The Banker

Apple has launched its new TV+ service and this provides another opportunity for filmmakers to bring untold stories to the world. That’s the case for The Banker, an independent film picked up by Apple. It tells the story of two African American entrepreneurs attempting to earn their piece of the American dream during the repressive 1960s through real estate and banking. It stars Samuel L. Jackson, Anthony Mackie, Nia Long, and Nicholas Hoult.

The film was directed by George Nolfi (The Adjustment Bureau) and produced by Joel Viertel, who also signed on to edit the film. Viertel’s background hasn’t followed the usual path for a feature film editor. Interested in editing while still in high school, the move to LA after college landed him a job at Paramount where he eventually became a creative executive. During that time he kept up his editing chops and eventually left Paramount to pursue independent filmmaking as a writer, producer, and editor. His editing experience included Apple Final Cut Pro 1.0 through 7.0 and Avid Media Composer, but cutting The Banker was his first time using Apple’s Final Cut Pro X.

I recently chatted with Joel Viertel about the experience of making this film and working with Apple’s innovative editing application.

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[OP] How did you get involved with co-producing and cutting The Banker?

[JV] This film originally started while I was at Paramount. Through a connection from a friend, I met with David Smith and he pitched me the film. I fell in love with it right away, but as is the case with these films, it took a long while to put all the pieces together. While I was doing The Adjustment Bureau with George Nolfi and Anthony Mackie, I pitched it to them, and they agreed it would be a great project for us all to collaborate on. From there it took a few years to get to a script we were all happy with, cast the roles, get the movie financed, and off the ground.

[OP] I imagine that it’s exciting to be one of the first films picked up by Apple for their TV+ service. Was that deal arranged before you started filming or after everything was in the can, so to speak?

[JV] Apple partnered with us after it was finished. It was made and financed completely independently through Romulus Entertainment. While we were in the finishing stages, Endeavor Content repped the film and got us into discussions with Apple. It’s one of their first major theatrical releases and then goes on the platform after that. Apple is a great company and brand, so it’s exciting to get in on the ground floor of what they’re doing.

[OP] When I screened the film, one of the things I enjoyed was the use of montages to quickly cover a series of events. Was that how it was written or were those developed during the edit as a way to cut running time?

[JV] Nope, it was all scripted. Those segments can bedevil a production, because getting all of those little pieces is a lot of effort for very little yield. But it was very important to George and myself and the collaborators on the film to get them. It’s a film about banking and real estate, so you have to figure out how to make that a fun and interesting story. Montages were one way to keep the film propulsive and moving forward – to give it motion and excitement. We just had to get through production finding places to pick off those pieces, because none of those were developed in post.

[OP] What was your overall time frame to shoot and post this film?

[JV] We started in late September 2018 and finished production in early November. It was about 30 days in Atlanta and then a few days of pick-ups in LA. We started post right after Thanksgiving and locked in May, I think. Once Apple got involved, there were a few minor changes. However, Apple’s delivery specs were completely different from our original delivery specs, so we had to circle back on a bunch of our finishing.

[OP] Different in what way?

[JV] We had planned to finish in 2K with a 5.1 mix. Their deliverables are 4K with a Dolby Atmos mix. Because we had shot on 35mm film, we had the capacity, but it meant that we had to rescan and redo the visual effects at 4K. We had to lay the groundwork to do an Atmos mix and DolbyVision finish for theatrical and home video, which required the 35mm film negative to be rescanned and dust-busted.

Our DP, Charlotte Bruus Christensen, has shot mostly on 35mm – films like A Quiet Place and The Girl on a Train and those movies are beautiful. And so we wanted to accommodate that, but it presents challenges if you aren’t shooting in LA. Between Kodak in Atlanta and Technicolor in LA we were able to make it work.

Kodak would process the negative and Technicolor made a one-light transfer for 2K dailies. Those were archived and then I edited with ProResLT copies in HD. Once we were done, Technicolor onlined the movie from their 2K scans. After the change in deliverable specs, Technicolor rescanned the clips used for the online finish at 4K and conformed the cut at 4K.

[OP] I felt that the eclectic score fit this movie well and really places it in time. As an editor, how did you work to build up your temp tracks? Or did you simply leave it up to the composer?

