Professional Uses of After Effects

A lot of production companies and video game development companies design their own in-house software to accommodate their needs, such as Pixar. However, even these studios use publicly accessible software such as After Effects to do things we assume were made on far fancier software.

Here is a video from Adobe's site detailing the use of After Effects as a major editing tool for the movies Iron Man 3 and Oblivion. Its cool to see how within reach the professional level methods and motion graphics are, for those of us advancing our varying levels of motion graphics abilities. (Adobe has some other great videos relating to After Effects and their other products that are worth looking through.)

VFX Before and After

This is a cool video I came across on Facebook earlier today which shows the evolution from green screen to the big screen. I think it's really awesome to see how a scene was shot versus how it ends up being presented to the audience. I feel like a lot of times we take things for granted and don't think about the work that was put in to make film happen and this video helps to point out that work.

https://www.facebook.com/dima.koslowski/videos/871221469654052/

Bring old photos to life

This week in my senior seminar class, exploring the documentary, we checked out the film The Kid Stays in the Picture. It's a documentary about Robert Evans life, an old time Hollywood actor and producer who ran the Hollywood game for a while. The film is almost entirely old photographs that with Robert Evans himself narrating his life story. But this isn't simply a Ken Burns film. The entire film is brought to life with after effects. Here's a cheesy trailer where you can get an idea of the film.

The film itself is worth checking out but I think this demonstrates how powerful a tool aftereffects can be.

Imagine your favorite movie without special effects...you'd see a lot of green screens, 3d models, plain backgrounds and etc. Your favorite movie would most likely not be profitable. I found a YouTube clip of movies with and without effects.
Though I already knew adding an effect to a clip makes it look much better it still baffles me how much detail goes in to special effects as well as, how much time goes into it.




So much detail also goes in to how clips are shot as well. Technical issues like a wire showing can cause massive amounts of problems in post production. Close attention must be paid to the placement of actors. If an actors arm reaches outside of the green background that can lead to hours of rotoscoping.
It's small details like that, that make me appreciate movies a lot more. (Even if it has a crappy story.)

Remembering A Graphic Design Legend

Hi Guys,

For this weeks posts I thought I would switch things up a bit, while many of you are probably familiar with Saul Bass I thought I would do a little  blurb on him to inform you of some stuff you might not know. Recently I stumbled onto an article featuring a Google Doodle honoring iconic title sequences associated with Saul Bass and I figured this would be ideal material for a blog post. Although I was aware of Saul Bass I was naive to know that not only was he a recognized graphic artist but also worked with some of Hollywood's most prestigious filmmakers during a 40 year span making countless
title sequences. In addition to assisting filmmakers Bass also created some of the most prominent corporations logos and designed legendary film posters still recognized today.  Here is the Doodle that Google created for Saul Bass for his 93rd birthday which includes many of his most famous works such as West Side Story and Vertigo.





Some of his famous corporation logos.....

Pleasantville: Basing a Film Around a Simple Effect

One of my favorite films is Pleasantville, which was made in 1997. Pleasantville centers around two teenagers from the present day who are transported back to a black and white world and slowly turn it back to color. The film experiments with black and white vs. color and bases the entire plot around this. In the film, certain things and people turn to color while others remain black and white.

I looked into how this effect was done and found this tutorial on how to do the "Pleasantville Effect." In this tutorial, the author uses Photoshop to create this effect and it is actually pretty easy to do. In another tutorial (below) Final Cut Pro is used to create the effect.

Learn How to create "Pleasantville Effect" in Final Cut Pro. For more Final Cut Studio How-To Videos & Articles, visit WonderHowTo.

It's interesting how such a simple effect was used as the basis for an entire movie. The result is an aesthetically beautiful film that is very entertaining. I've included the trailer below in case you haven't seen it.