In JayCut™ video editing tool, we will find basic editing functionality and additional web-optimized features like;

• Remix/trim videos and images
• Add music, transitions, and effects
• Add captions and subtitles
• Automated transcoding
• Use same account as webbased editor
• One-Click export to YouTube, Facebook, and other website
• Export videos for Iphone, Windows, and Mac

The advantage of the JayCut online video editing is;

• no need for download and/or install
• Instant access using any web browser
• No specific hardware requirement
• Access uploaded content anywhere and anytime
• Works on all computers and browsers
• Use content on the web in movies
• Collaborative editing, work together with other users from around the world

However, you must try this “unique” video editing. I recommend to use the high speed internet access if using this tool, because you must upload the video materials and download it after rendering.

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There was a time when video festivals had been far and several between. Studios controlled just about every single aspect to filmmaking and not much of an independent spirit to get found anyplace. It appears to have said that, with the rise of Indie movies that each state in the nation has it’s very own roll film festival. In California alone there ought to be twenty or more roll film festivals showing everything this side of phantom of the opera, London.

There was a time when movies did not happen at all, unless they had been under the auspices in the studios. No real likelihood of the tiny man obtaining his or her motion picture out there.  However, now it’s a whole various ball game. The minor man likes to show his films anyplace he can, hence the rise of independent movie festivals all over the nation.

Sundance, Tribeca, as well as the Toronto Motion picture Competition is the 1st and foremost festivals to submit your roll film too. This is rather like the lottery; should you will not play you can’t win. If you don’t enter your video you cannot get it proven. You need to continue to submit your motion picture as lots of times as you’re able to write up until you finally get acceptance into a pageant.

You might get very a couple of rejection letters until you receive your quite first acceptance letter. You will find a number of things that may help you out though. You might have to remember that a film competition board may have 800 submissions and only 40 spots for a movie to get proven. A lot of rejection letters have given the purpose that they had been far as well several submissions to even view them all. My advice to you is that once you’ve got your video performed, and you’ve the extremely initial date they’re opening for submissions then submit your film.  Never wait appropriate up until eventually the last minute.

Make sure your film is entered into the correct competition, for you would not enter a children’s movie into an adult alternative video festival. I am not sure there exists even the latter class, but you get the general drift.  Furthermore, read your application carefully. It may require your entry to become mailed, carried out on the net, or even in person.

From the category of the short movie, be incredibly careful you adhere to any time requirements for your piece.  If it can be a small too long then do some much more trimming. Just to become on the safe side if the film is to be 10 minutes extended, make it for 9 minutes.  Do not give them any cause to kick back a rejection letter.

Rejection is often a funny thing with Video Festivals; there is art even in rejection. The Slamdance video competition came about as an answer to the rejections from Sundance. The Sundance Competition shows in Park City, Utah.  At the same time, in Park City, Utah Slamdance runs. This can be a deliberate attempt to show the movies that have been over looked by Sundance. I’ll bet there’s loads of action in that town through the combined running of both festivals.

If you receive an opportunity to visit the Pacific Northwest throughout the end of May perhaps and beginning of June, the Seattle International Film Competition runs for virtually a month sometimes showing as quite a few as 300 movies. They have fantastic filmmaker’s forums and there is their original “Fly Filmmaking Challenge” that they hold every year. Theirs is the longest operating and shows the  most films of any other roll film festival in the nation.  -SLV-

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Using a green or blue screen in your production pipeline is simple: get a solid color background, film your subject in front of the background, then remove the chroma key in the background using your video editing software and replace it with something else. However, getting a precise key from your video can be a trial and error process that could cause frustration if the original video is not shot correctly.

Here are some techniques that you can use to make your green screen background production as trouble free as possible:

CHOOSING YOUR BACKDROP

- A chroma key background can be any color as long as it is not contained within the foreground elements you would like to keep in the scene. Most video productions utilize either a green or blue screen. A clean key can be achieved with either color, but you will want to take into account the color of clothing your talent will be wearing and also make sure nothing in your scene closely matches the color of the background color you are trying to remove.

- Use paint or a drop cloth and try to remove as many wrinkles or variations in the color of your background as you can. The more consistent your background color, the easier time you will have been removing it in post production.

