My finished After Effects video:
Trainspotting movie from Molly Ledger on Vimeo.
In the tutorial, we finished our videos that I had started a few weeks ago. I found After Effects easy to use and the tutorial was helpful as I have never created an animation before. I am not totally pleased with the result as it doesn't work that well. Typographically, it isn't very effective as it would be better if the text filled up the screen and didn't have orange space at either side. The text doesn't flow very well on the animation either as it is broken up slightly. The music could also fit better with the animation. If I had fewer slides to work with, I could make the music work in time with the sentences appearing. As this was my first attempt, I feel I have succeeded in learning about how to create an animation through After Effects although the idea for the animation did not work how I intended it to.
Firstly in After Effects, we created solids by going to Layer > New > Solids. We then created markers and moved the different coloured solids to change when the music changed. It was a challenge to pinpoint where the music changed in the song but I did it roughly and the animation changed colour as the music changed. We then replaced these solids with slides (my Trainspotting text slides) although I couldn't make the slides change with the music change as there were too many slides to fit in with the music. I therefore had to scrap the idea of it going along with the music and make the text start slow and speed up. This was to fit it in the 10 second frame as well as it looking effective. Although, it was difficult to get the timing right for the slide length as it seemed to be too quick at the end. I got it as close as I could to the effect I wanted although the lines at the end could have been broken up a bit more.
My music choice was from Youtube library and works well with Trainspotting as it is rock music which fits with the time it was written as well as rock music relating to rebellion. I chose Trainspotting as it is my favourite book and one of my favourite films. It was an easy film to represent although I could have chosen a better way to represent it. I decided to not add any fading effects and cut the film rigidly as this fits with the music and also the tone of the book although we did learn how to add a fading effect (by clicking on the layer and transforming the opacity). My animation does move and does work as an animation although could work better. Overall, it was a useful task that taught me the basics of After Effects.