[JV] George and I have worked with our composer, Scott Salinas, for a very long time on a bunch of things. Typically, I give him a script and then he pulls samples that he thinks are in the ballpark. He gave me a grab bag of stuff for The Banker – some of which was score, some of which was jazz. I start laying that against the picture myself as I go and find these little things that feel right and set the tone of the movie. I’m finding my way for the right marriage of music and picture. If it works, it sticks. If it doesn’t, we replace it. Then at the end, he’s got to score over that stuff.

Most of the jazz in The Banker is original, but there are a couple tracks where we just licensed them. There’s a track called “Cash and Carry” that I used over the montage when they get rich. They’ve just bought the Banker’s Building and popped the champagne. This wacky, French 1970s bit of music comes in with a dude scatting over it while they are buying buildings or looking at the map of LA. That was a track Scott gave me before we shot a frame of film, so when we got to that section of the movie, I chose it out of the bin and put that sequence to it and it just stuck.

There are some cases where it’s almost impossible to temp, so I just cut it dry and give it to him. Sometimes he’ll temp it and sometimes he’ll do a scratch score. For example, the very beginning of the movie never had temp in any way. I just cut it dry. I gave it to Scott. He scored it and then we revised his scoring a bunch of times to get to the final version.

[OP] Did you do any official or “friends and family” screenings of The Banker while editing it? If so, did that impact the way the film turned out?

[JV] The post process is largely dictated by how good your first cut is. If the movie works, but needs improvement – that’s one thing. If it fundamentally doesn’t – that’s another. It’s a question of where you landed from the get-go and what needs to be fixed to get to the end of the road.

We’re big fans of doing mini-testing – bringing in people we know and people whose opinions we want to hear. At some point you have to get outside of the process and aggregate what you hear over and over again. You need to address the common things that people pick up on. The only way to keep improving your movie is to get outside feedback so they tell you what to focus on.

Over time that significantly impacted the film. It’s not like any one person said that one thing that caused us to re-edit the film. People see the problem that sticks out to them in the cut and you work on that. The next time there’s something else and then you work on that. You keep trying to make all the improvements you can make. So it’s an iterative process.

[OP] This film marked a shift for you from using earlier versions of Final Cut Pro to now cutting on Final Cut Pro X for the first time. Why did you make that choice and what was the experience like?

[JV] George has a relationship with Apple and they had suggested using Final Cut Pro X on his next project. I had always used Final Cut Pro 7 as my preference. We had used it on an NBC show called Allegiance in 2014 and then on Birth of the Dragon in 2015 and 2016 – long after it had been discontinued. We all could see the writing on the wall – operating systems would quit running it and it’s not harnessing what the computers can do.

I got involved in the conversation and was invited to come to a seminar at the Editors Guild about Final Cut Pro X that was taught by Kevin Bailey, who was the assistant editor for Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. I had looked at Final Cut Pro X when it first came out and then again several years later. I felt like it had been vastly improved and was in a place where I could give it a shot. So I committed at that point to cutting this film on Final Cut Pro X and teaching myself how to use it. I also hired Kevin to help as my assistant for the start of the film. He became unavailable later in the production, so we found Steven Moyer to be my assistant and he was fantastic. I would have never made it through without the both of them.

[OP] How did you feel about Final Cut Pro X once you got your sea legs?

[JV] It’s always hard to learn to walk again. That’s what a lot of editors bump into with Final Cut Pro X, because it is a very different approach than any other NLE. I found that once you get to know it and rewire your brain that you can be very fast on it. A lot of the things that it does are revolutionary and pretty incredible. And there are still other areas that are being worked on. Those guys are constantly trying to make it better. We’ve had multiple conversations with them about the possibilities and they are very open to feedback.

[OP] Every editor has their own way of tackling dailies and wading through an avalanche of footage coming in from production. And of course, Final Cut Pro X features some interesting ways to organize media. What was the process like for The Banker?

[JV] The sound and picture were both running at 24fps. I would upload the sound files from my hotel room in Atlanta to Technicolor in LA, who would sync the sound. They would send back the dailies and sound, which Kevin – who was assisting at that time – would load into Final Cut. He would multi-clip the sound files and the two camera angles. Everything is in a multi-clip, except for purely MOS B-roll shots. Each scene had its own event. Kevin used the same system he had devised with Jan [Kovac, editor on Whiskey Tango Foxtrot and Focus]. He would keyword each dialogue line, so that when you select a keyword collection in the browser, every take for that line comes up. That’s labor-intensive for the assistant, but it makes life that much faster for me once it’s set up.

