Motion Graphics & Video Editing Theory - After Effects Crash Course Part 1

1. Course Preview: video becomes more popular each day in the social media space, businesses use videos to get more engagement and eyes on their services and products. This course is designed to give you the path of least resistance to making scroll stopping eye catching videos. And after effects, Fast joined both Ryan Collins, a Social Media video expert with hundreds of video ads under his belt, and I, Lindsay Marsh, who have produced hundreds of hours of video content. As we study what makes compelling motion, video clips and graphics will learn the basics of adobe aftereffects and learn how to complete stunning motion video projects. I will walk you through motion theory, including frame rates. Sizes will talk about resolutions and provide helpful downloadable resource is along the way. Brian Collins will provide you with the precise tools and knowledge you need to skip all the headaches and get straight to making high quality videos and is entertaining. Yet it's a sink and calculated manner. He will also walk you through several amazing projects like logo animation, typography, video ad creation and tons more. And yes, you can learn after effects and start creating compelling motion videos in no time, all you need is after effects and a will to succeed. I'll see you in the course 2. The Course Guide: First of all, welcome to the course. I'm glad you decided to join both Ryan Collins and I on this journey to learn how to create compelling videos in after effects. First of all, feel free to join the exclusive student Facebook group. Just type in learned video for social media and go freelance in the Facebook search bar and click over to groups. Click the joint now button and answer the questions. You can post your student projects in the Facebook group. Or, if you don't have Facebook, you can post them in the Q and A community sections of this course, and we look forward to seeing your amazing projects posted. Next, downloadable resource is you can find all of the resource is you'll need for the course in this lesson. As a downloadable zip file, this course is broken down into three main sections. The first section is taught by me, Lindsay Marsh and I'll guide you through some video theory. The second section will be taught by Ryan Collins, and they'll go over the basic functions of adobe after effects teaching you from scratch. The third section of this course consists of several hands on projects you will work through with Ryan. Lastly, there'll be additional extra content and sections added to the scores as time goes on way hope to make this course dynamic with fresh, updated content, so I'll see you in the first lesson. 3. Creating Compelling Videos That Sell: in today's world video cells, but not just videos, because we're oversaturated with video content but compelling videos that hit the target audience and resident with the viewer. On an emotional level, 54% of consumers demand more videos from brands and companies they support. Video is the most favour type of content on social media platforms. A survey conducted by Wise Owl shows that nearly eight out of 10 users have purchased a piece of software application after having watched a brand's video. I can list hundreds of statistics, but they all point toward the same facts. That video is not only here to stay, but to remain relevant as a content creator. Rapid designer, a Web developer. Anyone who deals with digital content, you need to somehow be involved in video based media. You can have a static instagram ad, or you can have one that's in motion. Which one do you think is more effective when quickly scrolling down your feed? Motion demands attention, but can also give the viewer an additional visual story. Told through animation, motion and movement. This lesson will introduce you to some things we need to be aware of. If we want to craft compelling stories that sell products, engage your viewers and connect with their audiences with video, whether it be on a website landing page, a social media paid ad, an animated logo, AH brand asset or your own video based channel. Understanding who your target viewer will be can make huge impacts on how successful your video clip is. For instance, knowing that your target audience may skew younger, be mostly male or if you're promoting a new body spray or cream that's targeted toward gym goers might change the speed and the type of animation you use. Your typography might be thicker, bold, quickly, come and go off the screen, and may even flash, distort or flicker. What if your target viewer is a technical person looking to automate business activity, showing sophisticated users more software flow? An animation can really help drive click throughs toe landing pages that can continue that sales process for you or your client. Never lose sight of the angle for any video, no matter the length, you should have one single focus. Will your video Goalby educating the viewer about a service a product? Will it be to drive sales to landing page? Or could it be to drive engagement with viewers with an emotional drive? This is your main focus for your entire video, and staying close to this goal throughout will help you craft videos that are cohesive, work and convert motion and video can play huge roles and how we engage with content motion that is slower and more smooth can get off. Give off calm vibes was something this choppy and fast can give a viewer a