The following is a slight retooling of an email I sent to a small group as a part of a discusion about the layer-based compositing paradign, as found in After Effects , “vs.” the node-based system used by Shake , Digital Fusion , Nuke , and others. It’s partly a petition to get After Effects to expand its node interface option, and partly an attempt to undertstand these two different ways of visualizing the image assembly process. A filmmaker friend was making the transition from camera crew to screenwriting, and misguidedly asking me for advice along the way. She was having a really tough time with the notion that all great films subscribe to very similar “rules” of screenplay structure. Surely, she thought, this was an outdated notion, and in order to make one’s mark one should dispense with any such formulae. I said to her, “Think of it in terms of photography. Every photograph has a composition, whether it was consciously studied or an accident of a dropped camera. Bu
Official Blog of Author & Filmmaker