[OP] I suppose that method also makes it much faster when you are working with the director and need to quickly get to alternate takes.

[JV] It speeds things along for George, but also for me. I don’t have to hunt around to find the lines when I have to edit a very long dialogue scene. You could assemble selects reels first, but I like to look at everything. I fundamentally believe there’s something good in every bad take. It doesn’t take very long to watch every take of a line. Plus I do a fair amount of ‘Franken-biting’ with dialogue where needed.

[OP] Obviously the final mix and color correction were done at specialty facilities. Since The Banker was shot on film, I would imagine that complicated the hand-off slightly. Please walk me through the process you followed.

[JV] Marti Humphrey did the sound at The Dub Stage in Burbank. We have a good relationship with him and can call him very early in the process to work out the timeline of how we are going to do things. He had to soup up his system a bit to handle the Atmos near-field stuff, but it was a good opportunity for him to get into that space. So he was able to do all the various versions of our mix.

Technicolor was the new guy for us. Mike Hatzer did the color grade. It was a fairly complex process for them and they were a good partner. For the conform, we handed them an XML and EDL. They had their Flex files to get back to the film edge code. Steven had to break up the sequence to generate separate tracks for the 35mm original, stock, and VFX shots, because Technicolor needed separate EDLs for those. But it wasn’t like we invented anything that hasn’t been done before.

We did use third-party apps for some of this. The great thing about that is you can just contact the developer directly. There was one EDL issue and Steven could just call up the app developer to explain the issue and they’d fix it in a couple of days.

[OP] What sort of visual effects were required? The film is set more or less 70 years ago, so were the majority of effects just to make the locations look right? Like cars, signs, and so on?

[JV] It was mostly period clean-up. You have to paint out all sorts of boring stuff, like road paint. In the 50s and 60s, those white lines have to come out. Wires, of course. A couple of shots we wanted to ‘LA-ify’ Georgia. We shot some stuff in LA, but when you put Griffith Park right next to a shot of Newnan, Georgia, the way to blend that over is to put palm trees in the Newnan shot.

We also did a pick-up with Anthony while he was on another show the required a beard for that role. So we had to paint out his beard. Good luck figuring out which was the shot where we had to paint out his beard!

[OP] Now that you have a feature film under your belt with Final Cut Pro X, what are your thoughts about it? Anything you feel that it’s missing?

[JV] All the NLEs have their particular strengths. Final Cut has several that are amazing, like background exports and rendering. It has Roles, where you can differentiate dialogue, sound effects, and music sources. You can bus things to different places. This is the first time I’ve ever edited in 5.1, because Final Cut supports that. That was a fun challenge.

We used Final Cut Pro X to edit a movie shot on film, which is kind of a first at this level, but it’s not like we crashed into some huge problem with that. We gamed it out and it all worked like it was supposed to. Obviously it doesn’t do some stuff the same way. Fortunately through our relationship with Apple we can make some suggestions about that. But there really isn’t anything it doesn’t do. If that were the case, we would have just said that we can’t cut with this.

Final Cut Pro X is an evolving NLE – as they all are. What I realized at the seminar is that it changed a lot from when it first appeared. It was a good experience cutting a movie on it. Some editors are hesitant, because that first hour is difficult and I totally get that. But if you push through that and get to know it – there are many things that are very good and addictively good. I would certainly cut another movie on it.

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The Banker started a limited theatrical release on March 6 and will be available on the Apple TV+ streaming service on March 20.

For even more details on the post process for The Baker, check out Pro Video Coalition

Originally written for FCPco.

®2020 Oliver Peters

Pixelmator Pro

Pixelmator made a big splash among Apple’s Mac App Store offerings when it was first launched. To close out 2017, the developers are back with Pixelmator Pro, a next generation version of the original. Although both products co-exist, future development is now directed to the Pixelmator Pro product with an iPad version to come. Like its predecessor, Pixelmator Pro is only for macOS and, in fact, this version requires High Sierra or newer.

Pixelmator Pro is intended to appeal to users who want the power of Adobe Photoshop, but without the subscription and at a more attractive price. By being designed only for the Mac platform, the Pixelmator developers can optimize their applications for Apple-specific technologies. Pixelmator Pro taps into some features available through macOS High Sierra (10.13), like Apple’s Metal 2 GPU image processing and machine learning via Core ML. This excludes legacy Mac Pro towers, because they aren’t capable of Metal 2, in spite of being able to install and run High Sierra.

