After effects is enough to drive any sane man to the brink
So the filming went swimmingly, with the help of my girlfriend, a tripod and a camera held upside down. I did this to easily film my feet without having to crouch. I then cut it all together in Premiere Pro, and of course rotated the footage. I'm not showing the step for step of this because I'm assuming that you're strictly interested in what I did in After Effects and not Premiere Pro, as that was last term.
(I also transported my Premiere Pro sequence to After Effects using dynamic link. Very useful. 10/10 would use again)
So the first thing I had to do was stabalise the footage as it was rather shaky. I wanted to do this though without having to crop too much. I used a tool called Warp Stabilizer VFX, and these settings:
I had to change these settings slightly after this screenshot to ensure that it also cropped, not only stabilised. I kept all the other settings like this.
And boy does this take ages. I'm not even sure how long I watched this screen:
Good thing I've got nice feet.
After I was happy with the stabilisation, I went on to add text, and to make it appear. I chose the point where I wanted the text to exist, and then I added a mask so that I could control when it would appear.
To make it swipe from left to right I selected Mask Path, and then selected where in the time line the entire text would appear. I used the same effect during the entire film, so that it would have disappeared again by the end.
These are all the effects I used in my project, because it's all I needed to create my vision, but as I want you to know that I know about them, there are other effects I could've used. For an example the whole concept of Keying, and how to use a green screen, or get the green screen effect without there actually being a green screen. I made a blog post about it right after the lesson because I found it so fascinating. I will most likely use it in future projects. There are also an immense selection of different effects one can add to whatever project. Most of these helpful tools can be found under the window tab, and after that on the right hand side of the screen.
Sidenote: I wanted to add music to this project. Some tribal drums that would increase in volume, but as I didn't have that idea until the end of the project, (The day before the deadline) I encountered a problem when using the dynamic link and the file was unusable in After Effects.
This has been my first time using After Effects, and I must say I found it rather difficult at first. It's time consuming, complex, and the possibilities are endless. I've found out that the best way of working with it is to try different things - some work, others don't. There is simply too much stuff you can do for being told all of it, most of it you will discover by accident :)
Have a wonderful Easter!
-TJ
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