Upcoming Tutorial Breakdown: Meteor Hit

In this upcoming tutorial breakdown we will use stock footage from Video Copilot's Action Essentials 2 collection and many of After Effects standard plugins to achieve an effect of a meteor (or concrete blocks) falling and crashing in your front yard. I was limited by camera equipment and shot this in SD (720x480). One of the things I will be focusing on in the tutorial is how to match your HD stock footage with your SD back plate. I also did a version of this same clip about half a year ago which I will show. It is not nearly as realistic as my new and improved version that I will be show casing in the tutorial. Hope too have it up in the next week or two.

Joshua
MJOLNIR Productions

A couple of sites for Free Stock Footage and Green Screen Plates

I know its hard to find free Footage to practice on or even use in your own projects. I went ahead and rounded up all of the sites that carry free Stock Footage and Green Screen plates for you.

Video Copilot: Almost every tutorial has a project file that you can use to follow along with or use in your own projects.

Artbeats: Artbeats is one of your biggest stock footage resources on the internet. They now give away a Free clip every day to registered users. Their downloads include HD (1920x1080), NTSC (720 x 486), and PAL (720 x 540). By the end of the year you can collect over $100,000 of footage!

Green Layers: Green Layers is Similar to Crowd Control by All Bets Are Off Productions. They have a collection of free Keyed out Actors for use in your projects. This is also only for registered users.

Umesh's Free Footages: This guy has a bunch of great stuff. Some of the material is not the best quality but I believe he has started filming in HD.

Footage Firm: Footage Firm is a little different when it comes to free. The DVD's are free but you still have to pay $8.41 in shipping. I recently bought 10 DVD's with a $2,500 value for $84.10. Also check out Stock Footage for Free which is put out by Footage Firm.

Detonation Films: Need a fast explosion or muzzle flash? This is a great place for you free action stock footage. They have around 50 different clips to add to your pyro collection.

Visual Effects for Directors: This is another place with practice footage shot in HD. They have a collection of Green Screen plates and Match Moving shots.

Always HD: Another one of the popular stock footage sites, they also give away free stock footage elements about every week which are Always HD.

Pond 5: Another great stock footage site that has weekly free clips that you can download, just by subscribing to the site.

Ribbit Films: Ribbit Films has a deal that after you sign up for their site, you have six clips that you are allowed to download for a window of 14 days after you register, after that, they're gone. They have some pre-keyed as well as full green-screen shots to practice on.

Timeline GFX: These guys have a few different categories, Vector Art, Motion Graphics, and Green Screen. I don't care for the vectors, but the background graphics are nice. The green screen section has a few 'pre-keyed' as well as 'key yourself' clips that you can practice with.

One other thing, I don't know if any of you care for flowers or not, but run over to Pixel ART and pick up a free pack of Flowers. 4 SD (720 x 486) clips are included. I am sure you could use it in one of you Motion Graphics designs one day.
Joshua
MJOLNIR Productions

Welcome to EFFECTive Visions!

Welcome to EFFECTive Visions! This is the place for all of your DIY (Do it yourself) film-making tips. I am a 15 year old homeschool student who last year became interested in film-making. I am a VFX Compositor. I use Adobe After Effects and Photoshop. Right now I am working on my first movie based on the Halo games. Updates and info will be posted on it later. I have two other friends who will be helping post on this blog who are also film-makers with more experience in other aspects of film. We will try to mix it up by giving you tips and tutorials in various aspects of film-making. We're not professionals but we are serious about what we are doing. Hopefully you will learn from both our mistakes and our successes. Posts will include tutorials on all things film, tips and tricks, product reviews, and notices on free things to benefit your film-making. We will hopefully post about twice a week and more often if we see things that will help our readers. See you guys later.
Joshua
MJOLNIR Productions