There are a number of things I want to explore and experiment with over the next few weeks. I think my main focus is to work and experiment with foley, which; for those who don’t know, is the creation or alteration of sound in post-production. Foley is used to give a scene its life.

Foley can be used to make the space in which a character exists, much more believable and engaging. A simple scene of a person walking through a space – whether it be a hallway, a grassy plain, or a footpath, can be made all the more believable, when each action has its own accompanying sound effect. This, is one of my goals. To create a series of shots, that are completely foleyed with 100% original sound FX, that help create the space in which a character will exist in.

The only problem with this goal, is that I need visual footage to foley. So I had think of a secondary goal that primarily focused on visuals. After-effects has always been a program that I’ve wanted to learn. It amazed me with the things you could create, but it was always so daunting because of how complex it seemed. And there was always one visual effect that I thought was so cool, and that was what I like to call, the ‘through the wall transition’. This is simply when the camera passes through a surface such as a wall or floor, to seamlessly transition from one shot to the next.

I’m aiming to do a series of experiments, where I can try a number of different ways to produce the illusion of a camera passing through a surface. One easy way of doing it is to have a tracking shot follow a character to a wall, then fade to black, then fade back to the opposite side of the wall. It is also possible to create ‘fake walls’ within after effects, that can be the stand in for the actual surface, in which the camera will pass through.

These are all methods that I plan on trying and experimenting with, but I think the most exciting experiment I want to do, is to create the illusion of passing through a surface by playing around with 3-D layers in After Effects. In after effects, it is possible to turn a 2d-still or video in a three-dimensional space, and also implement a virtual camera that can pan, tilt, and track within this three-dimensional space. I would like to experiment with this function, and use the virtual camera to transition from a three-dimensional space, through a virtual floor or wall, and into another three-dimensional space.

So the final question is, how do I plan on implementing the two ideas into one? By the end of the semester, I want to create a sequence of shots, linked with a small form of narrative, where the character will do a bunch of different actions that I can foley, and also passes through different spaces, so I can implement the use of the ‘through the wall transition’.