Much like Apple’s own software, Pixelmator Pro features a pleasing user interface with a streamlined layout. The original Pixelmator interface was colorful with floating windows and tool palettes, but Pro takes on a more integrated and flatter design. You can quickly show/hide controls and bounce between a windowed and full screen display of the image to maintain the best focus on what you are doing. Layers are shown on the left edge of the interface with tools down the right edge. Additional tools and controls can be accessed from the main menu, as well as from a pulldown at the “+” sign in the upper left corner of the interface window. Whenever you select a tool like “Adjust Colors”, specific control parameters appear, along with thumbnails of your image using one of the built-in presets. Click “Add” at the top to expose more possible modifiers for that tool. This keeps the starting point simple, with an easy way to add more tools, much like Aperture did in the past.

Pixelmator Pro operation is very fluid. Little impedes your interaction with the interface. Camera raw images are processed in their native state, without the need for an image development step before you can work with them. Multiple raw files can be placed onto separate layers. Most camera raw formats, including DNG, can be imported; however, compressed raw formats aren’t recognized. For example, I was able to import images from a DJI image sequence, but not a Blackmagic Design URSA camera. With raw files, color adjustment tools continue to be available even as other manipulation is done.

Machine learning drives automatic layer naming. When you import a photo to a layer, Pixelmator Pro takes a best guess at what the image contains and names the layer accordingly. I imported an image of a large metal artwork and it was named “sculpture”. An image of the sanctuary in the Notre-Dame Basilica of Montreal was named “stained glass”. Most of the time, the automatic naming was close enough, but you can always change it yourself. The background layer and layers with camera raw images are not renamed. Another tie into macOS is the integration with photo libraries from Photos and/or Aperture. When selecting an image for importing onto a new layer, one option is to pick from collections that you’ve curated in one of these two applications.

If you come from graphics applications like Photoshop, then Pixelmator Pro takes a bit of readjustment in your workflow. For instance, the hierarchical order of applied processes is fixed. I can adjust color and then apply an effect, like a Gaussian blur. But then I can’t add grain from the color menu on top, because that’s part of the color adjustment options. Instead, I have to apply a separate grain modifier from the effects menu. Likewise, there are no adjustment layers to apply non-destructive effects to all the layers below. However, I can group layers together and then apply effects to the entire group, which is a viable alternative. You can rotate on image on the z-axis, but there’s no x- or y-rotation. Instead, you have to use the “Perspective Transform” effect and corner-pin an image to produce the look that horizontal or vertical rotation would provide.

Pixelmator and Pixelmator Pro both use their own proprietary file formats. Pro will open Pixelmator’s PXM files, but Pro’s PXD files can’t be opened in the original Pixelmator application. Of course, you can export in various standard formats, like JPEG, TIFF, and Photoshop. Pixelmator Pro also utilizes Apple’s Share menu, in order to send an image to Mail, Airdrop, Flickr, and also to your Photos and/or Aperture libraries. Importing layered Photoshop files with effects is a mixed bag. Standard items come across, but some layer effects are merged. Other effects, like texture effects on text, are dropped. The competing Affinity Photo gave me a more complete translation of the effects when I imported these same Photoshop test files. Nevertheless, the Pixelmator development team is committed to improving Photoshop compatibility.

There are certainly pros and cons with any application. Pixelmator Pro’s strengths are in image adjustment/retouching/correction, tasteful graphic design, and digital painting. Thanks to tapping into GPU power, painting with various brushes or deforming an image is fast and responsive, even on standard Macs. Paired with a tablet, Pixelmator Pro feels like the best digital paint product available on the Mac to date. The interface tends to hide its complexity, so if you don’t think Pro does something, make sure to check out its online help offerings. Odds are that the function or capability is indeed there. If you are looking for an alternative to Photoshop that’s also a great Mac design and image application in its own right, then Pixelmator Pro hits a home run.

Originally written for RedShark News.

©2017 Oliver Peters

Stocking Stuffers 2017

It’s holiday time once again. For many editors that means it’s time to gift themselves with some new tools and toys to speed their workflows or just make the coming year more fun! Here are some products to consider.

