[Dramatic music]
[Cinecom’s intro music]
Hey folks, Jordy here for cinecom.net and welcome to Copy Cat Friday!
In this weekly series we recreate video effects from famous films and music clips.
Today we're having a look at the band Why Don't We
and their music videos ‘8 Letters’ in which we can see floating objects
that suddenly start to twirl around super fast.
Now, this effect has also been seen in ‘Sun is Shining’ from Axwel,
so the idea could come from either.
It doesn't matter, we are gonna make some paper fly around us!
But first, let's have a look at this high quality stock clip of a plane
and fly over to our sponsor Storyblocks,
to discover hundreds of thousands more studio quality stock clips, transitions,
overlays, After Effects templates and so much more.
If you're into video editing or visual effects,
then Storyblocks is a must-have subscription
as you can download unlimited video assets for a single price per year.
I can highly recommend to check it out yourself,
you can do so by clicking on the first link in the description below!
And now, let's fly to the church!
[Music]
Welcome to church, guys!
First of all, a big thanks to the community for letting us film right here,
let's talk about the lighting.
In the music video you can see these three-stage lights in the back,
these are warm lights, which is pretty cool in that church.
We kind of recreated that.
For the convenience we are working with four lights,
but we do have that same feeling to it.
We have four LED lights right here, which are daylight-balanced,
that means it's more cold light.
That’s why we've wrapped orange filters around them
to also make them appear like tungsten lighting
and get that same warm tone to it.
Then over here we have our smoke machine which is warming up,
we’re going to fill the room with some mist later on,
and that way we are really going to get
those rays of lights throughout the entire church.
We’ve got some beautiful windows out there
and the sun is shining on those windows which is gonna be really cool.
Let’s have a look over there.
And here we've got the frontal lighting, we are working again with LED lights
but this time we are keeping them at daylight-balanced color temperature.
Because of that we can set the camera to also daylight
and just have normal skin tones,
but the lighting in the back will be much more warmer which is gonna be really cool.
We’ve got a huge softbox right here
because we're gonna have soft lighting over my skin tones,
so, yeah, that's basically the lighting setup and all that we need to start shooting.
Then the only thing that you have to do to take your shot is to take out your tripod
and put the camera on there.
And you can also move your tripod through the space,
but that is going to be a lot more complicated
when we're going to create the paper particles in After-Effects.
However we have made a tutorial in the past
which was inspired by the trailer of ’13 Reasons Why’,
which you can find a link to in the description below
that does cover how to do that.
[Music]
So, we've just made the shots that we need,
but before we're gonna pack everything up, there's one last thing that we have to do
and that is make a shot of the paper itself.
And we're going to use this as a particle
for the thousands of papers that are gonna fly around us.
So, just take a shot of this
in the same lighting conditions as you were standing in.
The general criteria is just filming this paper
and we're gonna grab one frame out of it,
but you can also just grab a picture from this paper, of course.
-We are back at the office, let's jump into After Effects!
Let's start by placing our shot into a new composition.
Since we wanna have the papers turn around us,
we're gonna make a duplication of our clip by hitting crtl+D.
With the top clip selected, head over to the toolbox and pick the Pen tool.
With this you can draw a rough mask around the subject.
If you are moving in your shot, you might need to go into your mask properties,
enable the Mask Path animation and change it overtime
so that the mask will follow you.
Lastly, increase the feather a bunch.
We can now go ahead and start creating the whirlwind of papers.
From the Effects Library I search for the Particle World effect.
Drag that onto the top clip, which we've created that mask on previously.
Already you can see a bunch of generated particles.
These particles is obviously not what we wanna work with,
so let's locate the clip or the photo that you took of the sole paper.
Add it to the composition and cut it out with a mask.
Of course, you can also do this inside Photoshop.
If you're working with a clip in here though,
then it's important to freeze it.
You can do so by right-clicking on that layer,
go to Time and then choose Freeze Frame.
Now, to make that paper a bit more organic,
I'm gonna search for the Bend It effect and drag that to the layer.
This allows me to bend the paper a little bit.