sense of urgency and become alive. It's up to you to control the speed of the video, the pacing and the delivery. For instance, this choppy animation style in the Starbucks add gives it a more youthful, playful feeling. Not everything has to be silky smooth and fast to do well on online videos. This could have easily be created with photo shop using just a gift. A smooth, slower paced animation with lots of easing in and easing out effects can make an ad appear high end, as in this example of a Facebook cover photo. The animation used here uses a lot of this easing in an easing out effect to slowly move the graphics and photos into place without any jerking motion or flat motion. These ease in ease out effects can easily be applied as default options and most video editing programs and an adobe after effects. You have a very fine control of this easing effect of graphic elements on screen. By using a graphic editor, you can see something that does not have this ease in ease out effect and compare it to a transition that does have its easing effect. Kind of a big difference, huh? So the speed of the animation is important and showing our style in connecting with their target viewer. But also the length of the video clip is, Well, you just have a few seconds to grab a viewer, and how you craft your video will determine how long they stay and finish up the entire video. The longer your motion and animation take, for instance, this software add the more you have to do to keep the viewers eyeballs on the video, notice the constant animation that's happening. This is an attempt to keep your attention on the ad. Having a wonderful pace to your animation at the start of your ad is great, but you need to continue to follow through. If you plan on making your videos longer than 10 seconds. Video shorter than 10 seconds are a bit easier to manage but gives you less time to explain your business or product. That's why videos that are more short in length or short form need to focus on driving the user to click through to the next stage of the sales process. That may be a landing page or a purchase. Now button shorter videos are less about educating the viewer in a product and more about teasing the viewer with the product. Longer videos tend to be more educational in style, maybe even guide the viewer on how to use the product we're seeing how knowing our target viewer knowing how long to make her videos and also the pacing of the animation could be big factors and how successful our videos are. But let's give even more detail about how to use typography color layout to create a nice balance between elements and our videos. Some of the same principles of design and graphic design can be applied to motion. Video concepts like fought pairing typography, color schemes and layouts are all critical factors. Typography and motion videos is something truly to behold. Type can slide in, disappear and reappear, fade in and out, replace each other or even take up the whole screen using a similar typeface. Choice throughout your motion video can help it stay branded and consistent. The same rules apply to static ads or fixed ads as the same to motion videos as well. If you use multiple typefaces or fonts and one video, make sure they pair well together and use enough contrast between your type based choices like one being bold and another one being thinner, our one being a serif typeface and another being a san serif typeface. Typography or type can easily overwhelm a motion video. Never present so many long phrases in too short a time period. Watch your video multiple times to make sure you can read out loud all of the vital text. This is one aspect we don't have to worry about with static graphics this time with motion , we have to worry about the pacing here. Well written type or copy is useless if the viewer cannot easily read and digest the typography. Readability here is key and you don't want to cause reader exhaustion. By the end of a long video, for example, great motion typography could be seen an animated logo. Examples. Take, for instance, this one the timing of when you bring in some letters over others in what transitions you use all play a part of the overall brand presentation and feel never take too long to animate a logo. If it takes over eight seconds toe fully, bring in a logo. That might be too much time for the viewer to spend idle watching it. A 2 to 5 second animation for a logo seems to be a great average time for most brands and add video intros and Altro owes. Take, for instance, this animated logo. We have this triangle spinning in a little bounce action to add a little subtle movement and a glare effect to finish it off. All of these are small, quick actions that do not take away from the brand readability of the logo. It is ledge, a bill right away or within a second or two, and is effective and introducing the company brand before in a long form or short form video motion. Typography can help characters come to life motion. Typography can also be called kinetic typography. Notice how mesmerising this form of animation is, and it's that's exactly the point. Weaken stare at this for several minutes and still be entertained. This is the type of fast, attention grabbing elements we want to have in our social media ads, video ads, gifts and more. This type of animation is highly effective at driving traffic, and users to click more about a project or service are just to grab their attention. Because of this irresistible ITI