Live Brief 2 - Visual Effects for Guerrilla Filmmakers Course (Week 1)

With being editor for Glenn's Maniaframe project, It's best I continue research into new editing styles and techniques, and keep my skills busy and ready for editing. Norwich University of the Arts is using a website called FutureLearn, to distribute and give a course online for free called, Visual Effects for Guerrilla Filmmakers. It's a four week course and is all online, it helps to introduce and develop new and effective editing techniques in the visual effects area.

Week one has just started on the 8 February and the final week will start 6 March. The first week has been very much an introduction to the course, the ideas, the software and whats to come. Early on it discusses the differences between visual effects and special effects, and how visual effects are more digital and something done in post-production, whereas special effects are your practical, on the day stunt styled effects. We were also introduced to a software called HitFilm, and it's a free special effects software like Adobe After Effects, but one that everyone can download and have access too. There is one tutorial this week using HitFilm that focuses on tracking. I've used tracking before in After Effects and used it recently in our Think advert but it was very amateur compared to this style. There was a video walk through on how to use tracking effectively in HitFilm and they even provided us with some high quality footage to use for tracking. It slowed it down and went through step by step and made it easy to understand. They also made it so you are able to transfer these skills into over software such as After Effects. It was quite fun and successful using this tracking tutorial, and gets you thinking about more than just the edit, and the preparation as an editor you need to do for filming, so everything is in place for the edit.

We were also introduced to a few independent guerrilla filmmakers, such as The Blaine Brothers and Haz. They discussed their work and passion for visual effects, and in some cases how important the tracking technique we just learned was during their films and careers. There are also little tests here and there to keep you on your toes, to see if you remember details from previous articles or videos. So far it's been quite a fun and educational learning experience. In week two there will be more to read and learn about, as well as the introduction to green screen tutorials in HitFilm, which will come in helpful because a few ideas Glenn has for his final piece, include green screen of some sorts.