Using After Effects

When I first used after effects on the Friday I was completely lost. At the weekend I watched tutorials on after effects so I could get the basic jist on how to use the programme. I also sampled examples of after effects on video co-pilot for inspiration for my trailer.

I searched tutorials in YouTube however most of them were far too long. So I watched a video put onto our media of a tutorials by a guy called Parker

So I click on the link to watch it on YouTube, found his channel, subscribed and watched more of his videos because they were much more snappy than the ones I had found previously and was much more easier to watch.

The 3 videos I watched were:

1. on the basics
2. key frames
3. and animating text

On Monday morning I began to use after effects more confidentially I followed videos on video co-pilot to guide me. I first looked at a tutorial called Jumpy text. This showed how me as it says on the tin, make the text jump off and around the page. I wasn't really interested about the text flying all over the lace, what I was interested about the flare flashing which I though created a sense of peril and uneasiness. The flying around of the text didn't really represent the horror genre.

I found creating this effect way more simpler than the others I looked at and producing the effect took me just over half an hour . I made this effective by firstly inserting the text and creating a 3d effect by turning on the 3d effect alternating the layer and duplicating it.

 To make the flare animate I created an adjustment layer and I then brought more life to the flare by using colour correction manipulating the brightness using curves. Next I clicked on the layer and put the opacity to 50 per cent, clicked the stop watch icon and type in wiggle (5,50) in other word the flare will move 5x a second thus bringing it to life.

The first flare animation I made was a blue one and it didn't really look as intimating or creepy as I had hoped so I tried it with a red flare image this looked much better as red signifies danger and the red connotes the Pied piper as he is seen to wear red historical as I found in my research so I wanted to continue that theme into after effects.

THE Glass
This effect was much more demanding and longer than the flare; I had a real hard time tying to ge the text to stick to the icy texture and had to go back through the tutorial multiple times.

I typed in the text and added a animated blurred effect and enabled 3d properties, by adjusting the off set I made sure that one character blurred at a time. I then manipulated other settings such as the timing in which the text blurs in the sequence.

 

Here I am adding 3d layers to give the image more depth I added a black solid background first to the bottom layer to make it really dark then added light blue solids with the circle tool on the layers below ice map and the ice diffuse layer but above the text and adjusted the sizes to create light areas and feathered it out I continued to do this till I was happy with the effect.

 

 

 

Here I am making my final adjustments to the production title and I am very close to finishing; I am here trying to make the text clear again. I did this quite easily by duplicating the text and toning down the settings on the displacement map, scrolling the settings really low and putting the blurriness back to 0. I also lowered the opacity and changed the transfer mode to overlay. I finally went on to change the name to cryogenic productions to make it my own. 

Reflection

I have learnt loads since using after effects and I felt I have created some very cool inter title that will separate my film from others. Although very complicated for amateurs like myself  I find after effects really exciting and I would defiantly use it again. The tutorials on video co-pilot were also really helpful and I would recommend any beginners or pros to it