and attention grabbing qualities, you may see motion videos spilling into shorter clips on social media, where animated posters have started to take over. Designers can take their static posters at a bit emotion to transform them into interactive pieces that can go viral and rack up new followers. I think the future of design will slowly gravitate toward movement and animation and designs we create for brands and for ourselves. Learning motion programs like after effects could be helpful toe land future jobs that require these specific set of skills. Static design is not going anywhere, but the future is in movement. I want to study some of the latest motion videos used in social media. You can check out your instagram feed for video ads and study how they craft, um, paste them and use typography. Or you can head over to facebook dot com slash adds slash library to access all the current mobile ads being run, and several of them are motion videos. 4. Frame Rates: the technical side of video creation. What is a frame rate and why does it matter? In your videos, frame rates can dramatically change the feeling and smoothness of a video. Simply frame rates are the amount of frames or images that are shown in a one second of a video. For instance, movies air commonly shown in 24 frames per seconds, or PS. We tend to see the world in a frame right about this frequency so it gives movies and more natural cinematic field sports. TV may shoot at higher frame rates to capture more of the in between subtle movements that tend to happen in sports action. Low frame rights may be necessary and gifts, for example, because the more frames you have in a gift, the bigger your file size will be because it contains more photos per second. To create that sense of movement and your gift, you'll notice that simply increasing the frames per second on a gift will add more smoothness to your motion in transitions, but will come at the cost of a higher file size. There's even in effect in after effects called the posterized time effect that allows you to only so show certain frames, giving you this choppy, animated feeling without having to change the entire video frame rate lower. There is a balance you have to find with frame rates, and old depend not only on the style you want to have, but where your video will be placed or used. You would think having a super high frame rate of 60 frames per second would make the video super smooth and high quality, And sure it will look very smooth. But it comes with its own added effect, more and more TV's air coming out with the option to change movies from 24 frames per second to 60 frames per second. Have you ever switched to this higher frames per second mode and notice The movie seems, well, less riel or cinematic. They almost seem to have a cheap soap opera like quality to them. And that's exactly what this effect has been. Nicknamed the soap opera Effect, and using too high of a frame right could take away a bit of the rial life cinematic realism that we often associate with movies. That's because there's too much detail and we're seeing almost double the frames or the in between movements of objects and people, and our brains no longer fill in the gaps, so to speak. Let's talk about the reverse situation and talk about slower frame rates. Have you ever seen a claymation or a clay animated feature movie Thes Air created using lower frame rates per second simply because of the hard work involved in getting photos for each frame? But notice the stylistic effect happens with lower FPs or frames per second. Sometimes that jerky feeling can add this interesting stylistic choice, and sometimes it's done on purpose to create that effect for a video. So I want to talk about the most commonly used frame rates, and there's gonna be a downloadable resource that will contain all this fantastic information from this lesson. First of all, 24 FPs, this is the most commonly used one for movies and TV shows. The frame rate is the most natural for us to see, and mimics are real world frame rate we see looking around us. This is the minimum required frame rate set by the industry 30 FPs or 29.97 at FPs. This is the one we Seymour in TV shows and commonly used in motion action sports TV. This is also the common standard. Do you see for online video? Think about YouTube. You'll notice the uneven number of 29.97 And that is because of a more complex issue about drop frame time codes on I'll save that for another time. 60 frames per second ever seen those cool, mesmerizing YouTube videos of something happening in super slow motion? Those most likely used a higher frame per second to capture all of those little in between frames to craft a super silky smooth animation, you will also notice most video games are usually in 60 frames per second nowadays to capture all of that motion and movement. That's why video games lose a little bit of that natural cinematic feeling. In exchange for the details you need to play the game. There might be times where an animated logo might be in 60 frames per second. To get that silky animation, the most commonly used frame rate for videos you see on social media online or where you're most likely to create in place videos will be your standard. 