ILLUMINATION

- The most important element of a good green screen video production is the lighting. A well lit scene will allow you to tell the software what color to knock out and what elements to keep in the scene.

- Set up a series of lights who illuminate your backdrop consistently and try to reduce the number of hotspots on the backdrop. Outdoor or fluorescent lighting is a good option because it is a diffused light who spreads evenly across your backdrop.

- Light your subject well using diffuse lighting as well. Furthermore, a back light that illuminate the back of the subject will help to create a clean edge for your video software to work with.

SETTING UP YOUR SCENE

- Place your subject a minimum of four steps from your backdrop. This will eliminate shadows from falling onto the green screen and will also help to minimize the color spills. Color spill occurs when the reflected green from your backdrop “spills” onto your subject and causes the color of clothing or skin to change the hue to match the backdrop. This can cause problems for your color key software and results in rough edges on the final production.

CAMERA SETUP

- Try to shoot your video with the best HD camera you have been available. If possible, use a camera that allows you to make manual adjustments to the ISO/Gain, shutter speed and white balance. The ISO/Gain controls should be set to a low setting. This will require lighter, but will give you cleaner video with less noise and artifacts.

If you follow these simple rules, you can create high quality green screen footage that will allow you to remove the background in your video editing software. Now you can replace the green screen with a virtual background or other video background. Have fun!

The Green Screen Handbook: Real-World Production Techniques

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A low budget film does not have the luxury of having great actors, locations and pricey sets. The only thing that can decide its success or failure is the story and how it s told. And that s not all that bad because the story and the script play a central role even in big blockbusters. So as a low budget filmmaker you should focus on telling a great story. Take your time developing a compelling script which would satisfy the viewer emotionally. You can start controlling your budget right from the scripting stage. Take care not to include events that would require complex special effects. Tell your story as simply as possible.

If you are making a thriller, you might want to include action set pieces like car chases and explosions. But it would be better that you devise an effective workaround as they would undoubtedly cost a lot and you might not be able to afford it. The suggestion of off screen action can be quite effective if executed cleverly. Suggestion has time and again shown to be more effective than actually showing something as by suggesting you force the viewer to use his/her own imagination. In fact great horror and suspense films have often been seen to use suggestion with great effect.

Making a low budget film may not allow you to build expensive sets or shoot at exotic locations. Even shooting at far off places would contribute to high travel expenses. The solution is to choose simple locations where you do not have to spend much to get the necessary permissions and which is easily accessible to the cast and crew. For indoor scenes you can request the help of family and friends and shoot at their homes.

After you have finalized your locations, plan out your shooting schedule in detail. The schedule should be planned depending upon the availability of the location, as well as the cast and crew. Moreover you should plan out in such a way that you can shoot all the scenes of one location before moving on to the next location. This way you may not be able to shoot your movie following the sequential order of the script but then you can put it together in order during the editing phase. In fact most movies are shot this way.

While choosing your cast, you should again limit yourself to a small talented group. Here also you can include family and friends. You can even meet up with aspiring actors in local schools and colleges or theater groups, and invite them to work in your film. But make sure that you choose reasonably talented actors as bad acting can spell doom for even an otherwise well made movie. As far as the crew is concerned, as a low budget filmmaker you would have to do most of the things yourself but you can take the assistance of filmmaking students living nearby or even your actors as time and situations permits.

When getting equipment avoid buying or renting too much stuff. Try to make do with whatever you have; this would include your camcorder, props, and costumes among other things. Keep in mind that if you tell a great story convincingly no one s going to pay attention to whether you used an old camcorder or a brand new HD video camera. Moreover if require certain piece equipment, then it s cheaper to rent than actually going and purchasing the same.

During the shooting phase be a little generous with the footage you shoot as the more material you have, the more options you will get during the editing phase. During the editing avoid using sound tracks which are under copywrite. If you search around you will be able to find enough royalty free sound tracks to serve your purpose.

The above tips will not only help you shoot your low budget film cheaply and efficiently, it would also help you enjoy the process which will hopefully result in an effective film.

