So for my series of experiments – my goal is to be better at foley sound effects, more comfortable with Adobe After-effects, and overall just a better filmmaker.

With foley FX, I think it’s just a matter of being able to record the right sounds in the right context, in order to create higher-quality sound FX. However, my goal to be able to move a camera through a surface (wall or floor) in after-effects, may prove to be more of a challenge. Why? Well, I have no experience with after-effects.

Transitioning from one shot to the next by going through a wall or floor through after effects is easier said than done. It requires one to know the basics of the program itself, while also knowing some of its intricacies. Something that I don’t know.

So in order to be able to create the final VFX of a camera passing through a surface – I’ve been learning how to use After Effects from scratch. So far, I’ve experimented with basic VFX, compositing and pre-compositing, and masking. Through this, I have created some very bad videos that I can learn from and improve upon in order to reach my goal.

BASIC VFX (EXPLOSION) –

To achieve the effect in the first video, I simply got stock footage of an explosion against black, keyed out the black background, and positioned and scaled it against the video clip of the man walking.

COMPOSITION AND PRE-COMPOSITION –

This video builds upon the first one. The video shows a total of 6 blue-ish explosions going off at different times. Interestingly, the blue-ish explosion is actually the same explosion from the first video. Through use of a number of different effects available in AE, I was able to give the explosion a more – ‘plasma’ look. The use of composition and pre-composition isn’t evident unless you see the editing files of the video. Compositions are simply containers for footage in the timeline, and by using them, you can create, transform and implement effects to a number of different visual elements in the timeline. So, by using compositions, I was able to duplicate, and apply the ‘plasma’ effect to each individual explosion, without actually having to go through the process six times.

MASKING

Masking is a tool that allows you to add or subtract different parts of a visual element in order to compose it over/under other elements. Had a bit of fun with this one.

Yes, none of this videos show a camera going through a physical surface – it’s not even close. But what it does do is give me a foundation to learn and improve upon, so that I can eventually create that very effect.