Orphicpixel

Posted: 23 Jun 2012 02:00 PM PDT

So you’ve just finished shooting a video, and you’re in post-production. It’s time to put everything together into a coherent whole. It’s time to go through your shots and find stock footage to fill in the gaps or possibly even replace some of the shots that you took. Why would you want to do that? Here’s a few good reasons:

You Can’t Shoot It All Yourself: Classic example: you’re shooting a scene in a desert. You’ve driven out into the sands, and you’ve got all of the up-close-and-personal shots. Now it’s post-production, and you just realized why the desert scene feels illegitimate; there’s no establishing shot. Since you’re not about to go back out and charter a helicopter, you hunt down some stock footage of rolling dunes, and you're back on track to a completed project.

This kind of thing can work just as often in the planning stages. Find a killer bit of stock footage first, then find a location to film at that matches the establishing shot. You save a few hundred bucks renting a flyover, and the end result is just as cohesive as the flyover would have been.

Compensate for Missing Shots: This is the worst thing that can happen to an editor. While you certainly can’t use stock footage to replace shots of the characters themselves, almost any ‘empty’ shot can be ad-hoc’ed using stock footage. Say one tape went missing, and with it went that killer shot of the creepy shadows on the window and that other shot of the snow falling off the roof. Or the Director of Photography simply missed that coffee pot overflowing on the checklist of shots. It’s stock photography to the rescue!

Even if a particular clip doesn’t quite fit in visually with the rest of the clip, you can always snag it anyway and use AfterEffects or similar software to modify it until it fits in nicely with the rest of your work.

Stay within Your Budget: We’ve all looked for jobs on CraigsList and seen people with ridiculously low budgets for the goals they want to achieve. $500 for a three-minute video might make sense if all you want are some stills and a voiceover, but it’s not enough to rent a quality camera for an entire day, much less put together an entire video.

With stock video clips, you can ‘cheat’ your way into having an entire commercial or PSA without having to hire any actors, rent a camera, or any of it. Just spend your budget on some quality stock footage, design a story to weave the clips together, and head back to AfterEffects to make them all visually contiguous. You’ll probably still have to hire a voice-over artist, but if you’re clever, you can do everything you need to do and still have a decent profit left over.

In the end, your ability to use stock footage well is limited by two things; your imagination and your skill with your post-production software of choice. If it looks the same to you, no one else is going to know the difference. And as an added bonus, you can save a few hundred bucks or more in the process. Now why would you ever not want to do that?

James Daugherty is a videographer and photographer who relies on stock footage and stock photography from Shutterstock.

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The Latest Apps for People just Starting out on the Web.

Posted: 22 Jun 2012 11:07 PM PDT

If you’re new to the Internet or to making a living online, these apps will help you to stay in control of all the data and info that you need to compete and be successful. From an easy to use ‘to-do’ list to a search app that searches everywhere you leave written messages these will help the new (or the web pro) immensely. Click on a couple of them and check them out, they’re well worth a few minutes of your precious time.

LiveFyre – A conversation platform that will help boost your rank and build your audience.

If you’re just getting started on the web you’ll soon find out that if you don’t have an engaged, interested audience you’re basically taking to yourself. LiveFyre helps you to not only find an audience but also interact with them and keep them interested in what you have to say. Of course what you have to say should still be interesting. Global publishers or niche blogger alike, our LiveFyre can help turn your content into a facilitator for meaningful live conversations.

Best Feature – All of your conversations are written back and saved to your database. Very convenient.

5 Minutes – A fast website maker for the newb or the pro.

Whether you’re a high-test affiliate marketer or a newbie who doesn’t really know their way around just yet this site is for you. It helps you make a website, fully functional, in less than 5 minutes, which is incredibly fast. One thing to remember is that they will charge for high-end stuff like payment pages but that’s to be expected on any site.

Best Feature – Full customization is available with their free tools.

KickSend – Send lots of pics all at once with ease.

If you take a lot of pics with your iPhone you have probably notices that sending them to all the people you care about is a real pain. It takes a lot of time and effort and, if you’re trying to build a business, you don’t have a lot of time to spend. With the KickSend app you can send sets of pics to anyone (or everyone) that you choose simply and quickly. It’s a great time saver, to be sure.

Best Feature – People can comment to the pics and share them easily without downloading the app.

Mighty Deals – Web tools at great deals to help you get started.

When you start your journey to make a living on the web you’ll find that you need a lot of tools to help you keep up and keep relevant. Mighty Deals has those tools and at great prices to boot. There are icons and vector graphics for your websites, low-cost apps to help you maximize your time and lots of other stuff you can really use, not just filler or junk. Some of the things they have you might not need just yet if you’re a newbie but in time you will.

Best Feature – They have a ‘freebies’ page with free stuff. That’s a price you just gotta’ love.

Skinnyo – Staying healthy is a challenge, and so is this app.

We all want to stay healthy, eat right and keep our weight under control (or lose some pounds if need be) but it’s tough with all the time constraints that we face every day. The Skinnyo app looks like it might be a lot of fun. You can use it to ‘challenge’ anyone you know who has the app and wants to lose weight / eat healthy and likes a challenge. You can see your progress and everyone else’s too, and race to see who loses the fastest.

Best Feature – Make teams and challenge other teams in a weight loss throw down!

TeuxDeux – The modern to-do list will make your life a little easier.

Maybe you know this, maybe you don’t, but there are a lot of ‘to-do’ apps out there and, of course, they all claim that they’re the best. TeuxDeux claims that too, and they may be right. What they have is a bare-bones but visually compelling and easy to app that you can use at work or at home and then take on the road with the iPhone they have. It’s an easy interface and even kind of fun, and should make keeping up with you lists of stuff to do a little easier.

Best Feature – Their ‘someday bucket’ for things you want to do ‘someday’.

CloudMagic – Find that info fast over multiple platforms.

If you’re just getting started as an internet entrepreneur and you use your tablet, phone and laptop to check and send email, you’ll find out very soon that when you need a bit of info that was sent in one of those emails, like a phone number or a reservation code, it’s not so easy to find sometimes. With CloudMagic you can search all your date streams from any device and find that info fast, before you start pulling out your hair.

Best Feature – It searches EVERYWHERE you have left any type of content. Social, email, whatever.

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sâmbătă, 23 iunie 2012

Orphicpixel

Orphicpixel

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