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Filed under: Motion Graphics •Post Production •

Spinning Gold

In a perfect world, clients supply gorgeous video clips for you to use in the graphics they’ve hired you to create. When that doesn’t happen, there are a few tricks in our bag for adding punch to these clips. Our goal is not to add “effects” or to make video look like film - but rather to make your client say “How did you make our video took so great?” We covered tinting movies using various tint and tritone effects in Getting Behind The Color Wheel, and those techniques can be combined with the tricks contained in this column.

Midas Modes

Blending modes in After Effects offer some of the coolest “effects” around - yet they take little render time and rarely look gimmicky. When a job calls for layers to be composited on top of each other, video editing systems have only opacity controls to work with, which often results in lackluster imagery).

In After Effects, we rarely composite layers without using blending modes. Instead of Opacity, try compositing the top layers using Overlay or Soft Light instead (see below).  If the image is primarily black or white, use Screen - which drops out blacks - or Multiply, which drops out white.

When an image of a camera lens is composited with an eye using just Opacity (left), the result is rather flat. Using Blending modes (right), the final image is much more interesting. Images courtesy TVFX.

You can also duplicate layers and apply different modes to each to enhance different areas. For instance, if your chosen mode reduces the white of the eyes, duplicate the eye layer and place it on top in Add or Screen mode, which highlights the whites. Opacity can be used to turn down layers that are overpowering the mix. We often add contrast to layers using Levels, or if they’re contributing unwanted color to the mix, convert them to grayscale. As an additional tip, if you like the way Overlay works but you wish the layer was stronger in the mix, duplicate the layer - two Overlays can be better than one.

There are no hard and fast rules for which modes to use, as so much depends on the content of the layers. But the surprises are what make Blending modes so creative. If the clips are already of high quality, as in our example, compositing with modes may be all that’s needed .

It’s a Hard Light

Blending modes can also enhance a single movie by compositing the layer back on top of itself. Duplicate the layer, and set the top layer to Hard Light mode - ta da, instant “punch” (see below).  Some plug-ins (Compound Arithmetic, Calculations, Composite and Boris AE Composite) will composite a layer on top of itself using a blending mode right inside the plug-in, which is useful if you don’t want to deal with two layers for animation purposes.  These plug-ins also allow for the result to be composited on top of other layers below using the regular Blending modes.

Compositing an image (above left) back on top of itself using the Hard Light Blending mode adds contrast and saturation (above right). NASA images courtesy Artbeats.

An alternative approach is to composite the Hard Light effect in a pre-comp if you need it as one layer.  Pre-compose the layer using Option #1, “Leave All Attributes”, and create the Hard Light trick in the pre-comp. This will leave all keyframes and in and out points in the original composition.

next page: the classic “instant sex” technique, plus tricks for smoothing noise and creating soft picture-in-picture effects

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