effects, and do final color grading to create the final effects sequence!
The Layout for the Training Makes It Extremely Easy to Navigate.
And, in case you're worried about how many "extra" plugins Kramer requires you to use in this series, the answer is: NONE. Unlike many trainers, who will "muddy" their training with lots of 3rd party plugins, Kramer is the sort of purist that insists on figuring out how to do things with the core plugins that come with After Effects. Because of this, you can actually do this training on any version of After Effects all the way back to 7! (Technically, if you're okay with it not looking quite as polished, you could do it on 6.5, you just won't be able to use the Lens Blur plugin that was added in 7.) Iin addition to giving you the free download of Blender, Kramer also includes the demos for Cinema 4D and 3D Studio Max, so that you can try them both out in this project, if you don't currently own them. (Obviously, not every 3D solution is right for every person, so Kramer makes it easy for you to try before you buy!)
With that said, let's break it down into the different categories.
Creating a 3D environment in AE is made understandable.
Comprehension
When I reviewed one of Andrew Kramer's first separately sold training series a number of years ago, it was for his Serious Effects & Compositing series and one of the main problems that I pointed out with that series was that he just went a little too fast...that it was more based off the speed you have to do for online training vs. the speed you can go at on a DVD. Well, The Bullet corrects all of those issues, by digging deep into the under structure of After Effects and three of the most popular 3D programs on the market and doing so at a pace that won't leave you behind. Kramer's easy going manner and often corny jokes make him a fun and interesting teacher to learn from. That doesn't mean that you won't pause the training at times to assimilate some of the material, as Kramer still does move at a brisk pace, but it never becomes terribly overwhelming.
[Caveat: This is written from the perspective of someone who's spent some time in After Effects working on projects, so I have a decent grasp of the basics. If you're completely new to After Effects, you might want to cut your teeth on some of the Total Training Basics offerings for After Effect. Then move on to a few of Kramer's 108 free tutorials on his website. If you're able to keep up, do not pass go, go directly to Toolfarm to pick up a copy of the training!]
Depending on which 3D program you use, you can select the appropriate path.
Depth of Information
Quite frankly, it's really shocking how much information Kramer crammed into this series.
The essential order of what he teaches you is how to create your 3D background in After Effects, how to prepare your introductory visual sequence, how to create artificial blow back on your gun (a technique you can skip if you chose to use a gas blowback airsoft pistol), how to create particles and smoke from your gun blast, how to create and texture the bullet in a 3D program, how to animate a 3D camera and the bullet, how to add realistic 3D lights, how to create a shell casing, how to animate an ejected shell casing, how to export 3D data into After Effects, how to color correct the imported data and time things correctly, how to do final compositing, and how to do advanced color grading. (The advanced color grading is pretty impressive, since he shows you some super sick ways to track skin tones that don't require 3rd party plugins like Beauty Box or Mojo.)
But that's not all. One of the most powerful elements in the training is the least flashy: properly setting up an After Effects project for effects work!
You will learn how to use the sculpting and rendering tools in your favorite 3D program.
Dynamic Link is an awesome concept, but, unfortunately, it's created a host of sloppy multi-taskers who've never learned proper After Effects "etiquette"--resulting in a chaotic mess of video and effects that are all linked to original video files, many of which are much longer than they used to be now that many of us have gone to the new digital workflow. This means that if you need to share an effects sequence with someone, you can't simply zip up a unique After Effects folder and send it to them with discreet assets. Instead, you must trim everything down for this transaction and find where everything you used is located on numerous hard drives. Kramer's explanations of the correct way to create an effects sequence will ensure that your effects shots never get too out of hand and that your assets are always with the correct folder. That training by itself is worth the price of admission!
Although he's packed this area full of great stuff, here's a wish list for the future, which is made up of downloadable content (DC) for "The Bullet" owners (in lieu of download, perhaps as a second purchasable disc?), downloadable content for Action Essentials 2 owners (DC/AE2), and, finally, a possibly more expensive "Pro Editors" (PE) version:
DC: Practical Blow Back - You can shoot your footage with a gas recoil airsoft weapon, which removes the need to create "faux blow back", however, getting a believable slow motion shot with this is tricky, so this DC pack would shows tricks for finessing AE's PixelMotion to get a good result.
DC: Advanced Lights in 3D – The current explanation of lighting in the 3D program of your choice is a little brief, at least it was in the Cinema 4D path I went down. This DC would explore 3D lighting in greater depth, so that you can do some of the trickier things like having a bullet fly by a light source or move from one unique type of lighting into another.
