Are you working on an HD project and found you need to incorporate standard definition footage? In this article, CreativeCow leader Shane Ross walks you through a step by step process of up-converting standard definition video to match a high definition project utilizing the AJA Kona 3 capture card. Read more...
Looking for smooth shoots even on extreme locations? Want a painless post? 24P, film look, Depth of Field converter, advanced compositing and sound design. Carl Larsen shows you how to avoid problems through planning, along with invaluable tips for cinematic storytelling on a tight schedule. In this Creative Cow Magazine extra from the "Workflow 3.0" issue, Carl Larsen shows you how to avoid problems through planning, along with invaluable tips for cinematic storytelling on a tight schedule. Along with his remarkable story, you'll find the original short film, its animatic and storyboards, and a close look at project construction. Take a look...
Carl has also taken his production and compositing expertise to create 2 of the Cow's most popular tutorials, Building a Cube World, and Building a Cube World 2, showing easy ways to create 360 degree scenes.
The word "workflow" has been abused for so long that it's easy to forget how important it really is... It's not a product feature.It's a combination of planning, discipline and creativity, achieved by perseverance, mastery of technology, and, if necessary, brute force, to get from one end of your job to the other. To redeem its abuse elsewhere, we have some especially gleaming examples of the proper use of the word "workflow" here.
South Park: TV's Longest Week Each episode of the Emmy Award-winning animated show is created, start to finish in 6 days, delivered with as little as 90 minutes before air. Here's a look at the people and technology that make it possible.
Metadata Through the Eye of the Lens A VFX cinematographer for films including "Quantum of Solace," Dave Stump also chairs the American Society of Cinematographers subcommittees for Cameras and Metadata -- and has unique insights on how the two are merging.
One team. Three Shows. Every week. FCP workflow pioneers Digital Film Tree (Cold Mountain, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, The Forbidden Kingdom) found themselves posting 3 network shows every week: Weeds, Everybody Hates Chris, and Scrubs. And they're doing it with the same team of 9 that used to post ONE show.
Fix it in "Pre." You might hope to fix problems in post...but the only way to make sure that you have everything you need is to start with careful pre-production. Read how one team balanced project design and storytelling while staring down the barrel of nearly impossible deadlines.
And... a round-up of Cows at work around the world and industry news. Download the latest issue here...
BESSIE'S 2008 ELECTION SPECIAL. MEET THE WINNERS...
Did you think we were talking about O'Brahma and MoooCain? Bessie is a single-issue voter: more grass, please. No, we're talking about YOUR votes here at Creative COW.
Millions of people have visited the COW so far this year. Many of you are coming every bit as much for the tutorials as you do to read the over one and a half million posts in 149 forums. For this year's Election Special, we've tallied your votes, and here present to you The Most Popular Tutorials of 2008...
Creators create. Everything we do is udderly unique, never before seen on earth. Right? Well, except when we need our own variation on somebody else's udderly unique work... and, hey, faster and better while we're at it. The overwhelming popularity of the recent Creating the Juno Opening Credits Look tutorial reminds us that we've got several more to help you create looks found in popular films. Take a look...
The Bourne Flashback: Creating a Flashback Look
The Cow's Aharon Rabinowitz shows you how to create the flashback look as seen in the film The Bourne Ultimatum, with some extra touches and hints.
Creating a Hologram
Looking to create your own holographic effect? Let CreativeCOW.net Contributing Editor Stephen Smith show you how. This Apple Motion video tutorial will teach you what you need to know to create a hologram effect.
Invisible Cape
With the help of his brother Yuval, Creative Cow contributing editor Eran Stern shows you a simple method to create the famous invisible cape effect inspired by the movie The Predator.
Creating the Sin City Effect
Creative Cow contributing editor Grant Swanson takes you step-by-step through the easiest and fastest (and extremely effective) way of creating the popular Sin City effect - colorized objects in a black and white world. You will learn basic techniques when working with color, and some useful masking/rotoscoping techniques. And don't miss part 2, here.
Looking for film look? Shoot like film.
Film look software will never offer the same impact on your work that film-style shooting will. Software will also always take longer than shooting right the first time. Longtime film shooter Kim Segel shows you the tools and techniques to maximize film looks, even on pauper's budgets.
