Paul Ezzy is an independent filmmaker and videographer. Trained formally as a filmmaker, editor, and actor at NYFA and the Rockport Photographic Workshops, Paul also has degrees in Education, Chemistry, and Psychology. His choice past-times include creating visual special effects, art, and video games.
Are you tired of solid stroke and soft shadows on your text styles? Do you need something unique and catchy for your project? Final Effects Complete 5 from Boris FX may offer a fresh treatment for your old title or lower third. FEC packs a wealth of eye-catching visual effects. Most of the effects are designed to work on full color images, but some can be used on alpha channel bitmaps such as text slates.
In this video tutorial, we use the BCC Witness Protection filter in Apple Final Cut Pro to obscure the face of a surfer who is surfing a wave at great speed, moving across the frame from the center to exit on the right. We will use BCC Witness Protection's built-in motion tracker to automate this process.
Boris Continuum Complete's Cartoon Look filter lets you easily convert images and clips into cartoon-style roto animations. The result is a look that has been popularized in films such as Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly. The look can also be seen in broadcast TV commercials for The Charles Schwab Corporation.
The BCC Optical Stabilizer filter enables you to stabilize shaky video footage. The filter uses optical flow technology to determine the movement of the camera and then adjusts the clip's position to compensate. Depending upon filter parameter settings, the motion in the clip will either be smoothed or completely locked down. Unlike many other image stabilization tools, the BCC Optical Stabilizer does not require you to set user-defined tracking points. This is useful for images where tracking data is unreliable.
Editors use transitions as a way to cut between scenes, typically creating an animated effect such as a dissolve or blur at the end of the outgoing clip and the beginning of the incoming clip. While most modern NLE systems ship with standard wipe transitions, there are some transition styles that are more of an in-camera effect rather than a synthesized gradient wipe or block dissolve. One of these effects, known as a Swish Pan, is created by panning the camera very quickly in a 180 degree arc, creating the look of a fast blur between the outgoing and incoming clips. Continuing in the tradition of making visual effects easy to create, Boris Continuum Complete 6 AE now includes a Swish Pan transition filter which is available free for registered BCC 6 AE users. In this video tutorial, we'll use the new BCC 6 Swish Pan filter to transition between a pair of clips.
This new video tutorial shows you the basics of using BCC Extruded Text in Adobe After Effects. BCC Extruded Text belongs to the 3D Objects category of filters which is new to Boris Continuum Complete 6. These stunning OpenGL-based filters use vertex and pixel shaders that enable the generation of animated 3D shatter, bulge, bend, taper, twist, ripple, and wave effects. You can also create reflection or texture maps for the generated 3D text - from any image or video clip in the AE timeline.
DV video is prone to jaggy edges and compression artifacts. BCC 6 AE's new DV Fixer will greatly improve the look of your clip without sacrificing image detail or quality. Watch how it's done inside Adobe After Effects CS4.
BCC Smooth Tone is an image restoration filter that smoothes out skin imperfections while maintaining image detail and contrast in areas such as hair and eyes. This video tutorial from Paul Ezzy goes over the basics of applying the filter to a clip in AE and provides a brief lesson on how to use PixelChooser to increase the filter's effectiveness.
