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September 2009
My Software Shift
by Gregory Fish
Let me cut right to the chase. I always want to create better looking graphics and have better designed videos than I ever have put together. I see what others are putting out for churches to use and I say to myself that I would like to do something as professionally and visually appealing as what I am seeing. I could make excuses and determine that it is not possible. I could give up trying to improve because of a lack of formal training. I could say that my equipment and software is outdated. OR, I could learn new skills and put them to use. And so can you.
Recently, a shift has taken place in the development of my Christian media. I used to spend most of my time editing in Adobe Premiere. Lately, I have spent almost no time in that program; almost all of my time editing has been in Adobe After Effects. It has been an exciting transition. I have owned AE for just as long as I have Premiere, but I did not spend a lot of time there because of my insecurity due to the advanced techniques required to operate such a beast of a program. Once I left the shallow end and went head first into the deep waters of AE, I figured out that it is fun to swim without floaters. OK, so my analogies are getting pretty corny. What I am saying is that you should not be afraid of such a powerful program, it is your friend. It's like Aslan the lion. (Wait...another analogy?) It's possibly not safe. It could tear you apart, but it won't because it is good. Plus, just do what I and so many other producers have done. Learn from tutorials, and it will all make sense, and you'll enjoy it!
The advantages are so numerous. The program is incredible. I have so much more yet to explore. For me, like you I'm sure, time is limited. However, if I can learn a new skill from a 15 minute tutorial, then that is 15 minutes well spent. I have a used Panasonic DVC30, which is a nice 3ccd camera, but it's not HD. However with AE, I can produce HD content without filming anything. Sure, I will keep making regular "film" videos, but this opens up all new avenues. As someone with a creative itch, I will have no problem staying busy in this program. I make videos on my time off from my real job of being a full-time pastor and family man. That means that I am making adjustments on these tedious AE projects in my mornings, nights, sometimes my lunch hour, and on my days off. It was not too long ago that I was clueless on many of the program's functions. If it were not for the help of online tutorials, I would not be able to learn this powerful application.
I will lead you to some of these training videos, but first let me address the issue of owning the product. I would love to upgrade to the Adobe Creative Suite 4 Production Premium package and get the latest versions of these programs. That is not in the cards for me right now. My version of AE is 6.5, making me outdated and ineligible to use a lot of the free or paid presets and project files available on the Internet. However, the program is still insanely useful. And I can recreate much of what I see out there from scratch. If you do not own this program, and like me CS4 is not an option at the moment, consider getting an older version or starting with a trial version. Then you too, can create stunning and thought provoking animations.
The shift is moving out of non-linear editing into digital compositing. A popular genre right now is that of "kinetic typography" (basically a fancy name for moving text). With AE this is a fairly simple process, once you get used it the program. It is very tedious and time consuming, but not difficult to understand. The results are of high impact. Your audience can tell even subconsciously whether an animation was easy or hard to accomplish. In other words, a novice piece is easily distinguished from an advanced animating technique. If you want to produce professional looking and sounding pieces then you will want to pick up this program and study it through some of the following sources and by experience.
If you want to learn AE, the first place to go is Andrew Kramer's http://www.videocopilot.net/basic/. This is basic training. You can even download a trial version of AE, the most powerful FX product in the world, and follow along with the provided footage for these 10 free tutorials. From there you can learn from many other free tutorials for whatever effect you are trying to accomplish. The goal of these is not for you to mimic them completely, but to use the knowledge from them to create your own unique material.
If you are stuck in a rut (like I was) in your familiar old software and long to do more to take your compositions to a new level, I hope to inspire you to do so. A couple of weeks ago I met with another media guy from a different church. I was pleased to see the other day his Facebook status was that he is working on a tedious new video and learning After Effects in the process. So you, like he, can make the shift happen as well.
Here is one of my videos in a new series that features some of the effects achieved in this software that are very popular today- http://www.sermonspice.com/product/26864/encounters--nicodemus--28widescreen-29. To do something like this yourself, first, go to this tutorial- http://www.crookedgremlins.com/09/01/2008/kinetic-typography-tutorial/. You'll see that it is fairly easy and fun to do once you understand it and get started. There is also a 3D tutorial on the same page. The tutorials refer to Illustrator files. There's another program I do not own. But it is not necessary. The secret is in pre-composing. You can type in the composition and make several layers. You highlight those layers and put them into various pre-compositions. You get creative lining the words the way you want them, and then will animate the rotation, scale (zoom), and position as a whole in sections. The video tutorial makes this easy to follow.
http://ae.tutsplus.com/tutorials/motion-graphics/design-rhythmic-motion-typography-in-after-effects/- is another great tutorial which dabbles in 3D as well. Warning: the first video on this page, the finished product preview, has a curse word in it. The second video is the tutorial, and it is clean. Another short video tutorial is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6S_ROor33vQ. This one has no voice-over. You can simply watch someone create some dynamic typography. There are sometimes good insights and links in the comments sections. There I learned that to help sync up the audio a little faster you can hold ctrl and then press and hold left mouse button on time ruler. Just after a second you can get a small preview of the audio. The skills learned from these particular tutorials will take your video making skill to a whole new level. There are many examples of typography work on Youtube that you can draw inspiration from. I am amazed by the creative possibilities of this genre. The effects available can give life to words. You can capture the emotion of what is being said.
I think that one of my best videos to date is my newest entitled "What was on His mind?" It was done completely in After Effects and you can see it here: http://www.sermonspice.com/product/27201/what-was-on-his-mind-3f. For the opening sequence I had seen this After Effects project on www.Revostock.com for sale that would be perfect. But it was for a newer version of the program, so even if I wanted to pay for it, it would not have worked. But I challenged myself to pull it off in my older version using the knowledge I attained from some of these other tutorials. I was able to recreate the same effect easily playing for a little while with textures, lights and the 3D camera.
The most time consuming thing was taking pictures I had downloaded from http://www.sxc.hu/ (a great FREE stock photography site) and making them form the word YOU. I got this started and taught my gracious wife, who is pregnant (and will have given birth to our 4th child and only daughter by the time you read this) to finish out the placement of the pictures and their keyframes before and after animation. So if she could learn, so can you. Before I go, let me give you a few more links for you to bookmark and refer to in your quest for animation domination.
http://library.creativecow.net/tutorials/adobeaftereffects
http://ae.tutsplus.com/
http://www.layersmagazine.com/category/aftereffects
http://www.dijitaljuice.com
Total training DVDs from older versions on Amazon.com
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Comments
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| Gregory Fish
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September 24, 2009 07:43am
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This is a cool new feature that will allow us to converse and learn from each other. Any comments or questions are most certainly welcome!
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