Adobe After Effects is one of the best programs out there to create impressive effects in matter of seconds. You dont always have to use your own material like still photos or footage, you can create from scratch animated content.
Past few weeks I dipped into the world of After Effects and found out many interesting effects I would like to share with you today. These effects are mostly suitable for horror themed videos.
Fractal Noise
This effect is designed to give you appearance of pixelated blocks and squares, which can run in loop endlessly. This glitch effect can also have different forms, like fog or clouds, or different shapes, depending on your preferred settings. You have options to change their height and width every couple of milliseconds or you can leave it running unchanged. In order to make this glitch effect loop, you have to set up evolution value, to for example "time*500".
Displacement Map
If you have already some pre-recorded or downloaded footage, that you would like to use, this effect is what you need. Displacement Map works also as a glitch with a difference, that is makes your video distorted and glitchy. You can set up distortion vertically or horizontally, higher the number, bigger the distortion. Another great property it has, is called Edge Behaviour, which allows you to distort the very edge of the footage, making the clip look like it is in glitchy frame.
Color Correction: Curves
It's only colour correction, not an actual effect? Oh well, kind of, but it really does the job and it make your videos look 10000% better. Without proper filter or colour correction, your footage will, most of the time, look like it is lacking pop of colour or contrast. With Curves, you can completely change the feel and look of your clip. You can manually move with lines, where each one represent different colour, and depending on placement, it adds to your footage specific hue.
Here is is given example of filmed footages. First one is without any colour correction and second one is having Curves effect applied.
Quite big difference, isn't it?
Hope this post was informative and inspiring for you. Lastly, I would like to show you a title sequence I created for my uni project. This video contains all 3 effects, so you can see clearly what these effects do in real time.
What is your favourite Adobe After Effect technique or effect?
Hmm, cool)