30 FPs are Sometimes you'll see that 29.97 as the standard because of an older issue with black and white TV, and its sense remained the standard, even though it's no longer an issue for us. The default FPs value and after effects, for example, is set to 30 frames per second, and it can easily be changed. You could also notice when you download stock footage or stock videos online, especially from free sites like pixels dot com slash video. You'll notice most videos come in about 24 frames per second. And remember, the higher your frame right, the bigger your file size. That's something we need to think about when placing video and other platforms, Social Media's and our own website. So let's talk about a very key word. You hear all the time with video, especially motion video, and that's Resolution 5. Resolution: a resolution is something you've already become accustomed to because TV and computer companies have boasted higher and higher screen resolutions, and they only seem to be coming out with new or higher resolutions with each new year. The resolution of a video is talking about the hype and with measured in pixels across the screen, the most commonly used sizes four K TV, for example, which comes in at 3840 pixels and width by 2000 160 pixels in height. And they get the name four K from the fact that the Horace horizontally it stretches toe almost 4000 pixels across a particular standard of measurement or four K screens. Apple has come out with laptops that are closer to the four K resolution and even some case for their larger desktop monitors. They're pushing five K for higher resolutions. If you ever grew up watching those old analog TVs or you watch TV before became digitized, the standard viewing resolution was only 4 80 p, or 600 filler 40 pixels and went by 400 pixels by hype. So let's compare that to a four K modern screen, you can fit up to 8 480 p videos inside of a four K video screen. The thing is there now shown on smaller screens, they're essentially getting up to eight times the pixels in the same viewing space, making four K look super sharp and crisp compared to the TV of yesterday. People are demanding higher and higher resolutions out of screens but also out of online videos. People are no longer putting up with the smaller 4 80 p resolutions because they're streaming Maurin more four K videos on Netflix and other streaming APS, making it the new standard of quality resolution. Just like Frame right does come at a cost. The higher the resolution or pixel size of your video, the more file size it takes up, and the longer it takes the load and buffer online. That means if I show you one of my courses in four K, 80% of the students was with less than stellar Internet connection. Speed would have a really hard time streaming at smoothly because the file size is gigabytes large instead of just megabytes. That is why you see 10 80 p and some lower resolutions, even 7 20 p still being used for online streaming and 7 20 p happens to still be one of the most common resolutions you see online. Currently, as you can see from this graphic, there's a massive amount of resolutions. You consent for your videos based on where you place them. I'm gonna go over a few very common resolutions you might see online. Don't worry about writing all these down. You could find this all in the downloadable resource. YouTube. YouTube is pretty straightforward. Using a standard 16 by nine aspect ratio. The aspect ratio is the dimension or ratio between your with and your height and pixels. So 16 by nine is the standard format you see. For most videos. Here is a common listing of acceptable resolutions for YouTube using the 16 by nine aspect ratio. The most optimal and common size used is 7 20 p 10 80 p and sometimes a bit higher at 14 40 p. The higher resolution is great for viewing pleasure, but remember, when you edit and export files, higher resolutions mean higher file sizes. There's a file size and storage problem that happens when you film and edit and export everything and four care higher. Sometimes using smaller 10 80 p. Resolutions can help keep those file size down and more reasonable to manage. Let's talk about sizes for Facebook. Let's say you're posting opposed, and you want to share on a business page or personal page for a quick 32nd video. The current standard resolution now, for this is 12 80 by 7 20 or 7 20 p. Once again, your standard aspect ratio, or the ratio between the length and height of the visit video is still set to 16 nine. You can also do a full portrait or a vertical size video at that same nine by 16 aspect ratio. Or you can even do a one by one ratio, which means it's a square video format. And don't worry. We'll go over that next Now for Facebook paid ads, you have some similar options. You can also reverse that aspect ratio on the landscape. Videos We just talked about to make them portrait or vertical in format. This would be simply reversing the ratio from 16 by 9 to 9 by 16 and also reversing the pixel sizes. For example, a landscape video in 10 80 p would be 1920 pixels and with by 10 80 pixels in height. If you reverse that to the portrait style format, it would be 10 80 pixels in width by 1920 pixels in height. A lot of viewers like to have their phones turned up right in their hand, so having videos that are full screen and portrait mode makes a little sense and some cases for optimal viewing and mobile formats. So studying where your videos might be viewed and viewed the most will help you in making these sizing decisions. You can post the standard resolution from prior that we talked about, or you have the option of creating a square sized add to landscape sizes or wider and portrait sizes or taller. But square has the same size and height, making