old film look with adobe after effects

“old film” look with adobe after effects

If you are sick of bling bling and high definition, make your skate footy look old with this Adobe After Effects tutorial:

1) Open your Adobe After Effects and create a new composition called “old film” (>Composition >New Composition).

2) Import your skateboard video footage (>File >Import >File) and drag it on the timeline.

3) Generate a vertical white line and call it simply “line” (>Layer >New >Solid >Width = 1; Height = height of your Composition; Color = white).

4) Drag this line on the timeline above the skate video footage.

5) Switch off the visibility of this layer by poking the eye.

6) Generate a solid layer the size of your composition and call it “particle” (>Layer >New >Solid).

7) Drag it on the timeline above the white line.

8) Add a “particle playground” effect to the “particle”-layer (>Effect >Simulation >Particle Playground) – settings as follows:

Cannon
Position: coordinates of your composition’s centre
Barrel Radius: minimal the distance between your composition’s centre and edge
Particles Per Second: 15
Direction: 0

Direction Random Spread: 0
Velocity: 5000
Velocity Random Spread: 0
Particle Radius: 1

Layer Exploder
Explode Layer: “line”

Gravity Controls
Force: -200

9) Add 80% noise to the “particle”-layer (>Select layer >Effect >Noise & Grain >Noise)

10) Make sure your skate video footage layer is below the particle-layer and move to the video’s first frame.

11) Add a strobe light effect to the video layer (>Effect >Stylize >Strobe Light) and set it as follows:

Strobe Color: white
Blend With Original: 90%
Strobe Duration (secs): 0.09
Strobe Period (secs): 0.15
Random Strobe Probability: 80%
Strobe: Layer becomes transparent
Strobe Operator: Add

12) Slightly offset the video layer (>Effect >Distort >Offset): Place a keyframe at the first frame of the layer. Place another keyframe at the end of the layer and add 3 pixels to it’s x-axis coordinate.

13) Select the just added, shifted keyframes (drag your mouse over).

14) Add lens blur (>Effect >Blur and Sharpen >Lens Blur) with a frequency of 8.

15) Apply Hue/Saturation to the video layer (>Effect >Color Correction >Hue/Saturation). If you want a black/white-video, tick “Colorize”. Otherwise bring the Master Saturation down to -60 und the Master Lightness up to 10.

16) Eventually add 20% noise to the video layer (>Select layer >Effect >Noise & Grain >Noise)

17) Select all layers and export the “old film” skateboard video clip (>File >Export…)