City of Heroes: Shining Stars is looking for Demo Editors
By
badmartialarts,
Posted on: 2012-04-10 07:16 in Multi-Media Fan Creations
Just a heads up that Shining Stars is still looking for demo editors.
I didn't get from this thread what you actually wanted people to do.
I get that demo editing is editing a text file. But a monkey can do that.
What are you actually asking people to do?
Quote:
That's like saying a monkey can run a camera for a TV production. Yes a monkey can run a camera. |
Originally Posted by dugfromthearth
I didn't get from this thread what you actually wanted people to do.
I get that demo editing is editing a text file. But a monkey can do that. What are you actually asking people to do? |
I can do the demo editing. The challenge isn't whether or not it can be done. The issue is whether or not it can be done in a reasonable amount of time. And for that we need manpower. 1 person doing the demo editing means it will take several weeks (read 6-10 weeks) to produce each episode and that's not counting delays that one person may encounter. We would really like to put together a Demo Editing team of 6-10 people if at all possible.
let me try again.
Are you going to give someone a bunch of video and they will do with it what they want?
Are you going to give someone a bunch of video and tell them to trim each to 5 seconds?
Are you going to give someone a bunch of video and a detailed list of edits for them to do?
Quote:
No, it sounds like he's going to give someone a script and they are going to make the characters hit their marks and say the lines on queue. Demo editing is more like directing than video-editing, as described, although some After Effects work at the end might kick it up a higher notch. I don't know anything about demo-editing, and don't have the free time to devote, though. :/
|
Originally Posted by dugfromthearth
let me try again.
Are you going to give someone a bunch of video and they will do with it what they want? Are you going to give someone a bunch of video and tell them to trim each to 5 seconds? Are you going to give someone a bunch of video and a detailed list of edits for them to do? |
Quote:
What Badmartialarts said. I have not spoken of Video editing at this stage. In this particular process of machinama, the video is created by running a demo with Fraps recording what the demo shows. What I need are people to create the demo files themselves. |
Originally Posted by badmartialarts
No, it sounds like he's going to give someone a script and they are going to make the characters hit their marks and say the lines on queue. Demo editing is more like directing than video-editing, as described, although some After Effects work at the end might kick it up a higher notch. I don't know anything about demo-editing, and don't have the free time to devote, though. :/
|
Here's the process:
1: Create Script
2: Record voice overs
3: create Demo files
4: Record Footage (Run Fraps)
5: Edit footage into video with proper audio.
What I need are more people to work with me in creating the demo files to be run with Fraps to produce the footage. People need to have a moderate to good understanding of cinematography and camera shots. I can not teach that. I can teach demo editing. So if the script says:
Medium closeup:TwinShot
They need to know what a Medium close up is. I can teach people how to accomplish the shot with demo editing, but I can't teach them what the shot is.
EDIT
Der! I just had a brain storm. Think of it like Animation. You have to have a team of artists to draw each cell in order to assemble into the finished animation. I'm trying to get demo editors (animators) to work with me to create the demos (animation) in order to edit into footage for the episode.
Just a heads up: Raging Bull productions is still in need of additional demo editors.
The City of Heroes: Shining Stars is a fan driven project to produce an ongoing machinima series based around the Shining Stars super group collection of characters. We are in the process of producing a mini-promotional episode. However, to produce the full series in a timely manner we will require more resources then we presently have. Those resources are people.
Under the name Raging Bull Productions, we are working to produce this series. However, at present the entire staff of Raging Bull Products amounts to myself, Torroes Prime, and my lead writer, Lady Libby. As you can see, that creates a bit of a bottle neck in terms of work ability compared to work load.
One of the things I want to do is keep this fan-based project from developing a job mentality. This is a project we are undertaking in our free time because we want to and its fun. I want to try and keep that mentality as much as possible. To that end, I dont want to overload anyone who joins us and thus we need to have more manpower to spread the work load around a bit. Instead of having one person spend 20 hours a week doing demo editing, we would like to have 10 people spend 2 hours a week to accomplish the same thing. Or even better, 20 people spending 1 hour each. Presently we are in the process of producing our promo episode and are seeking individuals interested in being Demo Editors.
Demo editing is probably the single largest part of this entire process. For those of you who have tinkered with Demo editing before, you understand how much of a time sink it can be. Now of course the big catch with demo editing is well, we kinda cant make the series at all without it. Were not saying its more important than the Writing, the voice acting, or the sound designer, but without the demo editing, we sort of wouldnt have anything to show. So, this is where we can really use extra manpower.
Im not going to go in to a lot of detail about what demo editing actually is here, but I will provide the basic idea for those that dont already know.
City of Heroes includes a Demo Record command which when activated records everything that is occurring on the current map the player that activated the command is on. When the record completes, either through exiting the map or using the Demostop command, the record of everything that occurred from the start to the end is compiled into a list that is a demo file. In the demo file is a listed order of events based on a time code. Literally each line of a demo code reads X milliseconds after the previous event, entity Y performs executes argument Z with parameters 1,2 and 3. That file can then be used to instruct the City of Heroes Game engine to re-render what it recorded. The cool thing about this is the fact that the demo file is little more than a basic text file so we can edit it and change what was recorded and thus make the game render something different on playback. Now, we cannot use demo editing to change the way the game works merely what it rendered. Basically, if you see it happen it game, you can make it happen with Demo editing.
There is already a great library of information and guides about demo editing out there and if you want to know more about demo editing I highly recommend you check them out. The best place to check is the Paragon Wiki pages on Demo editing. I have included links below for those:
Demo Editing- How To
Demo Editing/Demo Problems and FAQs
Demo editing/Additional Information
If you want to help us by being a demo editor, but do not know demo editing, have no fear. I will gladly help you learn the process and some of the tricks I've learned over my years of playing with it.
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