this a unique video format. So you're aspect ratio or ratio between your height than with is one by one. You could see an example of this on the screen here. The minimum resolution for the one by one aspect ratio, or the square video format is 600 by 600 pixels, but can also go up to 10 80 by 10 80 pixels. For that higher resolution, you can see faith the Facebook carousel Video ads used this unique square video format as well. Now for Instagram sizes, Instagram has a few special sizing requirements, depending on where you might post the video. They also support square portrait landscape and video formats. You also notice a similar aspect ratio and resolutions compared to the Facebook requirements. Instagram Carousel ads, which are the ads you could swipe and show multiple short video clips, are at the square aspect ratio, or one by one. Also, Standard Post could be posted in any of the three formats we just talked about with the popular INSTAGRAM stories. It looks a little bit differently, and you can use Landscape Portrait 16 by nine aspect ratios. This is when thinking about how the viewer will see your video is important. Most users I know hold their phones in a vertical or portrait mode on instagram, making this nine by 16 aspect ratio size, amore, optimal size. Just make sure you're doing a paid story. Add to leave a bit of empty space at the bottom for the call to action or swipe up form or information button or area I. G. T V is something Instagram has been pushing as their YouTube alternative. They have a similar size requirement of the 16 by nine ratio, but videos tend to take up the full screen on Lee and vertical or portrait size, so that nine by 16 and remember people are holding their phones vertically in this app will work the best. This makes it a bit tough, is not. All videos can look good vertically, especially when they might have been filmed horizontally or in landscape mode. This is why taking native video with your phone turned on to vertical mode might help with videos placed here. I G TV is a bit different of a format because the lengthy could post here is much longer than the maximum link you could post for an instagram story, making it a unique format for a long form video content for marketers, For example, there's also another aspect ratio that is accepted on instagram for standard feed post, and that's the four by five aspect ratio, which for a 10 80 p resolution would be 10 80 with by 13 50 height this one is a little bit different. It combines the height of the vertical portrait format but also provides a bit of wit from the one by one square format. This makes the format that would take up the most screen real estate on a user screen. This format is not accepted everywhere, so you need to double check before investing in this size video. But for this case, for static posts and images on Instagram and Facebook. Ah, this is one of the better, most maximizing real estate screen sizes you can use. You will start to notice a pattern with online social media video requirements and that the 16 by nine of the nine by 16 aspect ratio is fairly standard or even the one by one aspect ratio. Once you get used to creating and exporting these file formats, and you'll be well on your way to knowing how to best maximize the space given to you but also to maintain a nice, crisp resolution showing off your animated motion video work 6. Storyboarding : way. Plan a video just like with static design, weaken layout and sketch Our video outlined before we even hit the video editor or motion design program. This consejo us a ton of time in the development process by avoiding unnecessary trial and error with our animations, transitions and more. When you sketch out of static poster designed, for example, we think about where the headline might go. Maybe we feature a photo we see if we need multiple photos we can block out are areas where the necessary type will be, and we have some sort of call to action. Somewhere on the flyer or poster with crafting videos, we do the same thing, but with the added element of the timeline, now we have to think about time moving and things changing as it moves along. This added element can be tough for those who are used to just working with static designs . But the planning and sketching process is still the same. You've seen storyboards associated with cartoons or fully animated movies. They feature set blocks of time told through a series of sketch thumbnails called panels. You will want to set your panel size about the same dimensions of your final video. So if you plan on doing it 10 80 by 10 80 pixel instagram video or a video that will have a one by one aspect ratio, then plan on keeping your panels roughly that size so we can have a good idea of the space we have for our elements. I have a downloadable resource, a storyboard template for you in a few different aspect ratios. I'll be using this in the upcoming example in this lesson, and you can for projects in the scores. You can print these out and sketch them out with pen or pencil. Or you could do it. I'm going to do, which is bring a J peg into a digital sketching app, in this case, procreate, and I'm gonna sketch on top of that template, just some general rough ideas. The best way to learn story boarding is toe walk through. A quick example in this case will before 13 2nd instagram Facebook ad for a local gym. Let's use our 4 to 5 aspect ratio storyboard template to get started as we know, the four by five aspect