Showreel Production

This Wednesday's process and production workshop was based around the production of a showreel, compositing all the After Effects works we've done this year, into one clip, as a way to quickly show off the range of skills we have, and garner interest, and point people towards an online presence.

We started by finding some background music, that fitted with our work as well as being suitable to cut between different videos to. We had to cut it down to the required amount, leaving it to run a little longer than the visual comp just to have a safe space to work in. The next step was to import all the footage we had made previously so that there was 50 seconds of content plus the music in AE.

The next step saw us move into Illustrator to create the title and end slates - something that would help start and end the showreel as well personalise the content to ourselves. For the title slide I used my personal branding, which includes my logo, colour scheme, and font family (Raleway).

To help with the branding, I added my name, and the title, as well as the year. On the endboard I added a copyright notice and a link to my other animation work on Vimeo.

For the structure of the reel, we were told to put a good piece of work - one that we would like to do more of in the future. This would then be followed by a better piece of work to show improvement. Any less good work would then follow this, before, building up the quality again before the finish. The end piece should be something that you would be willing to talk about - as if you were watching it with any potential clients or interviewers.

Once this was ready, we began to set up the timeline with the projects in them to the desired order, as well as matching them up with the music. I then went back and shortened the desired clips so that it would cut/transition to another piece of work. And added effects to the transitions because I felt this matched the music more.

Animation showreel 2016 from Matt McGough on Vimeo.

Fairytale Infographic

Today's Process and production lesson was on After Effects with Sara. The session specifically focused on producing work in a short turn-around, and as such we weren't asked to prepare in files in advance.

In the session we were asked to create two separate scenes from a fairy-tale, and asked to include some kind of information or statistic from the story in the work. I chose Goldilocks and the three bears, because the number 3 is a recurring number and would be easy to include some kind of information on the screen.

I chose to create a wider, map style scene to act as a background for a title screen, and the scene where Goldilocks is trying the three different bowls of porridge.

The scenes were made in two different Illustrator files, just using flat vector shapes, with each element  such as the trees, the bowls, the house, Goldilocks etc on a different layer. We also created a third file for the transition/wipe which needed to fill the full 1920 x 1080 frame at least once to cover the cut between the two different scenes. I did a massive bear paw print that comes in from the bottom, scales up to fill the screen and then moves off the top of the screen at the original scale.

We then imported each file into After Effects. If the artwork wasn't finalised it was best to import the file as a composition, but in order to work faster it was better to use the composition retail file size option. For each of the compositions we altered the duration to just 5 seconds (the two scenes together would add up to the usual 10 seconds). The wipe composition was set to a 1 second duration, because it only had to be brief enough to act as a transition rather than a whole scene on its own.

When using text, its often better to use the text tool within After Effects as you cannot add text effects to imported text files/layers. So once we had added the text in AE we added effects to the text for it to animate in, this is done by selecting the text layer in the timeline, going to the top bar and going to animation > apple animation preset and then finding the presets in the Adobe After Effects folder, seen as we wanted the text to animate in we selected the "animate in" sub-folder. After trying a few different ones I decided to use the slow fade in preset as this gave the best effect for my work, as it wasn't too ostentatious.

The next thing we tried was a tilt shift. This was done by importing a subtle paper texture into AE and into a new composition, dragging the desired scene into said composition and turning on the 3D switch. Using the 3D properties we twisted the paper texture using the x and y axises, and moving them back to a flat plane at the end of the clip, this would add some subtle depth and dynamism to the background. To get a depth of field type effect, which softens up the background and foreground you can add a new adjustment layer on top, adding a Gaussian blur, and using a marquee tool to mask out the subject and keep the desired area in sharp focus.

I tried this and felt that it didn't really add anything to my piece.

Given more time I would have liked to add some more scenes and neatened up the starting and ending as at the moment I think they are a little abrupt and something smoother would look better.

Goldilocks from Matt McGough on Vimeo.

Working 3D Space

Todays workshop focused mainly around using After Effects 3-Dimensional capabilities, which primary consisted of giving depth to a composition made up of flat vector shapes (as objects in AE are only represented with a depth of 1 pixel), with a 3D stage using a camera moving in Z space.

