[Grant Swanson]

Hi Sam,

It looks to me like you could simply create a solid, blur it out a bit with Fast Blur, movie it to the edge, and if you wanted, you could play around with a few different transfer modes.

Hope that helps,
-Grant Swanson

https://videoapex.blogspot.com/

[Grant Swanson]

Hi Bart,

It’s been a while since I’ve done something like this, but try using the following effects (they all come with Sapphire): Warp-Puddle; Distort; and Distort Chroma.

Try combining one or two of these in a precomp along with the Levels and Hue & Saturation effects (using your plate as a guide layer.) A few keyframes in the color and contrast as well as the different distortions should give you the results you are looking for.

Hope that helped!

-Grant Swnson

https://videoapex.blogspot.com/

[Grant Swanson]

My educated guess would be that they simply shot the plate of the TV, and then created a greenscreen box out of which the actor crawled. Simply key out the box and color correct the actor to match the color of the noise of the TV and room (I would also assume that TV noise was created digitally, rather than actually shot played back on the TV).

Hope that helped!

-Grant Swanson

https://videoapex.blogspot.com/

[Grant Swanson]

I would check out Artbeats’s large collection of cloud videos, most of them are loopable, and you can easily adjust the hue/saturation if you wanted.

And since they are rather expensive, you don’t have to buy the entire collection, you can just buy the individual videos you want.

Hope that helped!

-Grant Swanson

https://videoapex.blogspot.com/

[Grant Swanson]

Hi Chris,

For the typewriter effect, just create your text layer, and type whatever it is that you want. Then twirl down the options for the layer, twirl down the text parameters, and click Animate–>Opacity. Twirl down the Animator 1 options, and set the opacity to 0% (Be sure you’re not setting the opacity of the layer to zero, just the opacity of the animator, the text itself). Hit the stopwatch for the “Start” of the range selector, and then go to the point in time where want the text to be completely typed out and set the start value to 100% (you can also drag the range selector in the Composition Window, if you like to do things visually).

Next, twirl down the Advanced options, and set the smoothness to 0%. Do a RAM preview to see if the timing is working out. Drag the last keyframe around in time to fine-tune the timing of the typing. You can also create more than just the beginning and ending keyframes for this animation for even more control.

I’m sure that both Magic Bullet Looks and the Sapphire plugins come with and “old-film look” preset. Although, you could do this easily in After Effects without a plugin. Just add some noise and grain (you can play around with which ones you like best in the “Noise and Grain” submenu of the Effects menu. Then just add the Hue & Saturation Effect (Effect–>Color Correction–>Hue & Saturation. Check the box for “Colorize” and drag the value to around 20 or so degrees. Then I would probably bring the Colorize Saturation down to around -20 or so. Again, just play around with the results until you have something you like.

Hope that helped!

-Grant Swanson

https://videoapex.blogspot.com/

[Grant Swanson]

Hi Deke,

If you watch it carefully you’ll notice that each of the cuts take place in between two separate sections, and not while he’s actually saying a word. The production quality on this doesn’t seem incredibly high, so I would guess that they just recorded a few takes from different angles, at different distances from the camera.

It’s highly unlikely that they zoomed it up in post, anything above about 20%, and you’ll start to have a very noticeable quality loss.

Hope that helped!

-Grant Swanson

https://videoapex.blogspot.com/

[Grant Swanson]

Hi Chris,

My two favorite After Effects plug-ins are the Sapphire plugins by Genarts, and Magic Bullet Looks. With these two and everything already bundled in After Effects, you can do just about anything. Particular by Trapcode is also pretty good, as far as particle generators go.

You can quite easily do the “type writer” effect you’re talking about in one text layer just using the range selector.

Hope that helped!

-Grant Swanson

https://videoapex.blogspot.com/

[Grant Swanson]

Hi Jay,

This happens because there is obviously no “Repeat Edge Pixels” button. The Lens Blur effect works off of a luminance map, or as it’s called in the effect, a “Depth Map Layer.” So for the most ease and control, I would create a black/white/gray layer to show where you want to be blurred. And set that layer as the source of the blur.

The next best option, and is much simpler, is to just use the Box Blur effect, which much more closely resembles in-camera depth of field, when the iterations is set at 1 or 2 than does the fast blur effect.

Hope that helped!

-Grant Swanson

https://videoapex.blogspot.com/

[Grant Swanson]

That’s okay…I just posted a respond to your first request without reading your follow-up…silly little mistakes…so now I’m quickly deleting that reply…

[Grant Swanson]

Ah, I understand now. That X is what appears when you have “Wireframe” selected at the bottom of the Compostion Window. Switch it to OpenGL, Adaptive Resolution, or none, and tell me if that works.

Hope that helped,
-Grant Swanson

https://videoapex.blogspot.com/