What is the best special effects/visual effects software?

[dzsoul]

umm yes this is a high school project and one or two movies from the whole batch of 4th yr students will be chosen as representative for the school for student category film festival. in the film festival, there is also professional category but i am gonna try my best.

anyway, about the software, yes, we have it at school, and each of us are given a copy of adobe premiere pro and after effects. but we are allowed to use other software. The main lesson for the whole year as graduating high school students will be sound and video editing.

i was asking this early because i need to learn the software first too...it's NOT that after i make everything, the shooting, etc. that's the time i learn the software...No! I will not have anymore time in learning the software! Anyway, our lesson for the month is still sound editing. I think we only have barely about 4-5 months and we are going to release the movie.

i made this thread so i will be able to know what's really the best out there, so i can ask for a copy to my teacher earlier. since most of you suggested i make a story 1st, so i was asking a bit for the making of the story. this thread is really open for any suggestions, making the story, the excellent software out there, etc. there is no need for an argue.

anyway, thanks a lot guys you helped me a lot. ill be coming back when i need some help again. ^_^

[fitch.j]

Ok, I understand better what you are aiming at now. If you are unfamilier with AE then i'd suggest following some tutorials to help you get familiar.

Video Copilot's Basic Training would be a very solid place to start:
http://www.videocopilot.net/basic/

and then there are literally hundreds(or thousands) of tutorials to help you see the advantages of each of the tools and plugins. Heres a good source for some of the major ones.
http://filmmakeriq.com/general/featured/1001-adobe-after-effects-tutorials.html

Hope this helps.

Once you are more familiar with the software and how it works, it will be much easier for people to give you specific advice on any effects you decide you'd like to achieve.

Having Prem Pro and AE handed to you is an amazing oppurtunity, and your right to want to make the most of it. You also seem to be aware the learning curve for these pieces of software is very large, which is good.

Good luck with it and i'm sure lots of us here and on other forums (creativecow etc) that will be more than willing to help you along your way.

[dzsoul]

what genre should our story be? it seems my group only likes horror and for me it is a big No-no. I have no freaking idea about horror coz i dont like to watch those kind of movies either making it.

what's in my mind is a bit of action (superpowers) and thriller, and i think it's gonna be sci-fi. what do you think?

[Snakebyte1]

As I understand it, you've got 9 people in your group. If you want everyone to contribute and pull their own weight throughout the project you will need to come up with some compromise. You guys are going to have to get together and brainstorm and decide upon a story. May I point out that its been a month since your first posting and you should really have a least a defined storyline by now.

If you pick something that the majority of people in you group are not interested in, you'll have a lot of floaters just watching a few do all the work. Your project will suffer and likely they'll be conflict among members. You need to make everyone excited about the project.

I'm assuming you are the leader of this group, so you'll need to use your "people skills" and manage this group - skills that will be very useful to you in the future. Delegate tasks to your group members, set deadlines, follow up on their progress etc.

There is no reason why you can't combine the different genres. For example, you have an alien that can morph into different people (morphing software is available as freeware such as WinMorph). This alien stocks, kills and feeds on its victims. A flawed human who happens to have some superpowers then must overcome their own failings and defeat the alien. There you go, its got sci-fi, horror and action, you could even work in some drama.

Coming up with the overall storyline or plot should be the easy part. The hard part is when you create the script. As Fitch.J pointed out "You can't make a good film from a bad script" (there is enough Hollywood examples of that!)

[Nitemare]

Some story advice... smaller is bigger.

A story about a group of super-powered people will be less effective than a story about 1 guy with super powers. What makes films stand out is believable, likeable characters in conflict. Obviously your film will need more than one character, but a "group" scenario will make your job harder and your film less appealing.

Spending 30 minutes with one character figuring out his powers and using them to find his lost puppy is more potent than a group of heroes saving the earth from alien invasion. People will relate to the one character... they'll watch the group but not feel anything about them.

Effects advice on a time budget... smaller is bigger. An example of this would be a super power where the character send lightning bolts from his hands. You could show that using effects once... then afterwards simple lighting tricks and sound effects could be used.

As stated before, the effects should support the story. A story custom made to showcase effects will always be obvious and crappy.

More advice... if the majority of people in your group want horror, you should consider it. A good leader guides a group... he doesn't steer them.

Just my $0.02.

[dzsoul]

I'm having a hard time thinking a plot to make the group happy? we already have a plot, it's still pending if our teacher likes it.

[bink111]

Although it is nice to have awesome special effects, it is just as, if not more effective to have good music that fits with your film...You should definitely consider this , especially with the semi-pro movie that you are trying to make.
I made a short film for my British Literature class from the "Beowulf" story, and I flew through it...It only took me three days to make the film (one of which was just a day for editing the video and adding music) and although we didn't make a script, and just winged it by making up lines as we went along, the video still turned out pretty decent from all of the editing and music that I added.
If we would have had more time on the project, we could have had much better scenes, acting, and possibly added some special effects. However due to the lack of time, just adding in music worked nicely.

Oh and also to address your issue of not being allowed to do a comedy, you can just add small funny things into your movie as I also did, as you will see when you watch my video..The quiz at the end got some very good responses from the classes that watched the video.


Here is a link to the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_Q6NT30K5U

[GohanMaster]

I have a question.

Right now, I am working on a scary movie me and my friend made, and I also have a green screen in my room. I'm interested in editing a lot of videos and making special effects, not just small ones, I'm talking about the ones the Pros use.

But the program I use is called Corel Video Studio Pro X3

Is there an inexpensive if not free Special Effects Program I can use with it to help give my video a bit more of a professional look to it and make it look cool?