Angry Birds and Final Cut Pro X. Two things we didn't expect to write in a headline! When it came to editing an Angry Birds commercial for Sydney's Luna Park, Tom Fossey from Rhino Post Production knew which NLE could quickly tame Red, Chuck and Bomb. (They have names?)
After the commercial, Tom Fossey from Rhino Post Production based at Sydney's Fox's Studios, takes up the story...
We were recently asked to create a 30 second cross promotional spot for the release of The Angry Birds Movie.
The spot was to be used across multiple platforms (TV, Online - social media channels), and in conjunction with Sydney’s Luna Park for their school holidays promotional offer.
We were supplied both film trailers and TVCs (texted and textless versions with split stems - DIA, MUSIC & SFX), some generic footage of the rides (at the park), and an approved script to work from…oh, and a fairly tight deadline of course!
Specs for machine / set-up
Mac Pro (Late 2013 model)
3.5GHz 6-core with 12MB of L3 cache
32GB (4 x 8GB) of 1866MHz DDR3 ECC
1TB PCIe-based flash storage
Dual AMD FirePro D700 GPUs with 6GB of GDDR5 VRAM each
Displays:
2x 27” Apple Thunderbolt Displays
Soundcard:
Apogee Quartet Soundcard
Monitors:
Event Opal (Active) studio monitors
To get the ball rolling we used FCP X’s “Record Voiceover” feature to lay down a guide narration track for timing purposes. Recording voice-over’s is definitely not our strong suit (we leave this to the pros), but using the ‘Audition’ feature helped narrow down the best (of the worst) takes. The guide VO track would be used as a placeholder until we were able to record the proper VO (with a professional voice-over artist).
(Click for larger screen grabs)
The narration track ran around 23 seconds in total, leaving us some additional time to integrate some dialogue grabs to fill the existing time throughout the spot. After importing all the assets we were able to quickly review the footage and mark some “Favourites” (in the browser), which we could later review.
After laying down a rough cut we began finessing both the timing and style of the spot. Unfortunately no footage or assets (for competition prizing) had been supplied (pack-shots, logos, holiday imagery etc), so we created some basic supers to help reinforce the messaging / VO when certain offers were mentioned throughout.
Staying inside X we used the 3D text generator to create some basic supers. We actually used Ripple Training’s 3D Animations plugin which gave us a little more control when animating the text.
Normally, we would jump in to After Effects and use Video Co-Pilot’s Element to create 3D text, but having the ability to stay inside the one app to achieve a similar result was really appealing, from both a workflow and feature perspective. Some subtle motion blur (created in Motion by Florian and downloaded @ fcp.at) was also applied to give the animated 3D text a more authentic look when flying in on screen.
To finish the spot we created an end frame logo animation for Luna Park. With only having a static logo to work with, we utilised motionVFX’s mLogo to quickly apply one of the many behaviours available to create this. With only some minor tweaks to the plugin parameters we were able to create a semi-customisable logo animation with minimal effort, time and spend. These logo toolkits are easy to use and offer a simple, affordable solution, especially when you’re up against a tight deadline.
We finally dropped in some SFX and replaced our guide VO before giving the audio some further attention. The ability to re-time VO reads (with auto pitch correction) in X is probably one of our favourite features. Assembling and finessing a cut has never been easier. Gone are the days of having to go to Logic, bounce out some re-timed reads and lay them back down in your sequence. With the multitude of AU plugins also available (both Logic and 3rd party) some fantastic results can be achieved with the audio tools in X. With whispers of a Roles based mixer, and hopefully some new (or improved) features geared towards audio, we’re excited to see what Apple has planned for future releases.
The approval process was relatively straight forward with only minor revisions. We used Hightail to send through some high res H.264 MP4 files for client approval. We utilise Frame.io for client approvals on larger campaigns with multiple spots, but for this job it was basic with only the one spot being created.
Final deliverables:
BROADCAST: ProRes422 QuickTime
ONLINE: H.264 / MP4 files (for YouTube / Vimeo etc).
Overall we really loved using FCP X for this job. Having the ability to stay in the one app to do everything is really amazing. Bring on the next release / update!
Special shout out to Charlie Austin for sharing his amazing skills, knowledge and professional workflows with the FCP community. If you haven’t seen his blog, make sure you check it out: fcpxpert.net
Rhino Post Production specialises in delivering creative content for film & television, online campaigns and experimental audio-visual based projects. Working alongside production agencies, film distributors, independent artists and major brands Rhino offers a variety of media based solutions across multiple platforms.
Through the editing process, we work with our clients to transform their project into a format that drives the key message and desired emotion into the soul of their campaign and target audience. For more information about our services or projects visit: rhinopost.com.au
