Is After Effects an essential requirement for an editor

[Mike Cohen]

I am learning new things I can do in Premiere every day. People often ask if I use AE, and in 10 years I have not yet found a use for it in the type of work I do. I have AE and Flash on my list of things to learn the rudimentary function of, but my editing load keeps me plenty busy.
In our small shop, each editor is usually the director, shooter, editor, DVD authorer and graphic artist if need be. Knowing a little about a lot of software is not so useful, but knowing a lot about what you use every day and enough about what you might use once in a while to get out of a jam is worthwhile.
For example:
Last year I noticed a shot of a guy wearing a “Jesus is my final anwer” t-shirt. While Jesus may in fact be his final answer, I thought it was distracting in an educational video for first responders. Knowing a tiny bit about Commotion, I was able to paint it out. Ask me how to do anything else in the program, forget it.

[Steven L. gotz]

I bought After Effects for the ability to fly a camera through stills like I saw at DVExpo. I never got any good at that and it sat on the shelf, so to speak. I saw a demo of using it for titling and I was hooked. In 6.0 it was possible, in 6.5 it got easy, and in 7.0 it is just so easy that I don’t even think twice about using it.

I now use it for Slow Motion as well. And Chroma Key using Keylight.

Is it necessary? Probably not. Do I find it very handy? You bet. Am I any good at it other than those things I use all the time? No way. Is it worth the money? For me it is, especially as part of the Production Studio.

I highly recommend that you lock yourself in a room with the Total Training DVDs and watch them straight through. That will give you a great tour of what is possible and a vague idea of how. One you know where to find everything in the training, it will be easy to go through that part of the training again when you need it. And then, watch some of the clips from my Inspiration site on your browsing PC while your editing PC renders now and then. https://www.stevengotz.com/inspiration.htm – you will notice at the very top a link to the Demo Reels barn here on the Cow.

If, after all of that, you decide that it won’t help you in your work, at least you will know for sure and be happy in your decision. But, that is just my opinion.

Steven
https://www.stevengotz.com

[Grinner Hester]

the more apps ya know the more marketable you will be. Surely can’t hurt to know AE. If you are an Avid editor on anything below DS, you have to know AE as Avid’s DVE is old, crusty and was in need of a revamp ten years ago.
Do you like motion grafix? Thats really the bottom line. If ya do, it’s the one to learn first, imo.