Creating EVE Movies

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EVE has a lot of opportunities for creating great videos. A lot goes into making a video that isn't shit: good editing (pacing; not having four minutes of titles and credits in an eight minute movie), good music, and good subject material.

But all of the best material and editing means shit if it looks like it was shot with an ancient handycam in the palsied hand of someone riding in storm-whipped seas on a dinghy. Which is why everybody who thinks about using FRAPS for five seconds needs to enable the advanced camera menu under Video options, now. We've made a handful of videos internally, but they usually only use the "look at" (boring) or "right click to swing camera left click to zoom" (results in a retarded-shaky shot that looks cool about two times).

This will add two new options to an object's right-click menu: "Set as parent", and "Set as interest". The "parent" is what your camera is anchored to (usually your ship). The "interest" is what the camera points at (also, usually your ship). When you set the parent and the interest to any two transversing objects, the camera will pan smoothly so it will no longer look like Muhammed Ali was controlling the mouse.

Imagine the opportunities:

• Set your opponent to parent and you as the interest. (This isn't going to work for frigates, because they disappear before 5km; you'll see glowing engines shoting and web and gun and nos.) The camera will look at your ship from the perspective of the opponent.
• Set yourself to parent and your opponent as interest.
• Dump a can, set it as parent, then set yourself as interest and burn past it in a straight line. (This is how that shot is pulled off in the beginning of every solo EVE video ever where the camera stays still and it follows the ship.)
• Orbit object one, set your ship as parent, and set interest to nearby object two. (Results in a shot where your ship slowly moves across the screen as the camera orbits the object of interest--very neat).

Another feature of setting interest is that the camera doesn't break away like a "look at" when you initiate warp, so you can make cool "OH GOD RUN AWAY" shots.

You can turn off the interface by pressing Control-Tab.

Now you can jew it up like Spielberg, too.