After Effects

Introducing all the elements of my project so far in After Effects made it feel like my film was finally coming together. It was fairly simple to introduce my image sequences as I didn't need to do anything to them to integrate them into my backgrounds as there was no green screen effect to remove from them. I used the keylight effect to remove the green on my green screen live action film footage and it got easier every time I did it. I learned many shortcuts and on the whole I feel that it is a much much easier program to use than maya and I intend to use it as much as possible in the future.

It's similar to photoshop in the way it builds up overlapping layers and I even refer to it as photoshop for videos. There are many pre-set effects, such as footage, or filters like blurring, that make editing your footage to the exact way you want it achievable. I do have one problem with it though.

Unlike Final Cut Pro, you need to 'collect files', which is quite annoying. Files seem to go missing and it can mess with your time quite dramatically. Other than this though I think After Effects is a great program, at least for editing footage. For sound, Final Cut is definitely the way to go.

The effects I used the most, by far, were gaussian blur and radial blur. I used these a lot because with the settings there are many ways that radial blur can be changed to replicate numerous amounts of things, whereas I used gaussian blur to create field of depth in many shots.

I also used a lot of masking. For just about every piece of footage I had a mask to direct where I wanted it to go or what I wanted it to do - unless I wanted it as it was without a mask though there are fewer examples of that to note.

The scene in which I am beamed into the ship I am quite proud of. I used a radial blur to simulate the light being distorted through the smoke around me that forms after I appear on the ship. I also have those lights turn on one by one, and I appear to react to the lights turning on within the footage by turning to face them. As this happens I use some of the art I developed, reacting as a sort of precautionary / biological / smart science-word scanner thing. Afterwards a few alien letters appear above my head, which is basically to connotate that I am an accepted life form or that I am not dangerous, or something along those lines. I like this scene because so much seems to be going on when I'm on the ship and you can watch it several times and notice these things one at a time.

The scene which I had a lot of trouble with was the laserbeaming of the aliens, if only because it took a while to get the laser beam looking decently good and powerful looking. I did this through screen shake and the introduction of an explosion. You can also see the laser beam fly past the aliens, creating said explosion. So much happens within these last few seconds of the film it was a mix of trying to cram in as much as possible, leaving the audience caught off guard and wondering what exactly happened. At the same tine, I did not want to confuse them entirely and leaving them wondering what was supposed to have just happened.

All in all I feel I have learned a lot about After Effects in a very short amount of time, and I'd liked to have spent more time using it.