After Effects T1 S1
A 'making of' video created for the use in the Anchor milk advert(s), showing each of the steps that led to the final product before being placed in context for the advert.
This looks really good because the feel of the video is minimalist and the copy is very subtle and unobtrusive. The animators have realised the video will be viewed close to a monitor and as such not made the copy massive. The transitions of the text and between each of the stages is also very subtle with wipes and transitions. The texture and movement of the milk and the glass also looks very good.
The second of the After Effects Sessions was used to familiarise ourselves with some of the functionality of the software as well as setting up our first project. We set up the project with a standard widescreen TV broadcast set up, making it 1920 pixels wide by 1080 tall with a 30 frame per second frame rate.
After the project was set up we imported the sound tracks we had found, I wanted to use a track from freemusicarchive.org called "Impact Allegretto" by Kevin MacLeod. We put this into the timeline and began to search it for an appropriate 10 second period in the track to use for our short movie trailer. Once this was done we began to mark some of the beat changes that would be good to use as an audio Q to change the on screen visuals.
After Effects T1 S2 & 3
The second of the After Effects Sessions was used to familiarise ourselves with some of the functionality of the software as well as setting up our first project. We set up the project with a standard widescreen TV broadcast set up, making it 1920 pixels wide by 1080 tall with a 30 frame per second frame rate.
After the project was set up we imported the sound tracks we had found, I wanted to use a track from freemusicarchive.org called "Impact Allegretto" by Kevin MacLeod. We put this into the timeline and began to search it for an appropriate 10 second period in the track to use for our short movie trailer. Once this was done we began to mark some of the beat changes that would be good to use as an audio Q to change the on screen visuals.
This would provide a rough guide to the timing of the cutting of the audio and visual elements and the duration each element would be on screen for. The next step was to replace these solid blocks of colour with our own images that we had sourced and produced. This was done by importing all the visual assets into the workspace before placing them into the timeline and matching the cuts of the corresponding coloured solids.
At this point I decided the beat of my audio track was not fast enough so I merged it with another ("El Preso Numero Nueve" by Kathleen Martin - again from Free Music Archive), I added some more markers and added my images. This made my trailer better because it increased the tempo and that was the desired effect as I was attempting to make an action film trailer.
Once all the audio and visual's were matched up I added some effects by making the trailer black and white. This was achieved just by adding a black solid and changing the blending/layer style to overlay and this made it black and white. I also added transitions such as fades to the start and end. The fade at the end allowed the end board to come in with the text. The end board was black but I adjusted the opacity so that the character behind was still partially visible, I did this because the final scene of the trailer was very short and the speed of this may have meant the viewer wouldn't have time to see and take in the final scene before the end board came in.
Another effect I added was to one of the scenes, I added a red overlay to it because the victim was bleeding and this bit of colour was emphasised because it was one of the few occasions where colour was used. I also added an audio effect of a gun shot (from Cute Stock Footage, but to match this I changed the visual to a blank black background - meaning that the viewer would pay more attention to the audio track.
For the final bit of editing I did, I added the end board and placed some text on top of it. "The Plumber" split across two lines, all in caps in Helvetica Neue. I increased the point size of the word 'plumber' and changed the colour to red to make it stand out more. On another line in a smaller point size but also in caps and Helvetica Neue I adding "coming soon" but in white this time.
Once all the video was ready we then had to export it to view on Vimeo and QuickTime Player. We added it to the render queue and rendered with the best settings available. We set the output module to 'Quicktime Movie' (but if we were wanting to just export the audio we would need to select MP3). We also had to change the format options by changing the video codec settings to Apple ProRes 4444, with the audio output on, this allowed the file size to come down without drastically effecting the quality of the final video.
We opened the exported video in Quicktime before exporting it in 720p HD for use on Vimeo. Once the video had exported we uploaded the 720p version to Vimeo, because this was still a good quality to use and wouldn't take a long time to upload.
"The Plumber" After Effects Project 1 from Matt McGough on Vimeo.
After Effects T2S1
The second term workshops in After Effects were 4 hour workshops, meaning that after each session there would be a product - a ten second clip, before starting a new 'project' in the next workshop.
The first session required us to have brought a character, made in Illustrator, to use in After Effects. Each element of the character had to be in a different layer, so that it could be animated independently of the other features. My character was made using simple geometric shapes such as hexagons and polygons, and in the end looked like some kind of rocky turtle.
We then set up the project using a widescreen HD format (1920 x 1080 pixels) and began to experiment with scale, rotation and position of the different elements of the character, before adding in additional assets for aesthetics, such as a background and a texture to make it more visually interesting. Once we added these elements I added a solid block of black over the bottom part of my background to distinguish this as the foreground for my character to walk on. Over the textured background I added a block of color (blue) and changed the blending option to give the background a blue tint.
My animation shows my character walking across the screen before stopping just after halfway. The character is then seen to raise his hand, shake it a couple of times before continuing his journey across the screen.
I like what I have achieved with this animation but it could be improved drastically. The motion of his feet could be more fluid and realistic, and if I had more time, I would have added another character to demonstrate that my character is playing rock, paper, scissors, and I would have also finished of the animation of the feet to match the body as it leaves the screen. I would also like to change the background, as currently I don't feel that it matches the narrative of the animation.
You can see a more polished, more complete and a slightly longer version of this here.
You can see a more polished, more complete and a slightly longer version of this here.
