Lesson 1 - Basics of After Effects

I was really excited to start this new unit, special effects is something that has always interested me, however something I thought would be almost impossible for me to learn. Due to may lack of skills using After Effects, I feel this unit will be challenging to me, but I am willing to give it a good go because well who doesn't want to make cool fake explosions?

This first lesson was just learning the basics which is something I extremely benefited from.

First we learnt how to set up a new project and composition, by selecting the desired settings and making sure our file is set to the right frames per second. When I imported this file it was at 30 fps, so I changed it to 25 fps.

A new composition was created, and it appear on the timeline below, ready for it to be edited and manipulated. I changed the scale of the image, as well as doing a simple animation using keyframes, to make it move across the screen.

I also stabilised it as the clip was slightly shaky.

I was also taught how to create solid colour shapes, that can be animated to move around and change shape.

I applied this solid colour skills to the background of the image, changing the sky colour from blue to yellow and the water pink, as well as making the buildings greyscale.

And this was my end result, a highly realistic edited clip of a landscape!

Much realism!