Pro Tools: After Effects Pack
Deadline: 25th April
Develop experimental, artistic simulations in response to a piece of music that is under a minute.
take in consideration how the simulations react to the mood, pace, tone of the audio piece. These changes in sound should have a visual impact.
I chose to do this brief as I have been trying to build up my portfolio and I've not worked directly with a piece of audio and after effects. I thought this project would be a good additional piece to put in there as I would like to display more motion graphic skills, as I have only ever done one project using After Effects.
Although I was initially drawn to the other brief on building your brand as I could also apply it to the professional toolkit, I didn't choose it. This is because I am not really sure what I want to specialise in or what to focus on, therefore, I could't figure out how to 'brand' my self for this project which is why I thought I thought I would focus on learning new skills in after effect involving audio.
Music Aspect:
To begin with I needed to find a piece of music that I could use and was royalty free as I would like to be able to share the final video and I wanted an original piece. I spoke to a friend of mine, Finbar Lyons, who is a music student at Bath Uni and shared my ideas with him on the style and mood that I was looking for and he agreed to come up with something for me
I wanted something a bit weird and unusual yet a little cinematic, so I wrote down some ideas so he can get an idea of what I was thinking:
Ideas:
The track that Finbar gave me was extremely interesting and I really liked it as there were many layers to it. At first it seems lighthearted and almost glittery but the more you listen to it the darker and more sinister it gets. The mix of both feelings seems almost psychopathic, like it would be the theme song for a villain in Sherlock Holmes. I imagined a dark street with lots of street lamps, that seemed welcoming but a little daunting if you stared at it for too long, there would be some people there too. I wanted to base the response I had to listening to the track to be reflected on to the visual motion graphic side. I made a little mood board of ideas that I wanted to follow for this piece:
Despite a lot of what I had in mind was street lights and alleyways at night, I didn't want to directly replicate this, but instead find an alternative, possibly more abstract. However, I picked out key words and elements of what sprung to mind when I listened to the track which I could focus on:
- glitter/glow
- lights
- a lot of dark elements
- a change in atmosphere
I began to do some research on what kind of things could be done on after effects and I came across people using particles to create different patterns with different movements and this really caught my eye. I especially liked the particle wave one I saw which is screen shotted below. I thought that it would be interesting to see if I could get the wave to move up and down in accordance to the music.
Plan: To create a particle wave that moved towards the screen. Whilst it did this, it would move up and down in accordance to the music. I would make the particle them self resemble little glowing orbs of light by making them white with a yellowy orange glow. I want the particles to be small like they are fragile. This would be against a black background which appears as an endless void and seems a bit daunting once the light stops. It would all move as one wave form too.
After Effects:
When beginning to look for tutorials on how to recreate a particle wave I recognised that a lot of them required a Trapcode plugin which I didn't have, nor was I going to buy. However, I still wanted to have a go at creating a particle wave without it. It was quite frustrating at the beginning as I felt limited with what I wanted to do. This is because I saw what was possible with the plugin but still wanted to create a similar look which I had in my head.
My plan was to search for a tutorial that gave basic instructions on how I could create a particle wave and then look at other tutorials including Will's to see how I should connect the audio key frames to the Effect or Transformation of the wave.
After a lot of searching on the internet I found two videos which gave the basic instructions on how to form one. This involved using the Fractal Noise Effect and then the Ball Action effect. I then made it a 3D object and edit the twist angle to create this formation shown below. I had a go adjusting all the effects to see what they would do and how they would change the overall look which became useful later on when I went back to adjust the final thing.
Through out every step of the way I really liked the different patterns and formations created when adjusting, particularly in the image above, it resembles a 3D maps. However, I did find it difficult to manoeuvre with the camera in a 3D space. Instead I adjusted the position on the left of the timeline panel and used the Pan Under, Orbit Around and Dolly Towards curser tools when I could. There was a lot of adjusting until I was happy which took up most of my time. Although the video doesn't move through the space, I was able to still have a go in the process of making which ended up being quite successful :
I had a go at using the colour charts to adjust the colouring of the particles which allowed me to create a richer colour and brighter colour that makes the whole piece feel as if it has more depth.:
I used a blur map effect along with the pen tool to focus in the middle of the screen which created more depth. I was able to make the particle wave move in one direction looking almost like the waves in the sea or a 3D heartbeat. I rotated the wave and zoomed in to make it look like the wave was moving towards the screen, almost like we are zooming through the waves.
One of the settings that I found really interesting was the 'Scatter' under the Ball Action effect. Changing this even by the slightest had a dramatic outcome. By having it at '0.0' it placed each ball in organised rows and columns which I do really like as it forms the waves and ridges in a cleared way:
However when adjusted to a higher value, the balls disperse creating more of a firefly effect which looks very pretty, but gets rid of the wave shapes that were formed which wasn't useful for what I wanted to do so I reverted back to having the value to 0.
Once the formation I wanted was created with the particles, the next step was figuring out how I wanted to whippet the Audio Keyframe to the motion graphics. I knew that I needed to use the whippet tool to link the slider in both channels to something but the issue was I needed to figure out where to link it.
I wanted the particles to move up and down according to the music whilst they moved towards the viewer.I tried to whippet it to the 'scatter' but that did work. Then I tried linking it to the scale in transform but that didn't work the way I wanted it to.
After trying a lot of things (which weren't successful), I ended up having a tutorial with Will (on 22/04/21) who went over what I had done. We found that it still didn't work the way I wanted it to which was frustrating. So we came to the conclusion that I had two option; either mess around with what I had done more and see if I can make it work even though it won't be the way I wanted it to be. Or I could restart with a new idea. I decided that I didn't want to completely start again as this involved more research and the time to recreate a whole new piece in 3 days. So I thought it would be worth going over what I had done again and adjust my idea and to make it work rather than scrap it.
After the tutorial I sat trying to other ways of linking both graphics and audio. After trying a lot of different things, I found that if I could link the audio to the ball size, it would adjust to the music. It looked as if the balls were glowing brighter rather than getting bigger
Final Outcome:
I ended up really liking this effect because it looked as if lightening was striking allowing us to see the particle wave. The stormy effect really reflected on the sinister vibe I got from the track. This worked particularly well as they flowed at their own speed towards the screen which counteracted the increase in ball size according to the music which created a very smooth effect.
Exporting:
For exporting, I added it to the render queue and changed the output module to 'QuickTime' and the video codec to 'Apple ProRes 4444' rather than 'Animation' as I wanted it to be a higher quality so I could use it for my portfolio.
I ended up naming the video 'In the Dark' because it begins and ends in darkness, it is showing what is going on in the darkness. The particles look as if they are still moving in the dark, and that the only way we can see them is through what looks like flashes of light which reveals glimpses of their movement even though it is actually the size of them that is growing.
Despite not being able to create what I had initially planned, I was really happy with the out come at it was successful in linking it to music and to the ideas which I had formed in the beginning. Furthermore, I was very pleased that I was able to create the particle wave that I intended on creating and learned how to successfully manoeuvre around a 3D space. I learned a lot of new skills like creating a blur map, using a camera in a 3D space and how to link the moving elements to the audio. I definitely think I would like to explore After Effects more and have a go at creating different motion graphics projects to work on my skills.
Comments
Post a Comment