We started by prepping the assets in Illustrator. Using 6-8 layers, to create a scene. Using each layer for a different element, I created a setting that featured some of Huddersfield's claims to fame - namely Castle Hill, and a set of rugby posts to indicate that the town is the birthplace of rugby league. Each of these were placed on top of a different hill to represent some of the physical geography that surrounds the town.

Original Artwork

Due to the processes that we would be using, any of the elements that were to feature in the background, or earlier on in the clip would need to be bigger than the standard HDTV art-boards of 1920 x 1080 pixels, this is due to the movement of the camera on the z-axis, objects would shrink into the background, and perhaps reveal the edges - which if undesired can look unprofessional.

We then began to move into AE, creating a new composition at 1920 x 1080 pixels, with a frame rate of 25 FPS and a duration of 10 seconds.
We then moved back into illustrator to finish prepping the assets, the last stage was to extended the art boards so that it included all artwork, even if this was beyond 1920 x 1080.
When importing the Illustrator file into AE it was important to select the option where the illustrator file retained all the layer sizes, as this would make it easier to maintain shapes proportions.

To begin to work in 3D space, first select all the layers in the timeline window, toggle switches and modes and turn on the boxes that are underneath the cube symbol as this enables the 3D options for these layers. When working in 3D space, a objects/layers position figures are given in 3 values, x - representing the horizontal movement, y - the vertical, and z - the depth enable objects to move backwards and forwards. As a default the z axis is set to 0, increasing the value moves the object further away, decreasing it into negative values move it closer to the foreground.

Sara then introduced us to a feature in AE that allows the composition window to be split into 1,2 or more views and the view of the stage can be changed independently in each of these windows, having one set as the top view and one as the active view gives a good idea as to the position of the elements, and how this well effect the final piece.

We then went about setting up the individual elements/layers, moving the background layer to the back of the shot, and then spacing out the layers to give the best visual effect with the movement of the camera in z-space. My work features a rugby ball, whilst the ball was moving towards the background I wanted it to spin, I did this by altering the Y coordinate in the transform, position options.

The next step was to add this camera, by adding a new camera from the layer menu. We added a two node camera using the 35mm preset. Something to consider may be the use of the depth of field option in this window, if you want to have a variable focus in the video.

We got the speed of the zoom/movement of the camera, by moving the playback head to the start, and moving the camera into the desired start position, and inserting a keyframe in the transform properties, and then moving the playback head to the end of the timeline, and moving the camera position into the desired the end shot. A slower effect can be achieved by increasing the gaps between the layers in z-space, having them closer together means that the camera will pass by them quicker as there is shorter distance to travel.

The next technique we were introduced to was how to alter the path that the camera takes. If you want the camera to move up and down changing the top view to a side view gives the best perspective, however I decided that I wanted my camera path to meander around the hills rather than climb them, so I stayed with a top-down view. The next step was to open out the properties section of the camera in the timeline and insert keyframes, if you want to move it up and down you need to alter the Y coordinate, I wanted mine to move side to side so I altered the X coordinate, using the handles found on the points can alter the curvature of the path. For as smooth effect as possible you want to use as few keyframes as possible.

Once we were happy with the positioning, the movements, and the speed of the piece were began to import the textures. Selecting the desired layer and the the wanted texture, and precomposing by going to the layer menu and selecting Pre-compose. A pop up window will open and select "leave attributes...". Then drag the texture under the shape layer, toggle the switches and modes and select the alpha trackmatte. You can add a colored tint by turning the visibility of the vector shape layer on, and altering the opacity and/or options. This should maintain the desired textured effect whilst adding the coloured tint. I changed the colour of the text by adding a coloured tint on top of the texture.

The final stage was adding the peel effect to the layers. This effect is added by adding the page turn effect which is found in the effects menu under effects > distort > Page Turn. We changed the controls to classic UI and played around with the settings in order to get the desired effect.

Apeeling Huddersfield from Matt McGough on Vimeo.

Boiling

In our latest After Effects session with Sara we focused on a technique called Boiling.