Just like the tiny house craze, many editors are opting for their laptops as their main editing tool. I’ve done it for work that I cut when I’m not freelancing in other shops, simply because my MacBook Pro is a better machine than my old (but still reliable) 2009 Mac Pro tower. One less machine to deal with, which simplifies life. But to really make it feel like a desktop tool, you need some accessories along with an external display. For me, that boils down to a dock, a stand, and an audio interface. There are several stands for laptops. I bought both the Twelve South BookArc and the Rain Design mStand: the BookArc for when I just want to tuck the closed MacBook Pro out of the way in the clamshell mode and the mStand for when I need to use the laptop’s screen as a second display. Another option some editors like is the Vertical Dock from Henge Docks, which not only holds the MacBook Pro, but also offers some cable management.

The next hardware add-on for me is a USB audio interface. This is useful for any type of computer and may be used with or without other interfaces from Blackmagic Design or AJA. The simplest of these is the Mackie Onyx Blackjack, which combines interface and output monitor mixing into one package. This means no extra small mixer is required. USB input and analog audio output direct to a pair of powered speakers. But if you prefer a separate small mixer and only want a USB interface for input/output, then the PreSonus Audiobox USB or the Focusrite Scarlett series is the way to go.

Another ‘must have’ with any modern system is a Thunderbolt dock in order to expand the native port connectivity of your computer. There are several on the market but it’s hard to go wrong with either the CalDigit Thunderbolt Station 2 or the OWC Thunderbolt 2 Dock. Make sure you double-check which version fits for your needs, depending on whether you have a Thunderbolt 2 or 3 connection and/or USB-C ports. I routinely use each of the CalDigit and OWC products. The choice simply depends on which one has the right combination of ports to fit your needs.

Drives are another issue. With a small system, you want small portable drives. While LaCie Rugged and G-Technology portable drives are popular choices, SSDs are the way to go when you need true, fast performance. A number of editors I’ve spoken to are partial to the Samsung Portable SSD T5 drives. These USB3.0-compatible drives aren’t the cheapest, but they are ultraportable and offer amazing read/write speeds. Another popular solution is to use raw (uncased) drives in a drive caddy/dock for archiving purposes. Since they are raw, you don’t pack for the extra packaging, power supply, and interface electronics with each, just to have it sit on the shelf. My favorite of these is the HGST Deckstar NAS series.

For many editors the software world is changing with free applications, subscription models, and online services. The most common use of the latter is for review-and-approval, along with posting demo clips and short films. Kollaborate.tv, Frame.io, Wipster.io, and Vimeo are the best known. There are plenty of options and even Vimeo Pro and Business plans offer a Frame/Wipster-style review-and-approval and collaboration service. Plus, there’s some transfer ability between these. For example, you can publish to a Vimeo account from your Frame account. Another expansion of the online world is in team workgroups. A popular solution is Slack, which is a workgroup-based messaging/communication service.

As more resources become available online, the benefits of large-scale computing horsepower are available to even single editors. One of the first of these new resources is cloud-based, speech-to-text transcription. A number of online services provide this functionality to any NLE. Products to check out include Scribeomatic (Coremelt), Transcriptive (Digital Anarchy), and Speedscriber (Digital Heaven). They each offer different pricing models and speech analysis engines. Some are still in beta, but one that’s already out is Speedscriber, which I’ve used and am quite happy with. Processing is fast and reasonably accurate, given a solid audio recording.

Naturally free tools make every user happy and the king of the hill is Blackmagic Design with DaVinci Resolve and Fusion. How can you go wrong with something this powerful and free with ongoing company product development? Even the paid versions with some more advanced features are low cost. However, at the very least the free version of Resolve should be in every editor’s toolkit, because it’s such a Swiss Army Knife application.

On the other hand, editors who have the need to learn Avid Media Composer, need look no further than the free Media Composer | First. Avid has tried ‘dumbed-down’ free editing apps before, but First is actually built off of the same code base as the full Media Composer software. Thus, skills translate and most of the core functions are available for you to use.

Many users are quite happy with the advantages of Adobe’s Creative Cloud software subscription model. Others prefer to own their software. If you work in video, then it’s easy to put together alternative software kits for editing, effects, audio, and encoding that don’t touch an Adobe product. Yet for most, the stumbling block is Photoshop – until now. Both Affinity Photo (Serif) and Pixelmator Pro are full-fledged graphic design and creation tools that rival Photoshop in features and quality. Each of these has its own strong points. Affinity Photo offers Mac and Windows versions, while Pixelmator Pro is Mac only, but taps more tightly into macOS functions.

