[Jeff Flynn]

This should be a relatively simple since it really isn’t an “effect” as much as it uses scaled videos within your main composition. Set your main composition size to match your desired final output.

1.
Divide your main composition into 9 equal rectangles by pulling out guides from your composition ruler (if you can’t see rulers, go under View/”Show Rulers”). The idea is basically to create guides that you can scale your video clips with and snap to. You might need to pull out a calculator and do some math here to divide your composition equally. If I remember the Brady Bunch Intro correctly, there was a black border around each person’s video window. You might want to also drag additional guides to set this border amount as well. If you want the black border look, set the compositions background to black which will create a black frame around each persons “window”.

2.
Once your main composition and guides are set up, and your video footage is imported into your project, drag then first person’s video clip onto the timeline. Right-click on the footage that you dragged on the timeline and select “Transform/Anchor Point…” and set both the “X” and “Y” to zero. This will make it easier to snap and scale your videos to the guides you made.

3.
Next, grab the footage on the stage and move it until it’s top left corner snaps to one of the top left window areas created by the guides. You can turn snapping on in the view window if it’s not snapping for you.

4.
Next, grab the bottom right corner point of the video clip in the composition window (you might have to zoom out to see it). Hold the shift key drag the corner toward the top left to scale it down. Holding shift causes the video to scale proportionally.

ALTERNATELY, You could also select the footage in the timeline and hit “S” on the keyboard to show the “Scale” transform property. Enter a value that resizes that clip to fit roughly within the smaller “window” that the guides have created. Make a mental note of the scale percentage for later use.

5.
Depending on your video clip source, the clip may not scale perfectly to fit within the little window. If this is the case (most likely it is) then you can simply scale it so that it spills out of the guide window area a little and then use the Rectangle Tool (select it with “Q” on the keyboard) and draw a rectangle mask that snaps to the window size created by the guides.

– – – – –
Repeat steps 2-5 for each of the different video clips of the people you are using. If all of your video clips are from the same source, try to use the same scale percentage for each piece of footage so that they all match.

Probably too much detail, and I’m sure there are multiple ways to do this.

I hope this helps you.

JFly