Creating the Juno Opening Credits Look The independent film
Juno featured one of the most distincitive opening credit sequences in recent memory. It has a wonderful handmade look - which it turned out was created by hand. Whether you have seen Juno or not, Cow leader Simon Bonner shows a much easier way to create unique, handcrafted looks, without the pain.
These are just a few of the thousands of tutorials, articles and industry insights you'll find in the COW Library.
Michael Essany is the author of "Reality Check - The Business and Art of Producing Reality TV", and in our newest episode of the Creative COW Podcast with host Franklin McMahon, Michael joins Franklin to discuss how he went from a local show to a multi-million dollar program on E Entertainment Television. Along the way, Michael offers tips on getting into the reality TV business, just how scripted "reality" shows really are, and the best path to take when planning out production of a reality-based television show.
As the Cow approaches 1,000,000 visitors every month, it's also expanding beyond the web's best source for peer-to-peer support for storage, cameras, hardware, software, and information, to now also offer the web's most trafficked source for services, gigs and events.
FAME: ADVERTISE YOUR SERVICES
Now with over 900 listings, we're adding more of them every day, from all over the world, in fields including subtitling, photography, web development, voiceovers, and every aspect of film & video production from previz to post.
FORTUNE: GIGS (aka, The "J" WORD)
Yes, there are hundreds of listings for high-level positions in animation and film & video production -- HD shooters, particle animators... honestly, all of it -- with dozens more being added every week. Recent listings also include Flash and .NET developers, sales reps, multimedia technicians, and an Assistant Professor in Interactive Digital Media.
There's a section devoted to low-paying gigs and internships for folks who are just getting started and want to fill their resumes with real-world experience. And of course an area for you to tell the world that you're available for work.
(While we're at it, we should probably mention our Classifieds too.)
FUN: FESTIVALS, USER GROUPS AND MORE
No matter what you're interested in, and no matter where you are, you're going to find something truly fun: a cinematography workshop in Fireze (Florence) Italy, the Paso Robles Digital Film Festival ("In the heart of California's Wine Country"), where this year's theme is Music and Film, a 3D modeling workshop, an Avid User Group in Boston on the subject of digital asset management, and "Disaster Recovery Strategies for Broadcasters and Facilities" in Detroit.
You've seen the effect before -- footage of a human, feet firmly planted on Earth as a camera zooms up into the air, past planes and birds, through the clouds, beyond the satellites and into orbit. It's beautiful. Well, there are a lot of ways to achieve this effect, and this tutorial by Greg Neumayer is a truly compelling example of compositing and animation expertise that you'll love putting your own spin on.
Be sure to check out our other most recent tutorials, spanning the globe of content creation....and beyond!
Adobe CS4 -- The Official Release Introduced Today
Creative Cow's 900,000 monthly visitors do more than one thing, so we offer more than one perspective on everything. That's especially important with a subject as big as Let's start with articles on CS4: Eran Stern on A Compositor's Look at CS4, and David Roth Weiss on An Editor's Look at CS4. Then tune into the Creative Cow Podcast, where Franklin McMahon talks about the features he's working with in After Effects, Premiere Pro, OnLocation, Encore, Soundbooth, and Photoshop Extended, as well as a deeper conversation with Eran Stern.
And of course, join hundreds of thousands of Cows from around the globe in the Creative Cow forums. Whether in peer-to-peer support communities for Adobe software, or cameras, or production, you'll find even more real-world experience from media creation pros in film and televsion.
Director DP, David Battistella, REDtrepreneur, early adopter and obsessed student of the RED camera system takes a closer look at how to hit the sweet spot on the RED sensor. David shows how understanding RED's inner workings will help you expose your scene just right, every time. Read more...
CreativeCOW Stats Current Site Totals: Posts: 1,675,124 Monthly Site Stats: Unique Visitors: 2,026,483 | Monthly Visits: 3,017,138 | Monthly Page Views: 8,218,662
Year to Date Stats:YTD Visits: 25,563,221 | YTD Page Views: 71,531,428 As of Oct 29th, 2009 at 8:07 am
The Bourne Flashback: Creating a Flashback Look
Creating a Hologram 
Invisible Cape 
Creating the Sin City Effect 
Looking for film look? Shoot like film.
Creating the Juno Opening Credits Look The independent film
