After Effects CS6 (Review)

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Adobe After Effects CS6

After Effects is a pretty essential tool for most filmmakers who are incorporating any type of graphic treatment to their work, and this latest update is a major one specifically designed to increase the speed at which you can create, without waiting on your computer. This alone makes this update more or less essential for anyone who relies on After Effects as part of their normal work-flow, but the addition of the camera tracking feature and extruded text are also HUGE.

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Flash Professional CS6 (Review)

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Flash Professional CS6

Today, though, despite what Flash has done for the internet and its builders, the climate has drastically changed presenting a frigid reception to the once indispensable toolset. New media devices, like the Apple iPad (with its huge adoption rate), have decided to freeze out the plugin from being used and in so doing splinter the market on utilizing it in production. On top of that, the rise of HTML 5 has finally brought a way for developers to create rich media without having to depend on complicated scripting or purchased software. These big changes beg the question “Is Flash still relevant anymore?” In Flash Professional CS6, Adobe has made some integral additions to answer that very question.

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Premiere Pro CS6 (Review)

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Premiere Pro CS6

Editors new to Premiere Pro will find a lot of great features, and for previous users (especially those who held off on getting Premiere Pro CS5.5 because of the relatively few updates over CS5) now may be the time to upgrade, as Premiere Pro CS6 offers up many new slick features designed to speed up your work flow.

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Lightwave 11 (Review)

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Lightwave 11 cover

Finally! NewTek is hitting it’s stride again with Lightwave 11. In my review last year about Lightwave 10.1, I’d commented enthusiastically about my conversation with Lightwave user and evangelist, Rob Powers. He’s been in the trenches with Lightwave on multiple film productions and has been able to bring that common-sense utility and passion for workflow quality into the forefront. I’d enjoyed getting reintroduced to Lightwave (LW) and rated it very highly. But also apparent was where it was lagging in what is now ‘standard’ abilities in competing software. LW 11 is now engaging those ‘standard’ features into version 11 and NewTek is doing it with a very sharp eye towards user friendliness.

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Twixtor V5 (Review)

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Twixtor Cover

It’s a plug in designed to blend frames, and it has enough options to keep you happy. It’s not just about slowing down or speeding up. You can change frame rates in general, taking 30fps footage and getting a better 24fps output is certainly a great option, this should work for converting any frame rate you require. As far as I know, the amount of frame rate changes you can implement to clip is limitless, given your OK with waiting for a long render to create new frames. The amount of controls given to each keyframe is pretty impressive.

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Monsters GT v7 (Review)

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GenArts Monsters GT v7

Monsters is a pretty high-end set of plug-ins. Atmospheric effects like Raindrops for example are meant to seamlessly integrate with live-action footage and give the impression that you rented a $10,000 rain machine on your low-budget shoot. Everything here looks pretty convincing, and unlike many other plug-in sets, there are very few “throw away” effects. GenArts clearly spent a lot of time making these look great.

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Photoshop Lightroom 4 (Review)

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Lightroom 4 Box Cover

Lightroom 4 is a bit of a different upgrade to the popular platform. For the first time we see significant shifts from the editing and workflow side to the distribution, social media, and print side. The interface has largely stayed the same, save minor additions and new modules. This installment doesn’t bring significant changes in editing performance; it expands your options regarding how you want to edit your pictures.

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Film School Secrets (Review)

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Film School Secrets

Well it’s no secret that film school can cost you an arm and a leg. Film School Secrets (www.filmschoolsecrets.com) is a web-based training program that aims to save you the costly tuition, and get you started making movies and getting practical experience right away.

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Cinema 4D Release 13 Studio (Review)

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Cinema 4D Studio Edition, Release 13

It is getting harder and harder to look the other way when it comes to adding CG (Computer Graphics) to the independent filmmakers tool set. For serious indies that are looking to “up their game” Cinema 4D, the full studio version, is worth a long, hard look. Even TV shows are doing so much with green-screens and environment manipulation, that viewers are expecting a level of sophistication greater than ever before.

Yes, we all know that the story is King. However, with offerings like Maxon’s Cinema 4D (C4D), even humble filmmakers can have professional grade tools in their studio, which only expands on the ability to tell a good story.

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Tiffen DFX 3.0 (Review)

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Tiffen DFX 3.0

Traditional Hollywood and anyone who has ever put a filter in front of a camera lens, whether still or motion, has probably used a Tiffen filter or gel. They’re amazingly well-known in the cinematography and special effects community for filters and gels for getting amazing looks in the midst of production, but it’s only been fairly recently that they’ve delved into the realm of optical effects.

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InDesign CS5.5 (Review)

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InDesign Cover

A short time ago, Adobe introduced CS5 and with it came some great features. But the forward thinking people at Adobe realized that as media evolves at an astonishing rate, new features must be added to their existing programs. Not wanting to wait until the release of CS6, Adobe introduced InDesign CS5.5, which adds some great new features specifically targeting publishers who want to publish across multiple platforms.

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Story CS5.5 (Review)

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Adobe Story CS5.5

With CS5.5, writing with a partner is even easier than it was in CS5, and you can even set up permission levels to only allow them access to certain parameters. This is done very simply and becomes important when working with multiple partners or producers that you don’t want to directly edit your work. You can even access your scripts on your iPhone! (You can read them for changes and make comments, although, as of yet, you can’t actually change the script directly.)

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Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum 11 (Review)

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Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum 11 Cover

As with version 10 before it, Vegas Movie Studio HD is an incredibly priced software suite. At below $100 you WILL NOT find a more feature-packed piece of software for editing. I’ve been using Vegas Pro pretty exclusively for the past few years and have always found it surprising in its efficiency and quality, so to get so much of that power for hundreds less, you can’t beat it.

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Something Startling Happens (Review)

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Something Startling Cover

Using films as diverse as “Juno” and “The Godfather” (and pretty much everything in between) Mr. Klick shows how each film – in their own way – has the same beats. Even if the genre is completely different, or the director is George Lucas or Woody Allen, there are similarities in place here that you may not see (and probably DON’T see). But they are there.

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Ozone 4 (Review)

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Ozone4Cover

iZotope Ozone is a killer mastering plug-in, and the value of six mastering effects in one plug-in continues to amaze me. It would be well worth your money to buy this program just for the presets, especially if you simply cannot afford to pay an audio engineer to master your film. Simply using the presets with minimal tweaking will place your film in front of so many other independent films. This plug-in would benefit any filmmaker looking to make their work a step above of the rest.

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