Month: September 2016

AFTER EFFECTS VS. PREMIERE PRO

It’s a bit difficult to describe what kind of program After Effects is, because it’s fairly unique in the world of post-production.  It may actually be simpler to say what After Effects is not.  After Effects is not an editing platform.  While it’s possible to make cuts and render a sequence of shots, After Effects’ timeline and workflow aren’t designed for the editing process in the same way that Premiere’s are.  After Effects is not designed for advanced color grading or audio mixing – Adobe makes separate programs for those tasks and the built-in tools inside Premiere are more advanced than those in After Effects.  After Effects is also not designed for complex art creation like Photoshop, Illustrator, or 3D modeling software.

Programs like Premiere, Audition, and SpeedGrade are designed around editing media.  After Effects is designed around creating media, often using assets created in programs like Illustrator and Photoshop.  After Effects is the perfect application for building animated titles and lower thirds.  It’s a powerful tool for character animation.  It can be used for compositing and special effects work.  It is most often used in concert with other programs to create sophisticated video content.

After Effects is also deeply customizable.  There are countless plugins and presets available for After Effects that can completely alter the capabilities of the program.  These run the gamut from 3D modeling to automated text animation to particle effects and everything in between.  Websites like aescripts and Video Copilot are fantastic resources for adding functionality to the application.  Larger companies like Red Giant and GenArts make more sophisticated  — and expensive — add-ons for even more advanced professional-grade work.

However, even without external plugins, After Effects is an incredibly powerful platform for media creation.  The program is built around the ability to quickly and easily animate just about any property or effect using keyframes.  While some of this functionality is present in Premiere, it’s buried in menus and not especially intuitive.  After Effects puts it front and center.

Setting Up A Project

When you open up After Effects, you’ll likely see a splash graphic with the usual options for starting a new project or opening an existing one.  However, unlike Premiere, After Effects does not require you to set a project location or save before you start working.  I’d recommend using the same practices we discussed for Premiere projects when working in After Effects: keep everything organized in a central folder, sort your media by type, and save frequently.

The After Effects workspace is a little different than the Premiere environment, but there are lots of analogous panels.  The “Project” panel is where media is imported and stored (although, like Premiere, no media is actually moved on your hard drive — it is only referenced in its existing location).  There is still a prominent “Timeline” panel, although the After Effects version has a slightly different structure and you create “compositions” instead of “sequences.”  There is no Source Monitor, but the “Composition” panel operates much like the Program Monitor.  You’ll again be doing a lot of work in the “Effect Controls” panel and the tools for text editing are standard panels, not a separate menu.  Like all Adobe programs, everything is extremely customizable; panels can be resized and rearranged and there are several workspace presets.  If you’re ever looking for a particular panel and can’t find it, the “Window” dropdown should help you locate it.

As I mentioned, in After Effects, you’ll be working in compositions, not sequences (which is what Premiere uses).  You can create a new composition by hitting command-N, selecting New Composition from the Composition dropdown menu, or by clicking the icon that looks like a scene inside a filmstrip at the bottom of the Project panel.  You’ll be greeted with a menu that gives you options for resolution, frame rate, and the duration of the composition.  There are several presets to choose from and – unlike Premiere – they are actually pretty helpful.  I use HDTV 24 or HDTV 29.97 most of the time.

Hitting “OK” will open up a new blank composition.  You’ll be dragging media into the Timeline and your work will be visible in the Composition panel.  Unlike Premiere, there are no pre-determined audio or video “tracks” in the Timeline window; pieces of media simply stack on top of each other.  Every video or audio clip, still, adjustment layer, text, and shape appears as its own layer in the Timeline.  You can also drag one composition into another or put footage into a “pre-composition” (much like nesting in Premiere).  You can rename media in either the Timeline or the Project panel by highlighting something and hitting return.

We’re not going to delve into the finer details of After Effects just yet.  For the time being, just explore the interface and how media is handled by the program.  Some things will be familiar and some will be very different.  After Effects in incredibly powerful and versatile, so it’s important to have a solid grasp of the essentials before we explore further.

BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER

We’ve now covered a lot of different topics in Premiere: sound mixing, color grading, green screen work, and the general editing workflow.  We’ll be moving on to After Effects soon, although we’ll continue to use Premiere throughout the semester.

Over the next two weeks, we’ll be focused on two things.  We’ll start to go over the basic workflow of After Effects and discuss the ways that it’s similar and different from Premiere.  We’ll also cap off our section on Premiere with a mid-semester project.

Midterm Project: Images and Voices

Your midterm project is to use the skills you’ve learned throughout the semester thus far to create a video based on a piece of spoken-work audio.  If you go to voicesinthedark.com, you’ll find a variety of audio content in mp3 form – poetry, fiction, and essays.  You can also find readings of the pieces on Bucknell’s own Poetry Path at bucknell.edu/poetrypath.  I’d like you to choose a work, or a section of a work, between 30 seconds and two minutes in length.  Using that as a base, create a video.

