How To: Create your own ILM for (almost) nothing

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How To: Create your own ILM for (almost) nothing

by Victor Agreda, Jr. Aug 16th 2005

In a former life I was a filmmaker. It just so happened I was still a technology geek, so the best part of the film, for me, were the effects (and the story, natch). Up until a few years ago it would cost you tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to do things that today might cost a few hundred bucks. Gotta love Moore's Law. What I want to show you is a bunch of free (or cheap) software that will give you many of the tools used by special effects houses. As usual, you will have to know how to use these tools— no griping about interfaces or workflow. Remember what Yoda said, "Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try."

And one caveat: I'm not talking hardware. Apps like Cinelerra will run on puny systems (like 1 Ghz P4's), but your mileage will vary. So be forewarned: this ain't Engadget or hack-a-day, so nevermind the bollocks, here come the apps you'll need. Go build the biggest, baddest box you can find to make your Lucas dreams come true.

Actually, if you can swing it, you might want to consider getting a few machines, so you can use the right tool for the job:

One dual-AMD hopped-up Linux box running Cinelerra. Add a RAID 5 array for a video editing system, and CMS, and 3d
One high-end Wintel box for audio, editing text, browsing (research), image editing, accounting, and 3d work
One Mac mini for quickie video editing (iMovie), music production (GarageBand), CMS, 3d, DVD burning (iLife comes with the Mac, remember?)

Also, it's nice to have graphics tablets, DV cameras, some homebuilt film gear.

Enough about hardware, here's the software to get you going...

Where possible I have tried to find cross-platform apps. Unfortunately, a lot of this stuff is very niche product, so I mention the OS required for each app. See, I told you to get 3 boxes!

Video Editing, compositing, capture, and audio editing: Cinelerra (Linux only)
I've blogged on this earlier. Essentially Cinelerra is an industrial-strength audio/video editor with compositing and capture built-in. Add a RAID array for true power and security.
For minor audio editing and fx work there's Audacity (mentioned by our own Jason Clarke earlier). Cross-platform.
For stop motion & pencil tests (animatics): MonkeyJam. Windows only.
That venerable Photoshop replacement: GIMP. Definitely cross-platform.
In my opinion, the best free 3d modeling/animation/renderer app is Blender3d. Their Orange Project was the inspiration for this article. We need more of stuff like that... Blender is really cross-platform, supporting some *NIX variants too. I covered a bunch of 3d apps earlier in case Blender ain't your cup of tea.
Screen capture (for actors using a computer on screen, especially if they are technically challenged): CamStudio. PC only.
Office replacement: good ol' OpenOffice, which you'll want for writing that masterpiece. And folks, the writing is the most important part, please don't forget this. To format your script properly, here's a little template to get you started. OpenOffice can be used to do scene breakdowns, manage money, etc. You know the deal... It works on all OS'es.
Font management: X-Fonter. PC only. I guess you could use FontBook on the Mac...
Task management: Task Coach. It's PC only, though I guess for this sort of thing you could use anything— paper, whiteboards, or iCal.
Content management: Midgard. It's also cross-platform, and I blogged about this earlier as well. A good way to centrally store stuff, and build your intranet.
Storyboarding: Director's Boards (there is a free version). PC and Mac.
And finally (though not technically just software)... For all those props and miniature sets (yes, they still do that) you'll want to poke around MIT's official site for the always-full class MAS-863, or, How to Make (Almost) Anything. The site is full of great info for making, uh, almost anything. Though you'll have to track down things like a Stratasys FDM 2000. I think my uncle has one... There's also a little piece of the class at MIT's OpenCourseware Initiative.

So there you go! Now get out there and make that masterpiece. If you're feeling generous, give me a credit as Lead Dingus.

Tags: compositing, fx, industrial+light+magic, IndustrialLightMagic, movie+studio, MovieStudio, special+effects, SpecialEffects

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Stephen Searer said 11:07PM on 8-16-2005

Thanks for the info, I've been looking into shooting some video on my spare time and this will help me get started.

LD said 11:13PM on 8-16-2005

http://www.geocities.com/n2geoff/OO/oo.html

Pop Astronaut said 11:20PM on 8-16-2005

Holy crap. That has to be the single most useful film-related post I've seen for a long time. If nothing else, I'll get a lot of use from Directors Boards. Thanks.

Darren Cornwell said 3:49AM on 8-17-2005

You forgot one program which is available on the cheap with certain credentials. If your lucky enough to be a student Apple will hook you up with a �99 pound version (Read: Full) of Shake, pretty much bog standard compositing tool for anyone working in SoHo with film.

Ben said 4:17AM on 8-17-2005

Monkey Jam looks nice, but until it has onion skinning, I don't think I could use it for stop motion work (as I'm not good enough to do it *without* onion skinning).

I've been using another free (Windows only) program called Anasazi Stop Motion Animator. It doesn't have some of the features of Monkey Jam, but it is nice and simple and has onion skinning.

http://www.animateclay.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=24&page=1

Kent said 5:26AM on 8-17-2005

I think you can forget about using a Mac Mini for 3D - you're kidding right??

Darren Cornwell said 5:36AM on 8-17-2005

I don't see why you couldn't do simple 3D work on a Mac Mini, I use a 1.3Ghz Powerbook and Maya for 3D animation - truth be told though, I never render more than 5Mins, but in short measured doses there's nothing wrong it, on the slowish side it may be, but it serves it's purpose. I could always go out a buy a RenderFarm with a couple of SGI's, but my budget doesn't stretch that far!

Victor Agreda, Jr. said 9:52AM on 8-17-2005

I use Blender on my 800 MHz iBook and it runs quite well (as does Maya, Cinema4D and Lightwave)...

But I forgot to mention Wax:
http://www.debugmode.com/wax/

It's another Windows fx app similar to After Effects. And it's free... It will even take certain plugins.

Amit Agarwal said 12:12PM on 8-19-2005

what is ilm ?

dennis p said 2:32PM on 8-21-2005

if you don't want to buy a Mac mini for the quickie video editing, music production & DVD burning bits there are competent Windows alternatives:

- Sony Vegas Movie Studio + DVD Architect package; there are versions for $99 - $149 which do a nice job. I use Movie Studio all the time and you can do frame-level editing. The DVD burning piece is pretty flexible but has a learning curve...

- Music ala GarageBand? Use ACID Music; same concept. There are others that would fill the bill for varying quantities of cash.

- Sorry, I haven't gotten into 3d, so I am no help there but I am sure there exists something to do that job.

If you already have a reasonable PeeCee sitting there, you might as well use it IMHO instead of ponying up bigger wads of cash for a Mac. Save the cash to buy a better DV cam or tape or pay for the flyers to get people to come watch your masterpiece...

retsyo said 11:06AM on 9-03-2005

for Screen capture software, I recommend http://www.debugmode.com/wink, which is free, and runs on both windows and linux, but does not support sound record yet

mgk said 10:02AM on 11-21-2005

While some of the templates for Open Office work pretty good, there is a purpose built open source (ie. free) software application for screewriting and performing pre-production tasks (breakdowns etc.) that also supports online collaboration.

www.celtx.com

Give it a try.

mgk

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