EPTPreface - Or Why Am I Doing This?
Its just one of those days
When you don't wanna wake up
Everything is fucked
Everybody sucks
I woke up yesterday and read shit that made me mad. It was something about overdoing things for money, undermining other people's work and arrogant disrespect.Anyhow, now I'm over it and freaking out about my neighbour, who is now playing "Amazing Grace" for the fourth hour non-stop on his bag-pipe. He is very bad at that. And very loud. VERY LOUD. I might break his fucking face tonight.
Besides that I figuered 6 hours ago that my movie, I was already doing, was shit, and that the music I chose was way too fast paced, so I have to start all over again.
I still like making movies / trailers. Although I really suck at it as it seems. I have a little experience, and worked with some pretty known names among the SCBW Movie scene, such as dyo, retuh and MooN. I thought I'd share this and make a real-time blog on how I'm doing right now. This should boost my motivation and stop me from raging again. I hope.
Getting Started
Ok. It doesn't matter what you want to do, making a movie neat looking and stuff is quite easy. Don't be scared by the upcoming wall of text. There will be pictures.
You can do anything:
- a video blog
- a video strategy guide
- a trailer
- a movie
- a pr0n of kerrigan ;;
What you have to have is this:
- Sony Vegas (any version older than 7.0 will be fine)
- Camtasia (Free Ware, Google it)*
- I recommend the High Resolution Expander**
- MS Paint or Photo Shop
- A lot of time and motivation
* Camtasia can cause trouble if you're using Windows Vista / 7. At least the newest versions. I personally use Camtasia 3.0.2. It always worked for me.
** Don't abuse that program, it will cause an ICCup Ban if you use it over at the Abyss in ladder games!
Recording Replays
It's quite easy. Install Camtasia and the High Resolution Expander. I recommend to set the solution for the Expander to 1024*768 - this covers almost all epic battles. You can zoom in later with Sony Vegas without problems, the picture quality will stay really good.
You need to chose following things in camtasia:
Capture: Input -> Screen
Effects: Cursor -> Hide Cursor
Options: Preferences -> 25/50.0 Frames/second *
Options: Preferences -> Hotkeys -> chose what you want
* Frames/second: a frame is a picture. 25.0 means that camtasia will capture 25 images per second, which is the default setting if you want to create a decent movie. I recommend to chose a higher number. If you want to change the pace of the recording afterwards in Vegas the recorded scene could start to jiggle, get blurry or other stuff.
Once you're done, you can move on.
Now: collect replays and watch them all one time. Don't start to record right away, because you won't hit the scenes you want to record "on the fly" - you will have a lot of bad material afterwards.
When you record a scene, make sure you start the record via hotkey after the game has started and you left the lobby.
Always name your recordings with an easy name, something like "ArbiterRecallFightingSpiritTake1". You might save them in a seperate folder. This way you will maintain an overview if you have more than let's say 15 recordings. It's very helpful, trust me.
With camtasia, the records of water will always have inverted colors. You can't change that, just get used to it. You didn't screw up.
It's also helpful to pause the game before the record / the scene you want to catpure starts. Then put up the players names, start the recording, and blend the player's info out. Un-pause the replay and stop the recording 5-10 seconds after the action is done. With that you have the following information coded into your recording: player's names and color (helps later with vegas), and you make sure that ALL the action is in the replay. Later, when you actually do the editing part, you have an easier job to fade in/out / transition the scenes.
This is by far the shortest paragraph I'm going to post (lies, the shortest will be the choice of music), but it will take you a while to record. With the help of the High Resolution Expander you gain a lot more time. So, just take it like a man and do it.
The Soundtrack
The Soundtrack is the most crucial thing. Don't think you could pick anything, because this is the most important thing ever. A movie / trailer depends on its atmosphere. This is something you can only create if you have a really good soundtrack.
It takes a shitload of experience to judge which song fits to your scenes the best. So, take a look at your recordings. If you have big fights you might want to chose real epic music, like Hans Zimmer, John Williams or other composers. Slow pace, chorals, all those things work.
If you have short microintensive scenes that could work in a faster pace you might want to chose faster music. Like the newest Daft Punk OST - Tron Legacy. It's fast paced, it can underline micro intensive fights. But those songs are harder to cut. You will find out, so it's likely a trial-and-error process you have to figure out for yourself.
In my trailer for the ICCup Highlights Movie of December I used Nine Inch Nails - The Day The Whole World Went Away - slowely paced, worked well. After that I tried to use "Derezzed" by Daft Punk and found out that my scenes didn't work on it. That's why it sucks. So, think about this BEFORE you start your movie. Nothing sucks harder than to discover you can't continue, only because you chose the wrong songs.
I guess this it for Part I. The upcoming tutorials will feature this:
- Creating video tracks with Sony Vegas
- Fading in/out Audio/Video files
- Constant Borders (Latter Box)
- Making transitions
- Using the Camera (Zooms and Panorama Stuff)
- Changing the Pace of recordings
- Using easy effects such as the Sin City Effect
- Creating Kill Counters / Split Screens
- Advanced Effects: Using Cookie Cutter
- Introduction in Blue Screen
- Advanced Effects: Using Tracks as Overlay
- Using the Mask Option of Pan/Crop
If you want to read more post your comments, or at least suggest how I should kill my neighbour (god, he is now dressed like an EMO AND PLAYS A FUCKING BAGPIPE AND A RELIGIOUS SONG I HATE HIM SO MUCH)
Regards T_T;
