Week 18

I was finally able to catch up with my pending animation assignment. I started doing a stop motion edit but didn't think it would benefit me in any way since I want to move into Post Production and there's plenty of material to animate in this sector.

I had the idea of making a still image into a video clip by using several effects. I took inspiration by the film London has Fallen as I have just recently seen it and grabbed an image of the London skyline and put on my After Effects timeline.

My first goal was to give the image motion so I used corner pins on each side to stretch the image whilst keeping it as proportionate as possible. This worked pretty well giving the viewer the impression that it's actual footage rather than an image.

After that I grabbed an image of smoke online and added it to a separate composition on After Effects in which I cut the smoke out from the background using the pen tool. I then added the Liquify effect which gave it motion. I then added it to the other composition and tracked it onto a building so it corresponds with the movement.

I looked for some nice pictures online to use as an overlay to give the image some atmosphere and found this image with a dark sky and a little glimpse of the setting sun.

I flipped the image so that the sun was at the horizon of the London image, creating a flare look. The gray sky made the environment look misty which fits the atmosphere I'm going for.

Last thing I had to do in After Effects was add some fancy colour correction. I added a blue/purple-ish colour tone to the image for a nice and cinematic look.

I then rendered the composition and transferred it over to Premier so I could add sound effects. I used a song by Epic Score which has a quiet slow beginning thats followed with a sudden ''

woosh''. I made the clip start with the swoosh and even added a flash effect to transition the black screen to the scene of London burning. This quickly sets the scene that London is under threat. The edit is quick and confusing like an emergency situation, throwing the audience straight into the action. I added a couple sound effects to bring the clip to life and added black bars for the cinematic look.

Overall I think I did fairly good with this clip. The smoke obviously looks bad but I'm not a very experienced After Effects user so I think it's a good start.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lz0sn2PcKZ0