New Special Effects TEST!
 

Hey guys... I completed this short test video in After Effects. It took about 4 hours...

Please check it out!
Thanks,
Colin Worley

LINK : http://youtube.com/watch?v=4K_04jpMqcs

i like it - have you added the camera movement yourself?

I think if I was watching, I'd stay looking at the explosion - maybe the explosion could have a bit more colour too?

I don't know your experience, but it's a great idea!

Thanks. Yeah, the shake was done by me... the reason it's so shaky is it's supposed to have a home-video feel. If a bystander saw this, they would be shocked/scared so it wouldn't be ultra smooth footage. The shakiness was just to emphasize the event that just occurred from a citizen's point of view.

(Like the movie 'Cloverfield'.)

Thanks for watching it!
Colin

I haven't seen Cloverfield but...
 

That looked really well done! Care to spill the beans on if you used anything special?

Thanks man! Well actually, I didn't do anything special here. I simply got a high-resolution picture off the internet, dropped it into After Effects and worked away.

First, I added a simple camera tilt, upward. Then I began to add all of the explosions from some stock footage. Then, I linked the stock footage to the picture (so it would follow the camera's motions). I then use 'The Wiggler' inside of After Effects to create the bumps and shakes.

Lastly, I brought it into Premiere Pro to do some color correction and a few other simple things. I also added sound effects: city ambiance, two explosions, glass shattering, metal bending, etcetera...

All in all, it took a little over 4 hours to actually create, then a bunch of rendering time... (especially since I used motion blur to give it that "home movie feel".

And that's about it! ;)

Thanks to those who watched and commented,
~Colin Worley

Very, very cool dude!

If you wanted to make the camera shake a little more organic, you can shoot reference markers handheld and transplant that motion into your clip...then you can have "real" handheld footage:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSiFmEDl_gY

I should add though that the shot looks really good.

It's great!
 

The video was fantastic...especially for a 4-hr job! I have a basic (maybe dumb) question: What's the specs of your system? I installed After Effects 7 on my laptop (dual core with 1gb ram) and tried to work with cineform avi (from m2t hdv) and it's really slow. Of course, I am absolutely new to this kind of thing. Any advice on the best way to learn this software?