If you work in the Final Cut Pro X world, several utilities are essential. These include SendToX and XtoCC from Intelligent Assistance, along with X2Pro Audio Convert from Marquis Broadcast. Marquis’ newest is Worx4 X – a media management tool. It takes your final sequence and creates a new FCPX library with consolidated (trimmed) media. No transcoding is involved, so the process is lighting fast. Although in some cases media is copied without being trimmed. This can reduce the media to be archived from TBs down to GBs. They also offer Worx4 Pro, which is designed for Premiere Pro CC users. This tool serves as a media tracking application, to let editors find all of the media used in a Premiere Pro project across multiple volumes.

Most editors love to indulge in plug-in packages. If you can only invest in a single, large plug-in package, then BorisFX’s Boris Continuum Complete 11 and/or their Sapphire 11 bundles are the way to go. These are industry-leading tools with wide host and platform support. Both feature mocha tracking integration and Continuum also includes the Primatte Studio chromakey technology.

If you want to go for a build-it-up-as-you-need-it approach – and you are strictly on the Mac – then FxFactory will be more to your liking. You can start with the free, basic platform or buy the Pro version, which includes FxFactory’s own plug-ins. Either way, FxFactory functions as a plug-in management tool. FxFactory’s numerous partner/developers provide their products through the FxFactory platform, which functions like an app store for plug-ins. You can pick and choose the plug-ins that you need when the time is right to purchase them. There are plenty of plug-ins to recommend, but I would start with any of the Crumplepop group, because they work well and provide specific useful functions. They also include the few audio plug-ins available via FxFactory. Another plug-in to check out is the Hawaiki Keyer 4. It installs into both the Apple and Adobe applications and far surpasses the built-in keying tools within these applications.

The Crumplepop FxFactory plug-ins now includes Koji Advance, which is a powerful film look tool. I like Koji a lot, but prefer FilmConvert from Rubber Monkey Software. To my eyes, it creates one of the more pleasing and accurate film emulations around and even adds a very good three-way color corrector. This opens as a floating window inside of FCPX, which is less obtrusive than some of the other color correction plug-ins for FCPX. It’s not just for film emulation – you can actually use it as the primary color corrector for an entire project.

I don’t want to forget audio plug-ins in this end-of-the-year roundup. Most editors don’t feel too comfortable with a ton of surgical audio filters, so let me stick to suggestions that are easy-to-use and very affordable. iZotope is a well-known audio developer and several of its products are perfect for video editors. These fall into repair, mixing, and mastering needs. These include the Nectar, Ozone, and RX bundles, along with the RX Loudness Control. The first three groups are designed to cover a wide range of needs and, like the BCC video plug-ins, are somewhat of an all-encompassing product offering. But if that’s a bit rich for the blood, then check out iZotope’s various Elements versions.

The iZotope RX Loudness Control is great for accurate loudness compliance, and best used with Avid or Adobe products. However, it is not real-time, because it uses analysis and adaptive processing. If you want something more straightforward and real-time, then check out the LUFS Meter from Klangfreund. It can be used for loudness control on individual tracks or the master output. It works with most of the NLEs and DAWs. A similar tool to this is Loudness Change from Videotoolshed.

Finally, let’s not forget the iOS world, which is increasingly becoming a viable production platform. For example, I’ve used my iPad in the last year to do location interview recordings. This is a market that audio powerhouse Apogee has also recognized. If you need a studio-quality hardware interface for an iPhone or iPad, then check out the Apogee ONE. In my case, I tapped the Apogee MetaRecorder iOS application for my iPad, which works with both Apogee products and the iPad’s built-in mic. It can be used in conjunction with FCPX workflows through the integration of metadata tagging for Keywords, Favorites, and Markers.

Have a great holiday season and happy editing in the coming year!

©2017 Oliver Peters

The Art of Motion Graphics Design

While many of us may be good directors, photographers, or editors, it’s not a given that we are also good graphic designers. Most editors certainly understand the mechanics and techniques of developing designs and visual effects composites, but that doesn’t by default include a tasteful sense of design. Combining just the right typeface with the proper balance within a frame can often be elusive, whereas it’s second nature to a professional graphic designer.

German motion designer and visual effects artist Timo Fecher aims to correct that, or at least expose a wider audience to the rules and tools that embody good design. Fecher has developed the Crossfeyer website promoting a free e-mail newsletter for online training. A key component of this is his free eBook Motion Graphics Design Academy – The Basics, which he is giving away to subscribers (free) for the balance of this year. His intent is then to publish the book next year for purchase.

