Q: I'm an 17 yr old student and I am very interested in getting involved in the Visual Effects industry and would like some knowledge of some good schools to attend. What is a good steeping stone? What credits do I need and experience would I need to become employed at VCE Inc.? Do you think an associates in animation is good enough to work for VCE because I would also like to get a BA in multimedia.

Ryan,

I checked out many schools around the country for college before I wound up choosing Cal Arts. Cal Arts (California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California )is affiliated with Disney and at the time had the most impressive list of equipment, from 16mm and 35mm motion picture cameras, to animation stands and optical printers.

Nowadays however, this type of equipment is no longer needed since the computer revolution. Any good school with a media department and alot of computers should help and may be close to home.

Cal Arts is still a good place to head if you are interested in character animation as they are still affiliated with Disney. Instead of a full out college with a degree, workshops are good too. AFI or the American Film Institute on Western Ave in Hollywood has classes for film effects on the computer.

Los Angeles is still a good place to learn as there are still many connections. As I learned on “Star Wars”, getting a degree is less important than putting good film credits on your resume and having something good to show on your demo reel.

Pete

Q: I've been looking with great interest at the Visual Effects 2-CD set, and even though it says it is compatible with all of the Adobe programs, wouldn't it work with Ulead's Media Studio Pro 6.0? It's a digital based program. How are the images stored on the CD? I have several background images that seem to work fine. Please let me know. Thank you for your time and assistance...

A: VCE went to the website of Media Studio Pro to see what the compatibility is. While it seems as though the only formats that Media Studio Pro takes is MPEG and DV basically, VCE looked up the sister product which is Ulead's Video Studio and that seems to take in a lot of different formats for input. One format is TGA which is the format of the image sequences on the PC versions of the Visual Effects CD and Pyromania disks.

Q: What file formats are on the CDs?

A: The PC versions contain TGA files with FLI previews and ifl files. The MAC versions contain PICT sequences and QuickTime previews.

Q: What size clip do I need?

A:Regular broadcast resolution in the U.S. is 720x486. HD resolution is 1920x1080. If you live in a country which uses the PAL system, the resolution is 720x576 for broadcast.

Q: Why are some clips nonstandard aspect ratios?

A: Some clips, particularly from Pyromania Pro, are 2k film resolution clips that have been cropped to eliminate extra black around the image and reduce file size. This was done to fit more images on the CD and still give the most flexibility for compositing by not showing frame edges when possible. None of the image is missing, only black. These files are described as 2K rez as well as full frame 2048 x 1536 because all the originally scanned resolution is in the image. They have not been scaled down, just cropped.

Q: I have a Canopus DV Rex editing system and would like to use some of the Pyro effects in my Rex system. Is there any way to convert these files to work with the Rex? - Phil

A: Phil, I checked out information relating to the DV Rex by Canopus and could not find any information about direct importing, however, DV Rex seems to be bundling with Adobe Premiere 5.1 and this should be able to import the TGA (Targa) sequences.