Intro - by Matt Dickinson

One thing i wanted to do for our music video was make a small intro animation that we would put before the video from the sponsor as if it was being displayed online or on television. As our target industry was MTV i decided to use their logo and channel as a basis for this intro. Watching some of there channels and looking at their website made me notice that after the adverts on a t.v. program a small intro would appear for the music video. Also small animation would reveal the artist and name of the song behind the music video. 

Seeing this made me think that this would be a very cool thing to produce on after effects pushing our video a little further ahead than anyone else's and giving it that "wow factor" with the opening scenes showing both a smooth animation and a shot with the glass effect I produced in after effects before hand.


Therefore I got to work. knowing our target industry was MTV I obtained the MTV logo off the internet and imported into photoshop where I produced many different versions of it each I may or may not use. From white, black, transparent and even glowing images to give me a base of content to experiment with in after effects.


















After this I imported them into after effects along with the opening window shot. I seen on some of the the TV channels an intro where the MTV logo was actually transparent with the upcoming video, programme playing behind the video. I thought this was very cool so thought this would be a brillaint idea to recreate. I saved the transparent logo as a PNG file which keeps the transparency instead of filling it in as white as a JPEG would normally do. I then brought this in to the composition and layered a shot underneath to play but only be visible underneath the MTV logo space. I then added a mask on the "Music Television" caption to the logo to move horizontally in the first few seconds revealing the caption and allowing the footage to play for a bit.




I then wanted the logo and footage to fade and invert so the logo became "filled" and the background would change to the footage. What I did for the is have another version of the logo but black (Later changed to white). I then key-framed the opacity of the first logo to decrease and at the same rate key framed the black logo to increase. This made the made it look as if the logo was filling up and taking shape which I really liked.



Next I wanted the logo to move into the top corner where it would remain for the rest of the video. So at the frame the filled logo was 100% I key-framed it start moving towards the top left corner which was quite simple. I also key-framed the size so the logo shrunk in proportion.



After this I wanted the both the bar to reveal the artists name and the "Rocks" logo to appear as this was going to appear on MTV rocks. Firstly imported a created Rocks identical to the one on their website into after effects. I then scaled it to the right size and proportion where I wanted and then added a linear wipe transition. I changed the angle to O degrees and key framed the percentage over a second so it looked like the rocks slid down from the logo instead of horizontally.



Next i worked on the bar. I originally chose turquoise but quickly changed this to green to match the MTV rocks logo. I created a solid layer and appropriately scaled this to where I wanted it. I then added a card wipe effect on which provides this really cool mexican wave sort of effect as the "introduction". I messed around with the settings so it appeared to power or light up the bar. I then created to two text layers one with "The Naked and Famous" and the other "Young Blood". I transitioned these with venetian blinds which is a plug in that makes the text appear to flip and rotate around onto the screen. This created a small effect which isn't very noticeable but it was these small features that make the difference between professional and amateur videos. I key-framed them and layered them above the solid bar to take it in turn. Once they had disappeared i then used the linear wipe at a 270 degree angle to retreat back into the logo.



Once it had been rendered out i was extremely happy with my final result.


Glass Window Effect

One of the shots we wanted to do opening the music video would be a shot of someone tuning the radio of their car as if the song was being played on a radio station. We got this idea from the Clavin Harris music video "Feel so Close". We shot this particular shot from a number of different angles. However half way through i thought of the idea that what if the camera was t appear to go through the glass window of the passenger side on the car. I didn't exactly know how it would work but decided to have a played around.

If the window was removed in the actual footage it would allow us to have a steadi camera path and then i could then just add this back in post production. Therefore we rolled the window down and manually focussed in the final position. Then with my hands just guided the camera slowly and steadily through the window into the camera to bring Doms hand on the radio into focus.











Once we had the original footage i then had the task of editing it. Unfortunately watching it back i realised that all through i was trying my hardest to keep it as steady as possible there was still a reasonable amount of camera shake. Therefore i imported the footage into after effects and brought up the tracking window (images above).

I then selected one part of the frame that stays in the shot throughout the composition (gear stick) to track the movements over time. This shows me the direction of the footage movement and any severe shakes will show in the tracking movements as there wont be a straight line. I then restricted the movement of the footage to allow for a steady flow as if the camera was gliding through the window. This produced the video below, as you can see there is a massive difference between the two shots (below).



Once this i had been done i began the task of adding in the window which I knew would take me a while as I was trialling lots of different techniques to see which worked. The one finally found to work was using a pre composite made up of multiple layers on a mask. 



Firstly I started out on the first frame where the window was "biggest" and the most of it could be seen. I then created a solid layer and used the pen tool to draw around where I would want the window to be in the shot.

I then masked out the rest of the shot so only the solid layer was visible in the shape of the window. I then precomposed this shot, which turns the shot into a folder in other words so i would have to deal with lots of layers on the original project file.


The next thing i had to do then was actually texture the video. The first thing i added was a gradient or ramp in after effects. Looking at the small window next to it I could see that the overall tone of the windows was a pale blue and it was slightly darker at the bottom compared to the top. I then added this on a alpha matte paired to the solid layer (pen tooled window) so that gradient filled the solid layers spot. When the opacity was lowered it gave a very nice effect (seen to the below) however it was just not realistic enough.




So i thought what else would a window have, dirt? The most obvious thing that can make a massive difference is the texture to the window not just the shade and positioning. I then imported an image of a dirty texture i got off the image. I colour corrected using curves and the toner to have a more blue base so it would overlay easier. I then added it to the pre-composite and increased the contrast/exposure slightly to make it slightly more visible. I then added a mask to the top as there would usually be only dirt on the bottom side of the window from driving. Then feathered it out to make sure there was a gradual development of dirt and not a cut off line between clean and dirty making it appear more natural.





The image was getting better but there was still something missing to make it complete, a reflection. Windows reflect there background and it was essential to add one to finally finish off the texture of the window. I went on the internet and found a image of a field with trees and a nice sky. As the car windows are slightly pointed up wards i made sure it was essential for a lot of the sky to be able to be seen. I then played around with the curves again to increase the contrast but also decrease the overall tone of the image as reflections aren't known for being the brightest. Finally this created a realistic window i was very happy with.







Now i had my window i had to track it to the actual video. Unfortunately there was no way of me being able to track to whole clip and pin the solid matte to that spot and the most of the matte eventually goes out of the shot, which meant i was going to have to do it manually. I pressed the key frame button on the shape of vector, position and scale and then skipped a head and repositioned all the attributes to fit in the shot again. This took some time but it meant i could personally make sure all the frames were in shot and rightly framed.



However when it got to the point where all of the sides of the window were out of shot, it was hard to guess how much the window would increase and move to throughout the rest of the composition. Therefore i used this graph see the past rate of scale and position and then projected this path throughout the rest of the frames.



I was now into the final stages of the shot. At the end of the shot i know had to create the illusion that the camera was travelling through the glass. I travelled to that point I thought it would in relation to the surroundings of the shot and lowered the opacity using keyframes so it would gradually decrease. I then wanted to create a sort of ripple that would happen across the screen to reinforce the illusion that we were travelling through glass.

Therefore i created another pre-composite of a white strip which i feathered out and animated to move across the screen at the same point we "travel" through the glass. Then created an adjustment layer with a displacement map making sure only the horizontal displacement was applied and parented the source of the map to the animated rectangle. So when we pass through the window the displacement map bends the video across the screen quickly. Finally render is below which i am very happy with.





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