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Unedited transcript.

So filmmakers, welcome. I'm going to tell you today how to make a moving image letter head or um an email image that flickers or moves or pulses or vibrates or does something that's a bit like a film. Now, you know, we could argue it's not really film, but what is film? I mean, for me, film is it's moving. That's, you know, that's the core of the difference between a photograph and a film. It moves.

But then we we come into that sort of gray area where you've got the the pulse, for example, which becomes a um perhaps a backdrop. You know, you walk into a gallery and you've got this huge space and and some there's an image there, but it's moving. What's it doing? Is it is it vibrating? Is it wobbling? Is it jerking?

Is it um you know is there a sort of Ken Burns effect come you know it's going in the camera zooming in camera zooming out even by a frame you know a couple of frames something's going on isn't it something's going on and and your brain because humans have got amazing brains we've got amazing eyes and we know stuff like that and we would recognize something that even a very small move we you know we think what's going on what's going on there so is but would you call that a film. Personally, I wouldn't call that a film. And I wouldn't call a gif a film either.

Is it gif or gif? I don't I've never said that word out loud. I I say gifs, but I I as far as I know, gif is what you clean the bath with or you used to. I'm very old. I've been around a long time. Anyway, I think I'm going to use gif. I prefer it. So at what point do we, you know, rationalize this behavior that we have for communicating with other human beings with storytelling and perhaps creating mood or just um creating almost a discomfort, you know, or or something that's, you know, moving image is very popular now. Everybody's making reals less than 30 seconds.

My AI tells me sometimes when I'm promoting my business to to create something that's 10 or 15 seconds. You think, hang on, that, you know, that's it that sort of goes against what I what I do, which is telling a story. But you can tell a story in a pulse. And this is what I realized this week. So, I wanted to send some emails out about my gallery opening. Um, which is a moving image gallery, by the way, and I wanted to get some press coverage for it if I could. I still haven't sent the emails out. I've been far too busy doing other stuff. This is a problem with film making.

You know, you're constantly editing, re-editing, and and something that supposedly would take 2 seconds ends up taking, you know, two weeks. I mean that that's how intensely most filmmakers work. And I I do think that, you know, if you if you do that as a creator, if you're a filmmaker who's creative, that's your sort of go-to, you know, that idea that the you want perfection to tell the story. You know, you don't want accidental storytelling. You want it to be just right in the way.

Either that or or you're like me and you've probably got you're probably on a spectrum because obviously, you know, people on the spectrum go really into stuff. They, you know, and they find it um captivating and and I suppose distracting really. If you're a jobbing filmmaker, if you've got to, you know, if you're working in television or something, you got to get the edit out, you're you're not going to keep that job if you do that. So, you have to work in a very, very different way.

But you know primarily this film making site, this film school that I've just launched, these podcasts that I do and all the films that I make are coming at it from a creative storytelling point of view. And that's what I've been doing for many years and I'm really set in my ways. So imagine my horror when I said to my AI, I um I actually do you know what? I think I was I was quite happy with some with a a parallax. you know,

I just wanted a sort of image going across the top that with a a parallax um filter on it. So that's where they take they separate they the the software separates the layers two layers and it sort of blends in and out of these two layers and it it gives it that 3D effect.

Anyway, it was beyond the cap capabilities of of my AI to to assist me with that. But I soon found out it wasn't really the AI's fault. What it is is when you send moving image via email in embedded in the actual email. So this is part of the letter, part of your letter head as it were. It has to be under one megabyte. Now that sounds quite big, doesn't it?

Well, it's not. I mean, it's not really very big for a a a photograph. Not really. not HD, but of course it's it's fine for web viewing where, you know, you can get away with, you know, sometimes well 250 KB possibly, but you know, really you'd want something um a bit more um a bit clearer than that. So anyway, I thought, h no trouble, no trouble. So then we started sort of playing around, but you know, I I mean, I use AI a lot for my dirty work.

I don't there's things I don't want to do. Well, the what I have found out about AI is you normally end up doing more work than you would have ever done before you had an AI because what AI has given me is just the opportunity to do incredibly advanced things.

But, you know, I I want to learn or I want to do them all. So, the only way really that you can do them successfully is to understand what the AI is doing. So I'm always saying to it, well explain to me what you've just done there because at the moment it looks like magic and I don't I don't want to have magic in my life. I'm a filmmaker. I want to know, you know, I want to know the the the backroom details, you know, the behind the scenes. I'm the director. I want to see the director's cut and I want to know what absolutely every aspect of what I'm doing, even if it is only 300 frames.

