Steep Learning Curve

I have been studying Adobe After Effects for almost a year. This is an extremely complicated software package with a lot of features and options. After Effects is sort of like Photoshop for video. Now that online video has become the best means of attracting consumer eyeballs to your marketing message, it is vital to master video as a form of expression. Unfortunately, most people don't have the time or technical savvy to master a professional video editing tool or video compositing and animation software like After Effects so I am offering my services in this area.

Compositing And Motion Graphics

Video compositing is the process of combining multiple sources of video footage and graphic elements into one video. After Effects accomplishes this using layers just like Photoshop does. Motion Graphics is the art of animating graphic elements in a video. Using After Effects, it is possible to create a video without using any actual video footage. You can just import images and either pan and scan the image or animate it to create the illusion of motion. This is extremely useful in quickly creating inexpensive videos because you do not need to deal with the time and expense of filming digital video. It can also eliminate the need for actors.

Art Or Science?

Mastering After Effects definitely requires the creativity of the artist but it also requires considerable technical ability to solve the complicated problems that can crop up in production. After all, we are dealing with software here and software can be very frustrating if you are not good with computers. In addition to the usual problems, you have to deal with conflicts in video formats, problems created by digital video compression, various image formats, and even audio file difficulties. To create a video I frequently use a number of programs like Adobe Illustrator for vector graphics, Propellerhead Reason for synthesizer music, Cubase LE for audio recording, and Photoshop to create alpha channels. All of these software packages have steep learning curves and require you to solve a variety of problems to get them to produce the desired results. Therefore although you may think you need an artist for this job you had better find yourself one who is quite a geek as well!

Creativity Unleashed

Nobody can produce a movie all by themselves but using today's software I have come pretty close. After Effects really unleashes my creativity because it is powerful and permits me to experiment a great deal. Of course, you do need to thoroughly master the software to put all of its capabilities to effect so I have spent an unusually long time studying After Effects. I feel it is worth the time and effort because video is the most effective and compelling form of expression available and the Internet is now a video platform. All of your writing and artistic creativity can be wasted on the Internet because there is just too much content out there for you to stand out. Video content is difficult to produce so there are fewer content creators for video and they get more attention than blog writers and graphic artists. If you want to have your voice heard on the Internet today then you need to be able to express yourself in video. Of course, not everyone is a beautiful actress or eloquent speaker so mastering motion graphics is an important alternative to appearing in videos yourself. I have a lot of fun creating the music and video for my experimental films and there are now many opportunities to share my work with the world.