9 Excellent Tools For Filmmakers You Might Not Know About

There are a lot of tools available that can help a filmmaker produce a better finished product, but these nine are particularly helpful.

Film Crux has put together a list of nine options that will help elevate projects to the next level.

EbSynth

Ebsynth

EbSynth is an artificial intelligence (AI) powered tool that allows users to take a regular video clip and turn it into animated “works of art” by simply painting over the first frame of the clip. EbSynth will then apply that “style” to the rest of the frames and within moments, you have a completely animated clip.

Beatoven

Beatoven-ai

Next on the list is Beatoven.ai, which is an online AI-powered music generation website that can create brand-new and original music to fit the exact specifications needed for a project. Just create a new track, select the genre, duration, and tempo needed and the app will take care of the rest. Users can even choose different moods for specific parts of a track including silence and isolated instruments for a more emotional soundtrack.

ShotDeck

Shotdeck

Shotdeck is a massive visual library of incredibly captured stills from thousands of films made available for filmmakers to research, reference, and use for inspiration and education. Users can browse the film library by title, shot, keywords, movie names, and more which makes it easy to find exactly what they’re looking for down to the color palette for each shot as well as the complete list of gear and crew involved in the project.

Adobe Podcast

Adobe podcast

Adobe Podcast allows users to easily create professional audio for video or podcast projects even without access to pro-level equipment. The tool can automatically transcribe the audio source so users can edit it just by editing the text, and it lets you record with other people from around the world in real-time just by sending them a direct link.

Rotato

Rotato

Rotato is a drag-and-drop 3D mockup generator that users can leverage to easily animate their projects with a simple and intuitive keyframe system. According to Film Crux, this service is incredibly easy to use even if you have no skills or experience with 3D and motion graphics.

TurboRender

TurboRender

TurboRender, does what its name suggests. The cloud-based rendering service works with most of the major software out there like 3DS MAX, Maya, After Effects, Cinema 4D, Blender, and more. If an editor’s system is to old and not powerful enough to handle a project, they can just upload their project to TurboRender and have the service’s cloud computing do the heavy lifting; this includes batch rendering of multiple projects at the same time.

Runway

Runway

Runway allows users to perform complex rotoscoping in just seconds, by automatically transcribing videos so they can be edited just by changing the text descriptions through a web-based AI engine. The service allows users to actually generate videos, change the background, and make edits simply by typing in what they want to see.

Metahuman Creator

Metahuman

Metahuman Creator (from Epic Games) uses the Unreal Engine to create hyper-realistic fully 3D characters that can then be used for films. Users can simply visit the website and click “Generate” to design their own computer-generated “person” right in a web browser. The service is free as long as the assets are used in the Unreal Engine.

Move.ai

Move-ai

Finally, Move.AI is an animator’s dream come true. This app allows users to capture and create high-quality motion capture just with their smartphones, bypassing the need of expensive mocap suits, cameras, and software. According to Film Crux, this app is both incredibly powerful and accurate, allowing users to get shockingly good motion capture data for 3D animation and VFX projects.

More resources for filmmakers can be found on the “Free Stuff” page of the Film Crux website.

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