Learning After Effects

Yesterday in class we had a man called James (who is an expert in film production software like After Effects and Premiere Pro) come into our lesson and run a workshop about After Effects. He taught the class about how to make text for titles and create shapes so that everyone could learn and understand the basics of titling and how to create a basic title for ourselves. He showed us the graphic titling film 'Anatomy of a Murder' (1959, dir. Otto Preminger) and we each tried to recreate the opening title in our own way. After creating the title text and shapes of a leg, a dagger and a hammer, James taught us how to make the title animated. I had my dagger and hammer starting off screen. The dagger then swooped across the screen, stabbed the leg and had small blood spurts coming out. The hammer then came into the shot and hit the title of the film off-screen. It was pretty basic but I had never used After Effects before and I was surprised how quickly I learnt how to use the software. I would like to learn more advanced skills on After Effects as I think that animation is something that I would like to encorporate into my foundation piece. Because After Effects can be used to create animation for any genre, I could possibly use it to create sci-fi or action animations which could be harder to achieve with a camera as I won't have a big budget for my foundation piece.