Need Advice On How To Get Started On My Own Stuff

[Knight Templar]

I'm not that computer literate so I would like advice from people here who are.

The major questions being what size of computer do I need and what programs I need to do the following:

First:

I want to take various scenes from movies and television shows (about 75 in all, each about 2-4 seconds long) and combine them into a long sequence along the lines of The Third World War: The Untold Story on YouTube.

Second:

I would like to do my own special effects scenes for original and one day modern era Star Trek of a quality similar to that used for the television shows.

Any suggestions?

 

[Today]

I'm not that computer literate so I would like advice from people here who are.

The major questions being what size of computer do I need and what programs I need to do the following:

^What price range are you looking in software-wise? There's a big difference between $100 graphics programs and their many $1000s counterparts.

First:

I want to take various scenes from movies and television shows (about 75 in all, each about 2-4 seconds long) and combine them into a long sequence along the lines of The Third World War: The Untold Story on YouTube.

^Basically just video editing software. If you're just starting out with basic editing you'd probably want to start with something like Adobe Premiere Elements or Sony Vegas. Both of which have relatively shallow learning curves and are pretty inexpensive. You may also want to look into freeware video processing/encoding utilities as well to get your video clips into usable formats.. things like handbrake or virtualdub are very handy.

If you've never used video editing software before you may even want to experiment with the free ones that come with your OS.. (iMovie on a mac / Windows Movie Maker on a PC)

Second:

I would like to do my own special effects scenes for original and one day modern era Star Trek of a quality similar to that used for the television shows.

Any suggestions?

^You may want to try out Blender, it's GUI is admittedly quite clunky, but it's completely free/open-source and will give you an idea of how a 3d program works. I wouldn't suggest plonking down massive amounts of money on programs like Maya, LightWave, 3dMax, etc.. without getting a feel for 3d first. Buying the software is the easy part, learning to use it takes time.

Contrary to what many people think, none of these sorts of programs come with magic "make pretty visual effects" buttons.

 

[Knight Templar]

^Thanks. What do you think are both the easiest and most difficult aspects of creating your own effects?

How much does having examples of existing effects already available help a person in their work?

for example, I've always liked the effects shots of torpedoes hitting the OS Enterprise in "Errand of Mercy" and "The Deadly Years".

How difficult would it be to say duplicate those kinds of effects shots but show them hitting an Excelsior or a Galaxy class ship from the same angle?

 

[MikeH92467]

Have to echo the comments on iMovie and Windows Movie Maker. Either will do a great job of helping you learn the basics of editing. If you have a pc and Movie Maker isn't bundled in you should be able to get it by going to microsoft.com. They may be basic but there are a lot good shows and movies that do quite with just basic stuff. They are also very valuable because you will quickly figure out if you have any talent or desire to go further than the basics and how can you beat that for free?

 

[captainkirk]

For video editing and special effects I use Blender 3D. It's free and has lots of features. However it may be somewhat difficult to get started. But there are plenty of tutorials on the internet and people willing to help.

 

[Potemkin_Prod]

For editing, I recommend Premiere Elements. It's relatively inexpensive and very powerful.

 

[Knight Templar]

After watching the footage mashup for "Battlestar: 1999" on YouTube, I was kind of inspired with the idea of using Space:1999 Eagles to represent early Earth warships in the Earth/Romulan War.

I even started writing a kind of story framing outline with a voice over about how four squadrons of "Star Eagles" (12 ships) were being sent to protect the "Deneva Colony" from a Romulan attack.

I envisioned using footage of Nic Tate (Alan Carter) from the Space: 1999 episode "War Games" to represent "Lawrence Stiles" the commander of the Earth forces.

Yeah, he is supposed to be one of the ancestors of Lt. Stiles in "Balance of Terror" referenced as fighting in the Earth/Romulan War.

 

[Barbreader]

I follow a lot of fan efforts at Star Trek Reviewed. Please know that mash-ups are much more likely to be removed for copyright violations than other fan films, precisely because you are using original footage that does not belong to you. For many examples of mash-ups (some of which have have already been removed, I'm not great about keeping up this page) see http://startrekreviewed.blogspot.com/2009/06/214.html

 

[Today]

^Thanks. What do you think are both the easiest and most difficult aspects of creating your own effects?

How much does having examples of existing effects already available help a person in their work?

for example, I've always liked the effects shots of torpedoes hitting the OS Enterprise in "Errand of Mercy" and "The Deadly Years".

How difficult would it be to say duplicate those kinds of effects shots but show them hitting an Excelsior or a Galaxy class ship from the same angle?

To be honest, it's non-trivial. Even if you try out a 3d program and happen to have a knack for it, there's still a huge learning curve if you've never done CG before. It could literally take years to become good enough to set up a scene that looks anything like the shots you're trying to replicate. That's to say nothing about modeling. There are lots of example scenes and models for most major software packages, those can be useful to learn from. But it's pretty much taboo to just take someone's example scene and model, hit render, and post on youtube.

It also requires huge amounts of patience; while software like Maya and LightWave are pretty popular with professional graphics houses, the simple fact is that they have far more processing power at their disposal. Once you have your sequence setup and ready to go, you could be waiting hours, days, weeks, for it to finish rendering if you want to duplicate studio quality effects. It's not like editing actual footage, in that you literally have to render everything frame by frame if you want it to be there. Shooting one minute of video takes ~ 60 seconds, rendering one minute worth of 3d animation takes 1800 frames (assuming you're going for 30 frames/sec). Even short sequences are hundreds or thousands of frames long. So, as I said, you need patience, lots of patience. Or a render farm

 

[Knight Templar]

What is a "render farm"?

 

[Potemkin_Prod]

A group of computers that work together to render/produce a certain VFX sequence. Using a farm of computers speeds up production time.