After Effects

I have spent quite a lot of time this year playing with After Effects. Not everything I found was useful in terms of result, but all were useful in that they taught be a little more about how the programme worked and what its potential might be...

This is an effect called Binary; useful for learning how to use "random" presets and make better use of the text facility.

I have used this flock of birds a couple of times for students who are filming in front of a still image using green screen. It can make a still background come to life.

These light trails were used in the Live at Five titles, but I would also like to make further use of them. The fact that you can import a path from Illustrator, which a light trail could follow, would seem to have great possibilties!

Smoke: haven't found a use for it yet, but Pete Felstead assures be it's the next big thing!!

So far, I haven't explored layers and depth in any details. I would really like to explore the 3d potentials in AE. There is so much that this programme can do, I am actually quite excited about continuing to use it next year... and I'm quite surprised at myself that I have found something to be excited about!

I have also learn a huge amount about AE as a compositing tool during the Library project. As with Live at Five, now that I am at the end of this I can see how I would do it differently. But isn't that always the way? How boring to know it all already ;)