Aztec mask (creative process)

I had never used after effects before, but used various websites such as creative cow and videocoplitot which had many tutorials to aid me through. I also listened to advice from my tutors who felt the mask idea was strong and realistic due to the time we were given.

After finishing in After Effects I took it in to premier to add the sound. The project also gave me a chance to play around with render settings, general effects and file management.

It took a while to get the desired look I was after and i think the music added greatly to creating atmosphere.

After effects

• Key framed panning
• masked the eyes so they would open
• opacity mask fade in
• glow effect - mask becomes bright
• opacity mask fades in as eyes open
• minmax mosaic style effect as mask blurs to background
• desired font to animate
• chose font to mimic the British museum
• render to movie
• Duration 10 seconds
  

Premier

• select music
  
• black out effect at the end of ident
  
• render into desired format
• Duration 10 seconds
  

I spent hours watching tutorials then following them from VideoCopilot.com this gave me a basic understanding of After Effects. I used the ten basic tutorials on the website. It was essential that I watched these as I quickly realized I knew very little about After Effects.

For future refference I believe it is essential to study the tutorials as part of my research. As I did not take in to account the amount of hours which I would be spent learning the software. This prevented me from getting on with what I wanted to do , getting on with the Idents. As a result of this I will continue to study the programmes in my own time so that for future projects it will be easier to get on with my work.