Steven’s Blog
During the third year of film school at Humber College the students have the opportunity to specialize in three different ‘majors’.
Right off the bat, I knew I didn’t want to have anything to do with Pre-Production – too much paper work, too much thinking, too much work for me. I could never do what our amazing pre-pro team does here at Q.
OK, well that leaves Production and Post-Production – awesome, I thought. That’ll be easy, I’ll specialize in Cinematography to shoot my own videos, Video Editing to cut my own videos, Post Sound/Sound Recording to flush out the content. Perfect. There are absolutely no other skills that I will need. I am 100% set.
… wrong!
Go to YouTube and click on almost any video – here, I’ll help – what do these videos have in common? Visual FX! Yes, I may have helped to push my case with that second video but regardless, it’s hard to find a single amateur video (never mind any major motion picture) that doesn’t involve some sort of visual effect in the finished product.
And, of course, that was the final option for me to major in, and the 4th place finisher in my selection of skills to learn! So what is one to do?
Well, this where my incredible amount of luck and Q’s incredible amount of AWESOME comes into play.
When I first started here (link to ‘my first film job’ blog) I was using the skills I already had to edit and shoot progressively more complicated and more high-profile projects. Doing this, I was contributing some value (at least I like to believe that) to the products as a whole.
Then, it was time to make a request (in writing, to the higher powers):
“The last few months I’ve gone from viewing After Effects as a weird purple box that sits next to the Photoshop icon on my desktop to a program I’m actually using learning and loving. with Green screen shoots every other day and our resident AE guru busy on many other pressing issues *cough* leaving early everyday *cough* I’ve been put on assistant duty on a this new program and i’ve never been happier to be forced to learn”
so there you go, my 4th and final option is finally being filled out.
SOMETHING ABOUT Q BEING A PLACE TO LEARN.
My first two endeavors into the realm of key frames, masks and madness (link to my future blog about AE) include THIS (link to SK13-159) sick kids piece. And my own journey around the world to Switzerland September 2012
