Sapphire has long been an amazing set of high quality plugins that offer a diverse range of tools to power up your post production. The bundle of over 250 effects in total, gives you access to everything from lighting effects, generated textures, transitions and more!
Digital technology has opened many doors for micro-budget filmmakers. However, many filmmakers miss the look of celluloid… the colors, the skin tones, the beautiful highlights, and the grain… Is it possible to truly capture these aesthetics on a budget that won’t allow for the purchase and processing of film stock? Enter Digital Film Tools, and their latest plugin for editors and colorists: Film Stocks v3. In this review, we’ll take a look at the film/video version of this software and see how close it gets us to the celluloid visuals of old.
Last year, with the release of the film, Hardcore Henry (which was shot entirely with GoPro cameras in first person perspective), we decided that we were going to look at the different cost-effective sport and mobile cams on the market to see which ones were worth investing in for our readers. The gold standard in this market has been GoPro, who kindly provided us with one of their HERO4 Black cameras for this extended research article...
When our affiliate, DarkestGoth Magazine, needed a cutting edge video talk show that pushed the boundaries of microbudget creation some years ago, we helped them look at the notion of making it an animated show. The concept of a real talk show that’s entirely animated hadn’t really been explored, so that’s the realm we pushed into for their flagship creation, Whiskey & Chai: The Silas & Ami Show.
Over the past four years, I’ve used CrazyTalk to help them create the show, starting with pre-composited backgrounds and human amalgamation avatars which then moved on to true green screen backgrounds (so that we could composite in Premiere Pro) and a more 2D cartoon style avatars.
Every editor looks for something different in their software of choice. Some prioritize a low learning curve, others look for keyboard shortcuts instead of mouse-driven interfaces, and still others simply seek out budget-friendly options. Fortunately, today’s market has a style for everyone. I will discuss one option from EditShare: Lightworks v14 Pro.
CrazyTalk Animator3 is a 2D animation package from the very capable company, Reallusion. Known for their outstanding iClone and Character Creator software for the 3D environs, (also useful for 3D storyboarding or outright rendering to video), Reallusion has upgraded their 2D animation offering with Animator3.