In the third of this four-part series on how to give your video a broken-up, grungey look, I’ll be showing you three of the remaining five effects; rolling image, ghosting and chronic interference.
As usual, this tutorial shows you how to achieve all of these effects without the need for third-party plug-ins. The project file will be up soon, so subscribe to the RSS feed to get an update the moment it’s posted.
If you’re wondering how to create the little HUD element down in the bottom corner, you’ll find a quick tutorial on how to do that here.
I had a couple of people ask me how I created the spinning heads-up display element in this video, so I thought I’d take a quick break from the ‘De-rezzing your video’ tutorial series to show you just how easy it is to create your own.
TOP TIP: EdEditz pointed out via YouTube comments that you can use the ‘loopOut()’ expression instead of cutting and pasting keyframes for Ellipse 3, which is a good tip.
Here’s the next part to the de-rezzing series. In this tutorial, I’ll be showing you how to create a simple ‘low-res’ computer monitor display (sci-fi movie style) using just the plug-ins you’ll find in After Effects. This part covers the scan-lines, interference and reflections, future parts will cover some common interference effects.
I’ll be putting the project file containing all of these effects up on the web site when the series is finished, so feel free to subscribe to the RSS feed to stay posted.
Chroma-keying (often called blue-screen or green-screen) allows you to replace a coloured background with whatever you like. It’s a technique I often employ to overcome the limitations of office-based shooting environments, as it allows me to create a virtual set to replace the dull beige boardrooms that are often the only location space the client has on offer.
While it can be done with a simple portable screen and good daylight, getting a decent key is a bit of a dark art, requiring several processes in order to produce a convincing result. Here’s an example of how you can take material shot in front of a green screen and take it to an entirely different place.
Did you know?
The reason we now use green-screen rather than the traditional blue-screen background is due to the prevalence of digital imagers. Originally, blue was chosen because it was far removed from flesh tones (which can’t be changed for obvious reasons), but today’s digital video cameras are typically more sensitive to green light than any other part of the spectrum, and often have two green filters for every one red and blue microfilter over the photodiode.
