Jake's Production Notes

Just finished a motion graphics project for rc aerial photography & cinematography company Got Aerial last week. This was my first project working with the Element 3D plugin for After Effects from VideoCopilot.

First impressions working with the plugin are definitely promising. The biggest issues I ran into depend on what 3d tracker you employ to work with Element. I had some solid tracks with the 3D Camera Tracker plugin that ships with AE CS6, but, too often, the shots proved to be a little too much for the tracker to deliver anything solid due to the constant changes in perspective. Ultimately, I relied on The Foundry’s CameraTracker for most of the shots with very reliable results. The reel title mountain ridge flyover, however, proved to be too much for either the 3D Camera Tracker or the Foundry CameraTracker. For this particular case, I found the best results with PfTrack which provided me with a rock-solid track that I was able to use for both the Element 3D Text and the main title “The Art of Flying” which I created in Cinema 4D. Originally, I had created the title with the Element plugin, but, due to some strange artifacting, I switched to C4D to solve the issue. Overall, it was a fun and challenging project and an excellent opportunity to log my first project run with Element & AE CS6!

Check out the final results below. All footage by Got Aerial LLC and music by Krewella.

Just finished a series of videos for the Educational Leadership & Policy Analysis doctoral program at ETSU’s College of Education. All videography was provided by Jason Jones and Zion Madden of the ETSU Office of eLearning and talent by Dr. Bethany Flora, Dr. Don Good, and ETSU president Dr. Brian Noland. I performed all post-production duties with Final Cut, Audition, and After Effects.

A book trailer that I put together for Harlequin Publishing is now live! Check it out below:

Finally found the time to punch up my mograph reel. Have a look below:

Just found out that the new commercial spots that I re-designed for ETSU Online will start airing next week. Here’s a sample

Quick video I did for the ETSU Drumline. Jason Jones & Zion Madden of the Digital Media Services division of the Office of eLearning at ETSU provided videography, international students Giulia Andreazza and Paras Pageni provided the talent, and I performed all post-production with Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, Audition, and Premiere.

Quick video I did for the ETSU Drumline. Jason Jones & Zion Madden of the Digital Media Services division of the Office of eLearning at ETSU provided videography, the ETSU Drumline provided the talent, and I performed all post-production with Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, and Premiere.

This intro is from a massive project that I completed in late September. The project was for NPI’s continuing dental education webinar series – Dental Marketing Summit Series – hosted on Dentaltown. The project consisted of a little over 7 hours of greenscreen footage that I edited down into 7 hour long episodes. Each episode had it’s own custom intro and outro and a myriad of slides in between. All slides and intros were written by co-host Mark Dilatush and I provided the design & animation. This is the opener for the first episode.

This is a quick motion graphics intro that I made back in February for Professor Griff’s presentation at ETSU during Black History Month. No big frills just some Photoshop & After Effects. I’ll post a link to the whole presentation here when I finish uprezing the presentation (it was originally SD & HD).

I finally got the time to get this one finished – at last. Carter Legacy a mini-documentary that tells the story of how East Tennessee State University was founded and the role its benefactor, George L. Carter, played in making the school’s founding a reality. John Fleenor, Media Collections Manager at ETSU’s Archives of Appalachia, provides narration of a story by Ned Irwin, University Archivist. David Currie, Josh Elliot, and Jason Jones assisted with the live action shoot and all still photography was provided by the University Photo Lab, the Archives of Appalachia, and the website Johnson’s Depot. Thanks & props also goes to ETSU Digital Media Services who produced the project and aided in the distribution. I served as director, editor, visual effects artist, and producer utilizing Premiere, After Effects, Photoshop, and Audition on a Mac & PC.

This project required a massive amount of Photoshop & After Effects work for the 2D/3D shots which I’ll go into a little more in a future post. It will be featured during ETSU’s Centennial Celebration next month. Check it out below.