You can also apply other effects in here
if you like to make any adjustments to the paper particle.
So, once that is ready, we can go ahead and disable the output of the layer,
since we don't need it in the comp, but we're gonna select the top clip again
which holds the Particle World effect
and from the particle Property,
I'm gonna change the Particle Type to Textured Quadpoligon.
And this allows me to expand the texture property and target the paper layer.
Make sure to also change the second dropdown menu to Effects and Masks,
or else it won't use the Bend It effect, which we've applied on it earlier.
Alright, so far so good.
We've got the papers in our scene,
next up we're gonna have to make some adjustments to it
to make it twirl around me.
First of all, we're gonna dive into the Physics option
and change the animation to Viscose.
This will make the particles spread evenly into the space.
There is also a twirl option, but we found out that some particles
would behave pretty weird that we couldn't control anymore.
So that's why we went for Viscose.
No idea if I pronounce that right.
But hey, let me know in the comments!
Currently the particles start from the middle and then they fall down.
So, first of all I'm gonna set the gravity to 0,
so that they don't fall anymore.
And finally I'm gonna set the velocity to 0 as well,
so that the particles stay nicely in place.
They're all grouped together now,
and to fix that, we're diving into the Producer property.
From here we wanna adjust the Stretch Radius out for all the axes.
Try to fill up the room nicely.
If you do notice that the particles are not utilizing the space like you want them to,
you can always dive back into this option later on.
You can also use the Position properties above
to move the entire particle cloud around and have them sit exactly where you want.
Alright, we've got the papers in place, now, let's focus on the papers themselves.
I'm gonna dive into the particle options.
The rotation speed will determine how fast the papers have to turn around
their own axis, so you can increase this.
The particles have a birth and a death.
They come in and go away.
From the birth size and death size,
you can set the size of the papers upon reveal and ending.
Usually the birth size is gonna be a little bit bigger as the death size.
This way the papers will slowly decrease in scale overtime,
making the entire cloud of papers more organic.
And finally, set the opacity to 100.
Next up, go to the top where you can find the Birth Rate.
With this setting we can control how many papers you'd like to see in your shot.
And with the “long…evity?
I’m not sure, let me know in the comments.
Anyways, with that setting we can choose how long each paper has to live.
But again, like I said before,
you might wanna go back and forward between these settings.
Alright, let's jump into the last setting, which can be found under extras.
And here comes the setting
where we can really make the papers become part of the scene.
First of all, enable Composite With Original.
This will make your subject -which we've masked out in the beginning-
to become part of the 3D space of the particles.
We can then open up the Effect Camera property
and move the virtual camera around using the parameters rights here.
By changing the distance, you can move the papers in the back,
to actually be behind the subject.
And using the grid, we can try to align the floor
to make it match with the real camera.
You can also change the focal length -the FOV-
to make the papers match with your wide angle or tele lens.
Next up, open the Depth Cue, change it to Fade and increase the distance value.
This will make the papers in the background softer,
having them out of focus.
Finally is the light direction, this basically moves the virtual light,
which allows you to match the lighting from the real shot with the virtual papers.
And those were all the settings!
I know it's much, but you've just learned
how to work with a very powerful and super popular particle effect
inside After Effects, good job!
Now, there's one last problem, the papers don't actually move around.
But that's super easily done.
Just go back into the Effect Camera property
and start animation for the rotation ‘Y’.
Then go forward in time and change that rotation.
Now those papers will flow around you like a whirlwind,
but it's missing some motion blur.
So, from your layer properties, make sure to enable Motion Blur from there.
And by the way, guys, if you can't find these settings,
then just right-click into your columns,
choose Columns and make sure that the Switches are selected.
And the very final step now is to enable Motion Blur
for the entire composition with this nifty button right here.
And that's it!
[Music]
Thank you Cinecom crew from the awesome work!
Thank you Storyblocks for the support!
That wasn’t good.
That’s better!
And of course, thank you for watching!
And as always:
Stay Creative!
-Have you ever seen such a big key?
Awesome!
Big doesn’t always mean good, because they installed a second lock.
Probably this is the safest lock.
There we go.