This technique uses both analogue and digital elements. It starts with drawing and tracing an image, so that in the end you have 3 copies of the same image, this produces 3 very similar looking images, that when viewed in quick succession resembles how water looks when it is boiling.

We started by scanning in the drawn images and importing them into the Photoshop. This was to ensure that each of the elements within the image were in the same place. To ensure that the images were cropped to the same dimensions and positioning, you can select the crop tool, select the area to crop too, then crop, then with the marquee tool you can drag the selected area over to another window, and  hold shift whilst holding the cursor over the second will drop the select the exact same area on this other canvas.

Once all the photoshop files were set up properly, we had to save them at 72ppi, in a naming format similar to name_001.jpg, name_002.jpg, name_003.jpg etc (on a side note, this technique works better with an odd number of files, just with how the brain analyses images, an even number like 2 would just make it look like there was a glitch in the video).

The next step was to then start working in After Effects.
We started with making a new composition, 1920 x 1080, with a frame rate of 25fps, and a duration of 10 seconds.

Then we had to import the saved jpgs, but when importing the files, we selected all 3 of them and turned on the option that says "import as JPG Sequence", and this allows the imported file to be a composition of stills but looks like a moving image in just one layer - making it easier to handle.

Once the imported file was placed in the composition timeline, we clicked back in the project window and went to file - interpret footage main, and changed the frame rate to match that of the composition from 30 to 25. Whilst still in this window, we changed the loop settings to 50 times. This loops the file out to the 6 second mark.

The next step was to select the layer, and go to the pop out menu in the timeline window, and select the turn stretch on, and changed it to 200 %, changing the frame rate to half - 12fps.

The next thing we did was create a new solid fill layer to sit at the back of the composition, with an off white colour. Then we started to experiment with visual effects. We started with colour correction, and hue/saturation with changing the the master saturation to -100%. We also used the levels option to make the whites whiter and the blacks blacker. We also  used the tint options with the map black/white to and then I selected a magenta kind of colour to converty my pencil to a magenta/pink colour.

Then we toggled the switches and modes, so that the blending options were next to the layers in the timeline window, and the image layer was changed to multiply, so that the white of the paper became transparent.

Following this, with the pen tool we drew the shape of the desired object over the top, as smooth as possible, and with as little points as possible. But we had to keep the path open, but the last point had to be as close to the first point, as possible in order to give the best effect.

With this path still selected, we went back to the effects menus, then generate then stroke, selecting all masks and the stroke sequentially in the options. Then we changed the stroke size, in order to cover the original shape. Then in the layer properties in the timeline menu to bring in the fade. Clicking the stopwatch in the opacity, when the playback head was at the right time on the timeline, and setting the opacity to 0%. Then when we wanted the drawing effect to stop, change the opacity to 100%. The final step of adding this effect was to change the paint style to, reveal original image.

Our next stage was to create new vector artwork for the background in Illustrator. I wanted to keep mine simple so I just drew some circles with a basic colour palette or green, red, blue and pink - match the colour of the buttons on the Playstation controller. Once we saved this we just copy and pasted it into After Effects.

Once this was done, we had to open out the layer and press the button that resembles a play button on a circular background. Once we pressed this we  selected wiggle paths. Then we changed the wiggles per second to match the project frame rate of 12 fps, then we had a play about with some of the other settings to suit our personal preferences. I also then went on to change the blending options of the cirlces to overlay (I think) to give a more muted appearance.

Then we followed the usual procedure in order to save and export the video.

Triangle Circle X Square from Matt McGough on Vimeo.

Rotoscoping

The subject for the second of our AfterEffets sessions was rotoscoping. We encountered this before with Jay in year 1, where we used Photoshop to draw stick men on top of a video of a break-dancer. This time we had to clip out a subject from a video using AfterEffects.