All right. So anyway, we're doing stuff and I took one little clip of film and the easiest way I tried various things, but the easiest way for me was to import it into onto my iPad. I like working with my iPad. um import it into um Final Cut Pro, clip it, and then I decided I didn't I was doing a Ken Burns, but it was so um it was so small it didn't really look exciting enough to me. It had to be under 3 seconds. This was the maximum time my AI said I it needed to the the Yeah, it couldn't be anymore for what I wanted for the email, right? a moving image on the email embedded in the email that everyone will be able to see on all devices. Okay, this is, you know, you're really getting down to detail now. Um, my cat's joining me and thinks I'm talking to it.

Of course, I'm talking to you guys, but a cat doesn't know that. So, it's just purring and enjoying life. Anyway, I thought right now what I I want here are are two different stills from two different films that I'm making for my for my gallery launch. Right. Um and I wanted them to crossfade. So I got the two that I wanted. I faded in I crossfaded faded in out and did Kenburns on both both um pieces was approximately one and a half seconds long. Um, and it looked great. I thought, "This looks amazing. My god, I'm an absolute genius. Wow, this is going to blow their minds." All these, you know, um these uh people who write about art. Not not gallery owners, it was journalists, all these journalists, you know, artify journalists, which I haven't haven't done it yet.

Um anyway, then I looked at the size and 3 seconds and we were talking 10 megabytes. I was what? So when you save in um Final Cut Pro, there there are options and you need to do the smaller size option basically. Um and there are several other options. So you play around with all of those and find your smallest. So I I did that and I managed to get it down to I think three megabytes. I could not get it done any smaller through Final Cut. So then I took it out um of Final Cut Cut and I took it into Procreate. And I really like Procreate because

Procreate does this really cool animation thing. You just import your little bit of film and it splits all the cells up. Um and you I mean you can annotate individual the the onion layers they call them and which is really exciting. I thought, "No, that's another film. That's not this film." All I wanted to do for this film was shrink the thing. Yeah. So, I mean, there's you can you can do it manually, remove frames manually, every whatever frame, every fourth frame or or you can do it in Procreate. So, that's pretty useful. You can reduce the um the bit size there. There's there's lots of little sneaky ways to get it down. Needless to say, you know, Procreate, whilst being a wonderful thing for creative film making, when I mix it with hand painting, it wasn't doing the job I needed.

So then my AI recommended that I use something called EZGIF. And Esgif is I mean what a hero, an absolute hero. So you can do so many things on there. So you can change video to GIF. You can create gifts from scratch. I believe um you can split, you can crop, you can optimize um you know I mean stills as well, JPEG optimizers, ping optimizers, repair aerif video compressor. I mean utterly fantastic. So what I did was I I brought in my I think it was my 3 megabyte version and I went to the section which is the online GIF or GIF optimizer and compressor and I uploaded it and I you I believe it was a lossy gif compression I used and it automatically reduced color, reduced frames, optimized transparency. I mean, it just did everything.

Now, the first go it got down to one something just it was about, I suppose. Yeah, it was just over the megabyte. Um, sorry, the Yeah, the megabyte. So I put it through again and did exactly the same thing and it it was like 900 and something and I thought just absolutely wonderful. So downloaded it and it was actually really interesting because it's really grainy and you know that just adds to the rather arty feel of the whole thing and I just thought oh this is absolutely the best thing since life bread as my dad used to say.

So yeah I mean what a what a great thing to be able to do. I I mean there are lots of ways to to skin a cat, are there not? And my cat's looking at me as I say that. Um you there are other ways that you could do this. Of course there are. But I think the the biggest thing that we want as as when we're marketing ourselves as filmmakers who are trying to market ourselves because that's what I'm doing.

I don't want to have to be up all night. It did take me four hours to do this. 4 hours because you know I I changed things and then I didn't like stuff and I thought I don't like the color matching and you know I got really um sort of film directorish if for one of a better description. I you know I got quite obsessed because if this is going out you know I'm hoping to send this out to sort of 200 journalists.

You want it to express perfectly your style, your in-house style, and and the type of films that you're you're making or the type of moving image that I'm making for the gallery. And I, you know, in that respect, it had to be exactly the right color. And of course, you're losing detail when you're compressing it. So, I really needed to make sure that I was happy with with what, you know, the end result was.

And you know, for something so tiny, you know, I mean, less than an inch square, I think, u probably, I mean, obviously you can enlarge it when you get your email, but do you know what I mean? Um, proportionally it it's quite small on the page, but it is pulsing and it is moving. And I I do think that, you know, this we can talk about the difference and what is film, but I do think it's film. I think I've managed to create a teeny tiny weeny film.

Marketing Yourself With a Filmic email. How did i do that? Let's find out at the iServalan Film School

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