mine

I’m a big fan of the fxguide.com podcasts, especially the Red centric news and information podcast, Red Centre (it’s spelled right… they’re Aussies). The folks at fxguide also have a series of instructional course that they offer via their website fxphd.com. The emphasis of that site is, as you can gather from the title, visual effects work with software packages like After Effects, Shake, Smoke, Flame et al. but they also offer courses on Final Cut Pro and the Red One camera use and post workflow. Currently I’m taking four classes (Red Tale from production, Red Post Production, & Stop Motion and Miniatures) and I just added other class (Digital Color Theory).

The way it works is each week a class and class materials are downloaded as QuickTime files. Each class is about 45 minutes worth of information and instruction, sometimes as a lecture and other times it’s interviews with industry professionals. While it lacks the face-to-face exchange, they have a forum for each class where you can ask questions of the instructor or other classmates. Win, win.

I have to say that after three weeks of “class” I’ve gotten a bunch of useful information and think it’s gonna be very well worth it. It’s the wave of the future kids…