ratio gives us the most screen real estate after talking with the client, we have some basic text we need to work into the ad and also unending call to action that prompts the viewer to sign up for ah, promotion on the side. Let's quickly jot down some of the basic text we need toe work into our ad. It's up to us to determine when these words are shown for how long and how the text comes onto and off the screen, which is called a transition. Let's think about our target audience. This will be a young audience who were trying to get them inspired to sign up for a high energy, 30 day exercise program. I'm thinking, Ah, really quick dynamic were transitions as well as dynamic visual transitions. Our total ad length will be about 13 seconds long, so we need to work through the required text and visuals quickly. That first scene our panel is so critical, so why not throw our first phrase get fit the fun way and there in the 1st 2nd center aligned along with some sort of visual anything to add that first attention grabbing element for the transition onto the next panel? Let's do a quick transition and quickly move to the next scene. First seconds, two through four. Let's quickly display several fast visuals of people in action. We just threw some text at them in the 1st 2nd so let's not have any text in this next panel to give them a natural reading break for a transition. Let's keep them quick and edgy. We could do an RGB split effect or a glitch effect something that could be done in less than 1/2 a second but adds a little bit of pop of color to the screen. Moving on to the next scene. Let's introduce another required line of type. How about shred fat? Since we already introduced some visuals with people, let's keep it to text only this time and add some very slight movement to her type. Let's also flash one more line of type make friends so that this one second clip has two high impact type visuals or typography visuals for our next panel. Let's keep this dynamic by introducing some action shots, but let's include a balance of women and men. So if we feature women in the start, let's feature more men in this section to keep it diverse with representation. Since we're targeting both male and females, this can last for two seconds. So 2nd 6 and seven for the next panel. Let's finish up our offer by presenting the next two lines of type, which is setting up our final scene and call to action. Let's have them be shown quickly, similar to the other type in the first few scenes, maybe with some distorted type animation to break it up from the other transitions we did earlier. Our last scene is the most important call to action panel. Let's feature our final required cold action typography. Bullets also have this last a full two seconds. It sounds quick, but in a 13 2nd video ad, it's a good portion of the video will have a lot happening in those 1st 11 seconds of the ad. So let's have this be more static text and one without a lot of movement so the viewer can really read the higher amount of screen text and the call to action. It's a little bit longer than what we've been presenting and prior panels or scenes, and that's a wrap with some ads. You're restricted by time with others, you might be able to expand this out past 13 seconds. But remember, sometimes shorter ads can be more effective with certain ad types like this one. Once you put this together with editing, software will be able to find tune the timing, maybe even adding that additional second or two at the end if needed. So don't worry about the super duper fine details. This is the story boarding stage. This is mostly for us to get ideas and a rough sketch in layout for how the video is supposed to flow. So there's your example of story boarding an action, and this was a really short, simple ad to start things off with. Things do get a little bit more complex when you animate longer videos, but also ones that have a lot of elements moving on and off the screen. Take, for instance, this motion clip. The same method applies. Create your panels about the same size as the final clip and start to jot down your desire . Text in the notes of that panel, Now weaken sketch out ideas for transitions between words and also how long they stay on the screen and how they enter and exit the screen. You can even do the same for a logo Animation. One. A spinning arrow. How far does it go up? How many times does it spin? What happens after the arrow comes in? How does the text fade? All this could be sketched out quickly in a matter of a few minutes and give you a huge head start in your project planning so you can print off and hand sketch or storyboard panels. Or use a digital sketching app like I did procreate to quickly sketch on top of your JPEG. Your ideas. Let this be a fun planning process, full of sketching, brainstorming and concept development. I have a quick little student challenge for you. I want you to storyboard and sketch out a concept for a 12th video ad for Instagram or Facebook. For a product or service of your choice, you can choose an already existing product like a new Starbucks drink or base it on a made up product or service of your choosing. I want you to feature a call to action at the end that prompts the viewer to take some sort of action. Our storyboards required for every video creation you do? Not really, but they are very helpful in getting that brainstorming process going and laying out a general plan for your motion videos. 7. AECrashCourse Skillshare Part2: