What will i need to learn, and how far will it take me?

[Star Destroyer]

I am currently unexperience with the film industry, but i am and have always been drawn to it. Particularly with special effects and the filters placed on certain scenes. ya know what i mean?
They way lighting can be changed in post production to add a special mood, or stars can be added in the nights sky to sparkle in the background. Its really hard to explain. But i dont want to do any 3d modeling, or character creation, nothing like that.

I think i mostly want to do what photoshop does to photos to video.

The thing is i dont know where to start.
Yes i know, i should go to school for it, but i am already doing my masters in Engineering so i have 2 years of that.

I want someone to reccomend some programs, (i was looking at Shake, and After effects things like that)
Some books, websites, cameras, lenses, books on cameras and lenses...
Anything that can help me out.

Do i have any hope or should i just not even try ?
I thought i would just ask, because its burning me up inside.

Thanks for the help

 

[bkvideography]

spellings a bit off.....but I don't think the industry cares about that.

 

[Star Destroyer]

Yeah, sorry about that i am on an old browser at school with no spell check and the keyboard is not the 'normal' keyboard layout.

 

[thebiggoose]

What you're looking to do is called "compositing". The major program used for this is After Effects. The premier place to get help, and a place I love, is on Andrew Kramer's tutorial page. Plus his products are grade A!

If you need any help feel free to post back here, or more effectively, IM me.

 

[killr_b]

What you're looking to do is called "compositing". The major program used for this is After Effects. The premier place to get help, and a place I love, is on Andrew Kramer's tutorial page

Yeah, not really.
Most pro compositing is done with Nuke (image of gui attached) or other proprietary in house software that they will teach you, that will most likely be node-based as well. They are very similar to Shake.

You just want to learn Node-based Compositing. And they will nearly demand that you also learn lighting. The lighting thing came in as more work was compositing 3d elements in a 3d space. (Added to the last version of Shake, but overall the industry feels Shake was developed for 2d compositing.)

In general, the people hiring would be glad to know that you know Shake, because the knowledge is directly translatable to all the other node-based composting software.

 

[Cromulent]

A good free tool that offers simple node based compositing is Blender (http://www.blender.org/) and is an extremely good tool for the price. Plus it will allow you to make the 3D models to actual incorporate into your video.

This is a cool video which got me interested in Blender : http://www.blender.org/features-gallery/features/feature-videos/?video=imaging

After you have looked at Blender you can move to Shake or Nuke if you feel you are ready to invest some serious cash.