Creating a Preview film

Hi team,

I've got 7 days to create at 2/3 min preview film for a client that I've been shooting a film for the past year (a year in the life of).

Can anybody point me in the direction of a good tutorial for creating dynamic preview films.

Also...

I've been shooting footage in late afternoon sunshine (warm light) but when I view the footage it looks a little cold. Can anybody recommend a good after effects plug in that will warm the footage up nicely or should I do this in colour correction ?

Thanks for any help given

Neil

Keep your clips specific to the subject matter. You're giving a preview of a "story" that is you are telling. Give me a 2 sentence description of "Snow White". Same process, just visually. Take the final story you plan to tell, condense that down into two sentences, literally. Then put together a video telling those two sentences.

Use color correction tools in FCP X to warm things up. Although there are many third party FCPX plugins that can do this, also.

Thanks Ben,

That makes sense, I'll let you know how I get on,


Neil

It is an old directors technique that has been around for decades, but most filmmakers and students are never taught it. Condense your whole film's store down to 2 sentences. Condense the story of each scene down to 2 sentences. Then when you have things go wrong, have to reschedule shoot, decide which scene has to be cut, etc, you know the story inside and out, in brief, and can make faster more informed decisions. And it works for doing your trailer/teaser/promo, too. I use this technique with projects almost daily, and find it gets me through from production to delivery much, much faster with very little problems. That and taking all the time required to properly organizing media before editing.

BenB wrote: … Give me a 2 sentence description of "Snow White". Same process, just visually. … .

Excellent advice/example, Ben!


… reminds me of my days in the Ad industry a few hundred years ago, one of my 'masters' phrased:
"A good idea is described in one sentence!"

Thanks guys, this is really helpful,

Are there any good books on these classic techniques ?

Cheers

Neil

The 1st half of "Blink Of An Eye", although it is very vague and only gives a couple of overly generalized techniques. The out of print "Craft Of Editing" by Micheal Wohl is a really killer book to follow. You can follow it in FCP X, too, though it was written for FCP 6/7. There are many books about editing on the market, few are worth while, as most a really vague and don't relate anything specific. Editing is not magical, mystical fluff, it is a solid language with rules, just like any language. What makes it difficult to really learn is a lack of solid, specific, quality educational materials about it.