• Play with the audio!  Be sure to incorporate sound effects, ambient noise, music, or all three into your finished piece.  Check out the Resources section of the blog and the sound mixing lesson for some helpful links.
• Use cool footage!  You can use video clips from previous assignments, grab stuff from the Prelinger collection or archive.org, or use clips from this collection of vintage carnival footage.  You are not required to use any specific footage, so feel free to find or film something on your own.
• Make it interesting!  Don’t just throw in effects or transitions randomly, but feel free to experiment with different techniques.  Use the skills you’ve been developing thoughtfully, including color grading and keyframed properties.  You are not required to use green screen compositing, but you are welcome to!
• Incorporate a title graphic that has the title and author of the work you choose.

Please complete a first draft of this project, render if using the Vimeo 1080HD preset in the H.264 format, and email a download link to me by next Thursday.  The project does not need to be completed, but you should have a working draft that you can share with the class.  Next week, we’ll look at everyone’s projects, give some feedback, and complete them.

As always, let me know if you have questions or need any assistance.  Have fun!

COMPOSITING IN PREMIERE

Chroma-key compositing has been a staple of the special effects industry for decades, but it’s only in the last few years that the capability to good-quality, sophisticated compositing has become widely accessible.  For advanced compositing work, you should probably use software that’s effects-focused, such as After Effects (we’ll cover green screen work in After Effects during the second half of the semester).  However, the compositing effects in editing programs such as Premiere have gotten good enough to use for quick, relatively simple green screen work.

While it’s commonly referred to as “green screen,” you can (in theory) use any color for compositing.  Blue was the color of choice for a long time, but green eventually became more widely adopted because it’s less common on articles of clothing.  Both blue and green – and occasionally other colors – are still used.

For the best results, the screen should be smooth, saturated, and even.  There needs to be good separation between the subject and the screen, so a backlight is often helpful.  The Marts video studio has excellent green screen facilities, with green lights positioned to augment the curtain.

Before you actually start keying out the green screen, you may need to crop out some of the frame.  Go through your footage to double check the movement of your subject and find any unwanted objects in the frame.  The simplest way to cut out sections of the frame is using the Crop effect, which allows you to bring in the edges of the image.  I often use this to cut out light stands or uneven sections of the screen.  If you need to make more precise crops, try a Garbage Matte effect instead.

Ultra Key

There are lots of chroma-key effects in Premiere, in the “Keying” folder.  I’ve gotten the best results by far using Ultra Key.  After you apply the effect, you’ll need to choose the Key Color using the eye dropper.  There may be some variation in the color of the screen – try to click on a section that’s saturated and fairly close to the subject.  You should notice an immediate effect after choosing the Key Color.

While the initial result may look good, you’ll want to switch your view (under Output) from Composite to Alpha Channel to see how effective the key actually is.  This will switch your view to a black and white silhouette – black areas are keyed out and white areas will remain.  Your goal is get get rid of all grey areas and get an Alpha Channel view that is purely black and white.  To do this, adjust the parameters under Matte Generation.  There are several sliders to play with; I’d honestly recommend going through them in order and seeing how they affect the image.  I generally have good luck adjusting the Highlight, Shadow, and Pedestal.  You should be sure to occasionally scrub through the footage, to make sure that the lighting situation doesn’t change during the shot.

Once your Alpha Channel image looks good, switch back to the Composite view – the subject should now be neatly isolated against a black background.  If the edges of your subject look rough, try modifying the properties under the Matte Cleanup area of Ultra Key.  Choke will expand or contract your keyed area, while Soften will blur the edge – this can make your key look more natural.

Sometimes your footage may be a little under-saturated, which can make pulling a clean key difficult.  When this is the case, you can use an effect like Fast Color Corrector or RGB Curves to add saturation to the green before you apply Ultra Key.  Remember that the order of the effects in the Effect Controls panel makes a difference.  If your resulting footage looks odd, you can always apply another color correction effect after the Ultra Key to bring it back to the desired look.

When you choose a background for your chroma-keyed footage, remember to consider the perspective of the subject and try to match it as closely as possible.  Lighting, color balance, and saturation are also factors to consider, even when using abstract or indistinct backgrounds.  I often add a small amount of blur to the background to help everything mesh together.  As a final step, you could nest the composited footage (or use an Adjustment Layer) to apply color correction to both layers simultaneously – this also helps the footage look uniform.

Project 5: (It’s Not Easy) Keying Green

For this assignment, download the green screen footage that we captured today, along with two of the background video clips below.

Create two scenes, one for each background.  Between the two backgrounds, incorporate all of the clips we filmed today, using Ultra Key for compositing.  You’ll probably need to adjust the scale and position of the green screen footage to make the composition work.  You’ll also want to do some color correction so that the subjects match their respective backgrounds.  Render your two clips together as a single video using the usual settings (H.264 format, Vimeo 1080HD preset) and email me a download link.  Happy keying!