Source from Base Articles

The Complete Guide to Low-Budget Feature Filmmaking

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Most of the successful films that are showing at film festivals these days are movies that were made at a fraction of the cost that it takes to make a major Hollywood studio film. Advances in technology have made it so that just about anyone can make a movie. Film cameras, video cameras, sound recording equipment, and just about any other kind of equipment that one needs to make a movie can be purchased at very affordable prices these days. The equipment that is available these days can provide a very low budget movie with a production value that looks like James Cameron had something to do with the project. This professional look coupled with a unique story can help any film’s chances at being accepted into film festivals like Houston Worldfest, Cannes, Toronto Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, etc…

Try as they might, the major Hollywood film studios will never have a monopoly on creativity. They spend millions of dollars on marketing research in an effort to figure out just what it is that the film-going audiences of the world look for when they go to the movies. Despite all of this effort, they still have not come up with a formula. The tastes of people who go to the movies are as hard to predict as an earthquake is, for the pattern changes all the time. Because of this fact, the door is left wide open for the creative types of the world to enter the game. All they need to do is come up with a unique idea that they can transform into a movie, enter their film in festivals like Sundance and then let the judges decide. While the big studios have tried to take over the film festival circuit in recent years, it is still the little guys with the small, yet creative films that are King in that realm.

It does not cost as much as you would think to make a movie that can be entered in contests like the Sundance Film Festival. Sony is about to release a line of High Definition camcorders that are perfect for anyone who wants to make movies on a shoestring budget. While movies made with these cameras will not be shot on “film” (like movies have been since the beginning), they will (almost) look like they were. These new cameras will be able to give a high quality image that is comparable to the image that film provides. The two camcorders are the PDW-F330 and the PDW-F350, and they offer all sorts of film production features that even the most film-loyal professional filmmaker must respect. Both cameras offer true 24P recording in both SD and HD, interval recording, and slow shutter recording to name a few. The F350 model also offers true variable frame rate recording capabilities which are also referred to as the “slow motion/fast motion” features. Features like these are very valuable to anyone making a low budget movie for it allows them to include motion effects in their films without the use of an expensive film camera or a high priced film lab. Both of these cameras will be on the market in March of 2006. The F350 will cost about twenty five thousand, while the F330 model will only cost about sixteen thousand dollars. A PDW-F30 deck will be available in June for about nine thousand. These are small prices to pay to be a self-sufficient independent filmmaker.

A low budget filmmaker can invest in a relatively low-cost HD camcorder and deck and have everything they need to make as many movies as their mind and body can crank out. All they will need after that is a creative mind, a few thousand dollars, a few ambitious friends for their actors and crew, some script writing software like Final Draft, and an iron resolve to make a movie. They do not have to worry about the high costs of film stock, film processing, or film-to-DVD transfers. All they will need is their camera and a $30 disc (23.3GB) and they will be set to film an entire movie. Buying discs for a camera is a lot cheaper than buying film and all the financial baggage that comes with it.

Once they shoot their movie with one of these cameras, a low budget filmmaker can go right to their computer with the disc and start editing it using one of the many affordable editing programs that are available these days such as Final Cut Pro. They can do all of the post production work for their movie on their home computer, as long as they are willing to shoulder a mother load of work responsibilities.

Technology has allowed independent filmmakers to bypass many expensive steps in the filmmaking process. Instead of paying a bunch of people hundreds of dollars an hour for film services that are only available in cities like Hollywood and New York, they can now do all of these steps in the comfort of their own home on their own computer.

For anyone who has ever had a dream of making their own movie, there is no better time than now to make it happen. The playing field has been leveled in terms of technology, but you still need a creative story to get anywhere on the film festival circuit. The affordable equipment can get you on the field, but you must bring a good game to win. A creative mind is your best player in this game, so if you have that part taken care of you are halfway to making your film vision a reality. Nurture your creative idea until it becomes a unique script and then dedicate your life to making this script into a movie. If your idea is as good as you think it is you will do quite well on the film festival circuit. If this happens it could lead to a decent distribution deal for your movie. If you stick with it and continue to make films you may even find that you have made yourself a career as a professional artist who makes independent films, and that dreams really can become reality.

Original source and author from Michael P. Connelly’s article

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