I been trying to do some more small projects so I can keep learning new things with the adobe suite, today’s project was to try to make a photo feel more alive. Some advantages with shooting video is being able to capture the things around you that photos cannot. Some of these cues are the things you can hear around you, capturing motion and lighting.
I thought it would be cool to share a really poor description on how I did it.
- FIRST THINGS FIRST, since there isn’t a ton of moving parts in the photo I thought it would be neat to bring some life into the lighting. This includes multiple lighting sources and surfaces it may be reflected on. There are many different ways to achieve this in After Effects but my methods included adding blurs, playing with blend modes and dropping some simple key frames.
- Good news! That was the hardest part. Once the file is exported I brought it to Premiere pro to work on 2 main things 1) Color grading and 2) Sound. Sound design is extremely important when it comes to video as it adds this extra layer of immersion. The sounds I used in this video weren’t particular to Kawasaki Warehouse, I decided to put my spin on it with some faint speaking, neon buzzing, elevator bells and music. I also lied about the hardest part being in After Effects, It’s really finding the right music.
- Some final touch ups I made include a slow zoom and movie grain (to give that still image some more movement).
The original photo
The result (after Youtube compression)
So with the mix of after effects and premiere pro I was able to spit out this pretty cool video trying to create an atmosphere using a photo. What do you think?