ASSESSMENT 3 - AFTER EFFECTS TECHNIQUES

In this section I will detail the after effects techniques I used in each scene in chronological order as follows:

1. Graphical EQ + cityscape drive through
a. GRAPHICAL EQ
The graphical equaliser was created using the trapcode plugin ‘soundkeys’ which is available as a free demo. The actual plugin maps the sound pattern of the audio and creates keyframes based on the audio, the equaliser graphic is merely a representation that is supposed to be on a hidden layer.

I created the EQ by firstling mapping the sound, the EQ graphic also has a variety of graph like lines which run across the composition. I used keylight to make these lines transparent.

For the actual affect I duplicated and mirrored the EQ and also adjusted some of the sound response settings to give the graph a smoother and symmetrical appearance. Previously the graph appeared to show only spikes of certain frequencies, no doubt to help capture keyframes.

I also created a reflection by vertically mirroring the footage and also applied a fast blur to give it a faux glow.

b. CITYSCAPE
For the drive through footage I simply made levelling adjustment, then used blending (possibly screen or overlay) in conjunction with the Graphical EQ layer so that only the coloured areas would expose the drive through footage as well as colourise it accordingly. I also time stretched the footage and used a pixel blend.

2. TV screens
a. MOTION CAPTURE
I used a 4-corner-perspective method to motion capture the edges of the television set. In some areas I had to manually adjust capture points frame by frame as the software was unable to accurately track the footage.

b. OVERLAY FOOTAGE
I linked the motion capture track to footage which had levelling and colour adjustments on them. I used an effect called ‘colorize – gradient’ which applied a colour gradient onto some of the footage. I also used layer blending to preserve the TV screen’s scratches and to create the illusion that the footage was being played on the television screen. To further this affect the footage had a feathered round-square mask applied so the footage would not seem like a sharp square was placed inside the TV.

c. GRAFFITI WRITING
The free font “MOST WASTED” was used in conjunction with the ‘write-on” effect which creates a mask based on manually adjusted points that are keyframed along the time line. Once created a time stretch was used to increase the speed of the graffiti writing to about 2-3 seconds.

d. CAMERA / POSITIONING
A 3D camera was used to zoom out while the 4 TVS appeared from under one another. Opacity and motion blurring was used to achieve this affect.

e. Feathered frame
A black-feathered frame is used throughout this scene and through many other scenes in the music video clip. This feathered frame was created using an inverted round mask with feathering applied. The wobble affect was created by applying the ‘wiggler-gelatine’ effect. The black edges would sometimes clip out of the frame and expose the underneath layer so an additional black inverted frame was created to prevent the accidental exposures of layers.

3. Double exposure lomo effect footage
a. OVERLAY BLENDING
The footage was layered and cut using the overlay blend mode and screen blend effect. The variation for both overlay styles was because a screen blend by itself would sometimes lead to the footage appearing to over-exposed and bright when 3 or more layers with the effect appeared on screen (this instance is seen in the ‘dream’ section of the lyrics but was left like that on purpose). Overlay blending was used on some layers to prevent this over-exposure effect happening.

b. TEXT
The text had a bad tv – weak effect applied with the horizontal and vertical wave figures modified.

4. Scratch and remix section
a. 3D CAMERA
A 3D camera was used within the sequence to zoom and pan around the objects and sync with the remix/ scratch effects of the audio.

b. ECHO SPACE
A trapcode plugin called echo space was used to duplicate existing footage such as the graphic EQ and apply random X/Y/Z animations. Each layer of the EQ then had a layer blend effect applied to create a jumbled effect on the footage.

This was also applied to another set of TV footage with motion capture, however instead of duplicating just a single sequence of the TV footage, different instances of the TV footage was used. Once again there was random X/Y/Z animations applied as well as a time delay between the animations.

The footage was pre-rendered and imported into the comp.

c. MIRRORED FOOTAGE
The existing footage was time-reversed and existed in a 3D space to create a sort of 3D room/ corner.

5. Other Techniques
a. PRE-RENDERING
I pre-rendered each comp, scene and graphic element as I created them thereby creating standalone *.mov files which did not need rendering from scratch each time I previewed them or imported them into the main clip. This prevented extra long render times and system crashes and reduced the ram load on the system.

b. FOOTAGE CAPTURE/TRIM
The footage was captured using final cut pro 6, and was trimmed using quicktime as the original footage was not time coded and split into separate *.mov files.

PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED
The biggest problem I encountered was system crashes often caused by inconsistencies in the plugins when translating from mac to pc and sometimes between incremental saves. I also experienced a lot of crashes during ram-previews and rendering. I solved this problem by firstly switching all my work to my mac OSX install (which runs parallel to my PC install on a pc machine) and by using pre-rendering which helped me to micro-manage each scene, effect and graphic of the comp which required rendering. As mentioned earlier this allowed me to work on a section and then render and import it as a lossless video file into a comp which would not require rendering the entire set of footage and effects from scratch.

I also experienced a minor problem with capturing the footage in that my camera had depleted its clock battery and therefore was unable to run a system clock and apply a time code. As a result I had to capture the footage as one large file and manually trim and cut scenes in quicktime. However this was beneficial as it let me review the scenes and helped me to select scenes to be used.