DC: Matrix Style – In this DC, Kramer shows you how to create the warping air tunnels we all know and love from the Matrix.
DC: The 180 degree track shot – While Kramer mentions creating the 180 degree shot (that tracks a bullet from the shooter into the bad guy it's aimed at), the actual training is for a 90 degree shot. This DC would show some of the things to consider when creating the more elaborate 180 degree shot, and would include a fall guy to get struck by the bullet.
DC/AE: Action Essentials 2 Tweaked Workflow – Video Copilot's amazing collection of pre-keyed assets could cut down tremendously on the steps you have to create in your Bullet sequence. In this DC, Kramer would show you a selection of AE2 assets that will streamline this process tremendously. Additionally, extra work could be done on impact shots when bullets collide with objects and with people that would go beyond what currently comes with Action Essentials 2 and ties in with the DC: 180 Degree Track Shot.
PE: The Bullet – This augmented Pro Editors' version of The Bullet would use additional 3rd Party Plugins to speed up the workflow substantially. Expanded information could include advanced particle trails using Particular, tracking multiple gunshots, and creating breaking planes of glass for bullets to fly through on their way to their targets.
Interest Level
Even though the path for this is essentially around 3 hours of actual training(the extra two hours listed above come from the fact that each 3D path takes about an hour), it took me a lot longer to complete this because there are a lot of little steps you want to get correct. (I think I was at about 20 hours when I completed it.) With that said, Kramer's humor and manner keeps one interested throughout. Yeah, I needed to take some breaks from time to time, but he did a really great job of making me want to just keep working for a few minutes (or a few hours) more before you call it a night!
You can adjust the look and appearance of the bullet trail inside AE.
Reusability
This is an extremely reusable set that I was very impressed with. Once you do the basic training, you will be looking for ways to incorporate this sort of scene into your next action film! I happen to be in the midst of Depleted: Day 419, which has an elaborate gunfight with a concluding gunshot that would be perfect for this technique. If I'm able to adapt it successfully, it will track a bullet from a downed opponent across a room to a wall which blows out debris as the slug slams into it!
One thing that would be a great addition for future reusability would be to have a few template scenes set up in various 3D programs for users to modify themselves. Right now, he includes the project files for AE, as well as the 3D files form Cinema 4D, 3D Studio Max, and Blender, but they are all the finalized versions of these scenes. I would like to see an unanimated 3D template file that has a 50mm camera, a few common lights, one starting plane, an exit plane, and five of the most commonly used bullets near the starting frame with shell casings and textures to go along with them. (For example, three pistol rounds: 9mm, .44 Magnum, and a .45, followed by two rifle rounds, like a 5.56mm N and .50 .) This would provide the most common bullets and shells in one location, which could easily be animated based on whatever the shot calls for and would cut down on a lot of creation time.
The color grading instruction shows you how to adjust only certain parts of an image.
Value vs. Cost
For $49, everyone who wants to use After Effects and/or a 3D program needs to just pick this up! Even if you don't want to make Matrix or Wanted-style shots, the amount of training devoted to understanding 3D programs and After Effects in general makes this a great investment. I've owned Cinema 4D for awhile and loved what it was capable of, but didn't realize how powerful and how easy it was to use until I went through this training. If you want to improve your abilities in these areas, $49 is an extremely reasonable cost to do it and Kramer is a great trainer to do it with. (Plus, if you buy if from Toolfarm, you get an additional discount off the MSRP price!)
Example of Final Video As Created by Reviewer.
(Not quite as good as Kramer's original, but not bad!)
Overall Comment The Bullet is another example of great, high-level training to come from Video Copilot. As I conclude my review, I find myself vaguely frustrated that Kramer's parents didn't think into the future enough to clone about six or seven of him and force each of these clones to specialize in a completely different area of production work. Imagine if there was an Andrew Kramer creating training for advanced film editing, an Andrew Kramer for advanced lighting techniques, an Andrew Kramer for Advanced Cinematography, an Andrew Kramer for Advanced Producing? (My audio engineer is especially frustrated that there isn't an Andrew Kramer making 108 advanced sound design tutorials!) Oh well, I'll bet the "Red"-Earth (ala JJ Abrams' Fringe) corrected this problem! ("Yes, welcome to the Andrew Kramer Agency. Not a problem, sir. No. Not at all. We have an Andrew Kramer for that!")
Comprehension
9.0
Depth
of Information
10.0
Interest
Level
10.0
Reusability
9.9
Value
vs. Cost
10.0
Overall Score
9.8
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.
We've all been there. 