Originally I had found a highlight/promo video for a French water skiing festival/competition, I had intended to use a 4 second clip of a guy doing some back flips, but once I had imported the clip into AE the subject was too far away and the back flips caused too much disturbance in the water so you couldn't get a clear view of the jet ski to use this technique properly, so I scrolled back through the video and found a close up of a man doing some beat-boxing or rapping or singing into a microphone (there is no direct audio in the clip, its drowned out by the overlaid music track). We had to cut out a 2 second clip, that we could loop to fill out a 10 second long clip. We could speed or slow down how fast the clip could play be altering the time stretch setting, playing at 100% meant it played at normal speed, stretching it to a higher percentage would play it slower, and vice versa.

For the next step we had to change one of the preferences, we had to turn off "Preserve constant vertex and feather point count when editing masks. Using the pen tool we had to clip around the subject, creating a mask, to speed up this process we did this every other frame, by creating keyframes every 2nd frame. Because my subject was also holding a microphone I had to clip out the background which was visible through the gap between the mic, his arm, and this head. The idea was to use as little points as possible whilst still keeping a smooth appearance. To animate the mask path we tried to use as few key frames as possible, and moving forward until the mask didn't line up with the subject, and then moving the points of the mask so that they fitted.

To check that the quality of the loop was good enough, we had to test it. We did this by opening out the layer in the time line, opening out all the masks, selecting all the keyframes, and then ctrl + clicking them you can toggle the hold keyframe. Playing this with the loop playback option you should be able to see the quality of the loop.

Then we created the new composition which would be 10 seconds long and be the final product. We dragged the rotoscope assest onto the timeline. To make the clip last the 10 seconds we had to go to the layer menu at the top of the screen, go to layer, then time, and enable time remapping. This allows us to manipulate the speed that it plays at, as moving the keyframes together allows us to speed up the composition, and stretching them beyond the 2 second clip allows us to extend it to the full 10 second duration. The next step was to move the playback head to the end of the tieline and then move it to the penultimate frame and adding a keyframe here. We then deleted the last keyframe.

Once this was done, we then had to loop the two second clip to fill the 10 second duration. This was done using an expression (which we learnt how to use in the previous AE session). This was done by alt + clicking the time remapping stop watch, and then pressing the play button inside the circle allows us to open the expressions dictionary. We then selected property, 'loop out property (type=cycle, duration = 0), we then could drag out the layer to fill the 10 second. I then added a solid background colour and toggled the trackmatte option to see the video.



Rotoscop'd! from Matt McGough on Vimeo.


Given more time I would have liked to be a bit neater with the clipping and maybe add a different background.

Loops and Living Holds

AfterEffects, Process and Production, Week 2

This was the first of out AfterEffects workshops and was based around loops and living holds. We started with a head and shoulder portrait, I chose to use a portrait of Dave Grohl from The Foo Fighters. I chose him because I am quite a fan of his music, and is somewhat different to what I've done before.

To prepare for the lesson we had to vectorise the portrait. Overall I really liked the outcome of the portrait but I feel like I should have completed it  more, in such as finishing the arms, and separated the layers out with the beard/goatee and the eyes.

The next step was to get it into AfterEffects. Once it was ready in AfterEffects, we began to animate some of the individual layers. The crucial thing was to set up the loops, ensuring that the start and end keyframes were in the same positions, this was before we started to actually animate the elements. Using the pan behind tool we moved the anchor points to make sure that the centres of rotations were in a more realistic position such as the joints where the arms meet the shoulders, or the head meets the neck.

Then we had to link up some of the layers together, to ensure that they moved together, this is called the parent and child link and this was used for the layers that make up the face, like the eyes, nose and head. Once all the links were made, we went back and did some more animation to make sure that it worked together.

We were then introduced to another animation technique, which used 'wiggles'. This is a semi-automated process where you can select the frequency and magnitude of random wiggles along a motion path. The frequency dictates the number of jumps per second and the magnitude dictates the size of the jumps.

There is also a coding type of animation which is based on JavaScripts, we coded a wiggle into the animaton, which was really easy to do.

The final step was to add the textures and effects. I imported a folder of textures that I had picked to suit the style of the animation from a folder of textures I have on my hard drive.

Then we followed the export process we did for the previous AfterEffects projects.

This is my final animation.

Dave720 from Matt McGough on Vimeo.