I’ve had a chance to read through an advanced copy of the eBook. I find it to be an excellent primer for people who want to understand basic design principles.  The chapters cover animation, shapes, composition, typography, and more.

Feyer spells out his goals for the book this way, “The Motion Graphics Design Academy is for people who want to learn more about the basics of design, animation, and project design. It’s for newcomers, graphic designers who want to add a new dimension to their art, everyone dealing with digital image processing, and especially all kinds of filmmakers who want to improve their movies, trailers, title sequences, video clips, and commercials. The goal of the eBook is to give its readers a profound background knowledge about design and animation principles and to improve their artistic skills. Software and plug-ins are changing constantly. But all that theory about storytelling, animation, color, typefaces, composition and compositing will stay the same.”

Like any learning tool, it won’t automatically make you a great artist, but it will give you the guidelines to create appealing design that will enhance your next production.

©2017 Oliver Peters

Serif Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer

Photoshop users who are looking for an alternative to Adobe may find a refuge in Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer. Both are being developed for the Mac platform by British software developer Serif. This is a separate line from their Windows products and is their first collection built from the ground up to take advantage of the newest Mac and OS X capabilities. Affinity Photo, which was released on July 9 after an extended public beta period, competes with Adobe Photoshop. Affinity Designer is aimed at Adobe Illustrator. Both applications are available through the Mac App Store. They share a common file format. Affinity Designer just won the Apple Design Award at WWDC 2015. Due later this year will be Affinity Publisher – a desktop publishing application.

I’ve been testing both Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer for a few months and have been very impressed. Most of it has initially been with the public beta of Photo. Since I’m not a big Illustrator user, I really can’t adequately compare Illustrator and Designer, except to say that it’s a very capable vector-based drawing and design application. The application will import .ai files, but roundtrip compatibility is largely through certain common standards: PNG, TIFF, JPEG, GIF, SVG, EPS, PSD or PDF. The layout is built around three modes called “personas”. Start in the Draw Persona to create your document. Switch to the Pixel Persona for paint and adjustment functions. Finally, export through the Export Persona.

I spent more time with Affinity Photo, to see how viable it is as a Photoshop replacement. Its four modes includes the Photo, Liquify, Develop, and Export Personas. Photo is the closest to Photoshop in style and toolset, while Develop is more like the Lightroom toolkit. Liquify is designed for image distortion based on a mesh. Most of the image adjustment tools in the Photo Persona are adjustments layers.

In general, Affinity Photo feels a lot like Adobe Photoshop, but as with any of these tools, things are in enough different places that experienced Photoshop users will be counteracting years of muscle memory in making the switch. Nevertheless, you’d have a great comfort factor with Affinity Photo, since the toolset, adjustment layers and layer styles working in a similar fashion. One powerful set of effects is Live Filter layers. These are similar to Adjustment Layers in that they are editable and don’t bake an effect into the layer. The difference is that a Live Filter can be added to that layer only and doesn’t affect everything beneath it, like a standard adjustment layer. Live Filters can be re-arranged, disabled or edited at any time without relying on undo.

Compatibility between Affinity Photo and Adobe Photoshop is good and Serif states that they are aiming for the best compatibility on the market. In this current version, I had better luck going from Photo into Photoshop using a layered .psd file, than I did bringing a file created in Photoshop into Photo. The usual culprits are layer effects and vector based objects. In Photoshop, the Photo-created adjustment layer effects came across, but text with layer effects was merged into a rasterized layer with the layer effects baked in. When I went from Photoshop to Photo, layer effects were simply dropped. Affinity Photo is supposed to use third-party Photoshop plug-ins, but my attempts to use Magic Bullet Looks crashed Photo. Unlike Pixelmator (another Mac-based Photoshop alternative), Affinity Photo cannot use Quartz Composer-based filters, such as those from FxFactory. According to Serif, they will be working with plug-in manufacturers to improve the app-side support for 64-bit plug-ins.

If you aren’t completely locked into compatibility with Adobe Photoshop files sent to and from clients – and you are interested in an alternative solution – then the Affinity applications from Serif are a very strong alternative for Mac users. They are fun, fast and yield great results.

Originally written for Digital Video magazine / CreativePlanetNetworks.

©2015 Oliver Peters