New blog theme and header – sweet!

Praise God!  The new blog header design is done, and, viola!  I chose a different them – much darker colors and better fitting for that “media look”.

See a screenshot the Minosa Films “ninja moon” themed header (below.)

"Ninja Moon" new header theme for the Minosa Films blog - screenshot of Blender

I did the project in the free, open source Blender (www.blender.org,) with post work (adding copyright I forgot) in the GIMP (www.gimp.org.)

For those of you who are not familiar with Minosa Films and what it used to look like, please see the below image of what the Minosa Films blog looked like a few hours ago.

The old look of the Minosa Films blog

For video editing, etc., I’ve been looking into Apple FinalCut Pro.  Looks pretty sweet.

Feeling techy, looking forward to the future.  Praise God.

Hope all is well, fellow film makers!

-b

Progress made – editing

Well, the conversion of the .tod worked.  Praise the Lord!  I have converted it through Power Director Express, to the resolution of 720×480 (.avi).  Adobe Premiere Pro 1.0 can’t handle HD, so with this lower DV resolution I can edit my interview of Dr. Singh!

Dr. Singh Interview 08 - in Adobe Premiere Pro 1.0

This is great news, because it means I can start working on video with what I have now, even though I’m not doing HD yet.

I hope to learn more on how to use Blender (www.blender.org,) the open source 3d content creation suite.  I may work on something in Blender soon.  If mastered, I would be able to do title effects, 3D animations, compositing, and CG FX for my films.  But until then, my options are somewhat limited, at least in the area of 3D animations and beautiful CG FX.

Once again, any film ideas are very welcome.  We’ll see what comes…

Ciao,

Thanks for listening,

-b

P.S. I have also found out how to handwrite subtitles for Adobe Encore.  Now I can work on the subtitles for MIG (Miracle In Gansu play to DVD,) and work to complete the project.  (Previously I had tried to write the subtitles in Encore, which caused the Encore file to get corrupted.  I recommend writing subtitles in a third-party app (like Notepad,) by hand, and then import them.)

Blender green screening, VSE – and how to make your own greenscreen!

I am endeavoring to learn some of Blender’s (blender.org) VSE (Video Sequence Editor) and node compositing editor.

With the VSE you can arrange video clips and do effects, such as achieving a fade out to black (using three strips – video, gamma cross and color generator.)

Using VSE as a simple video editor may be very useful, and as it develops hopefully it will overrun such commercial monster products as Adobe Premiere Pro.  One advantage over Premiere Pro 1.0 that I have found is that Blender’s VSE accepts an .avi compression that I use, whereas Premiere Pro 1.0 doesn’t.  Besides that, Blender is completely free and open source, and is an alternative to Windows Movie Maker.  WMM can be very useful for shrinking file sizes and doing some simple editing (and you can do text effects and transitions,) but Blender’s VSE seems less dumbing.

And now about the greenscreening:

With the node compositing I am endeavoring to make a successful chroma keying – taking out a certain color, like bluescreening, also known as split screen – but it is proving quite a bit harder than I hoped. It seems (as is perfectly logical) that to have an effective keying I need very clear, pure colors to key out. Otherwise you get grays when it looks blue and your footage becomes very spotty.

Hopefully I will get some good results soon. Here’s a screenshot of my first work with chroma keying – overlaying a video on an image – not so great, but I’m learning.

Old machinery (video) on old machinery (image)

Also, doing further testing this evening, this chroma keying business may be much more difficult than I had hoped. Looking online for professional options, I found these two sites: (the first site recommended the second site.)

DIY (Do It Yourself – Bluescreens, Greenscreens, Backdrops and Background stands) Highly recommended to check out – you can find out about how to make your own greenscreen the cheap way. (not fool proof.

EEFX (green/blue screen backgrounds and backdrops(?)) Great for seeing professional quality equipement, seeing the prices, and learning about what makes their cloth special.

Hope you enjoy – looking forward to filming soon! Praise God!

-B