AfterEffects S3 - Title Sequence

For the final session of AfterEffets we were tasked with creating a title screen/start/end slate that used some of AE's 3 dimensional functionality, but first we had to create the assets in Illustrator.

I created a series of hexagons and a title (along the same theme) of HEXA, as with other AE projects each of the elements that I wanted to be animated separately had to be in their own layer within Illustrator, with most o the artwork being towards the centre of the board to avoid it running off screen between different viewing devices, and in this case the text had to changed to create outlines for the animation to work properly.

My illustrator artboard

Then we imported it into AE, and during the importation, retain layer size had to be clicked on. After importing the artwork and checking the composition settings, we toggled the switches and modes in the timeline, and activated the 3D layer option (symbolized with an isometric diagram of a box).

Turning on the 3D layer option adds a z axis to the standard x and y axis used in 2D work. X being the horizontal, Y being the vertical whilst the Z axis measures depth. Having done this I experimented with some of the effects available as well as the position of my hexagons within x,y and z fields.

Then we added texture and we did this by firstly selecting the element, and then selecting the pre-compose option from the composition menu. This creates a new composition, open this, and import that texture file before placing this at the bottom of the layer stack next to the timeline. Toggle the switches and modes again so that the mode options are available. Select the option that says TrkMat and select Alpha Matte, and this should add the desired texture to the desired element, in this case I chose on of my hexagons.

After this we added a vignette to the animation. This is done by creating a shape at the top of the layer stack, and dragging it over the top of the composition, leaving a border around the outside. We then changed the mask from add to subtract and feathering the edges to give a vignette effect around the outside of the frame. I chose not to include this in my final animation as I did not feel it matched the aesthetic I wanted.

hexa from Matt McGough on Vimeo.

Given more time I would have liked to have added a more fitting texture to my work, as well as add more depth to some of the individual hexagons.

After Effects T2S2 Kinetic Typography

In this session we set about creating a 10 second long animation in which words would be the main focus of the animation.

We started with finding something to base our animation on whether this be a spoken word soundtrack, a clipping from a song, or some kind of written word. Having recently watched the 2009 film Zombieland I decided I wanted to use one of the rules from the film and perhaps recreate a similar type of visual effect as they do within the film for each of the rules when it becomes relevant in the story of the film. I chose rule number 32; "Enjoy the little things". I chose this because I thought it was longer than some of the other rules and would give me more scope to be creative with the effects.

After we had decided on the content we had to create storyboards for the animation, using illustrator - which was set up to the same dimensions as After Effects (1920 px wide by 1020 px tall). I created a board for each of the different segments of my video - making 4 in total.

My storyboards for a more minimalist animation

After this I then began to recreate each of these storyboards in AfterEffects, seen as my video was mainly based around the words there was no soundtrack or live action video in the background, so I began to use the text tool to copy and paste the text from Illustrator into AfterEffects. Once all this was in place I began to stagger the corresponding layers to get a better timeline of the when the elements would come into frame.

Once this step was complete I went about getting the motion and timing of each the different elements right. This was just a case of timing the entrances of the different bits of texts so that there was enough of a gap between them so that it was easy to read with a naturl flow, whilst trying not to cramp them into a shorter space of time, you have to be cautious as to not give it too much time in between that you disrupt the natural flow. The motion paths of the elements also had to be planned so that they didn't crash over each other and prevent a viewer from reading them.

I then began to experiment with various entrances effects and styles. Whilst I found some pretty cool effects to use for each of the elements, using them in conjunction with the others didn't feel right, so I chose a much simpler range of effects and animations to create a better harmony and match with the flat aesthetic of my piece.

Rule #32 from Matt McGough on Vimeo.

 If I had more time I would have liked to explored more of the effects to give the piece a more advanced look. I would have also liked to have reconsidered the exits of the pieces, again to give a more professional ending to the work.

After Effects

After Effects T1 S1

Making Glass Cows from Assembly on Vimeo.

          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.

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. 

character 1LowRes from Matt McGough on Vimeo.

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.

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 T1 S1

Making Glass Cows from Assembly on Vimeo.

          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.