Aetuts+ Weekend Workshop #5 – “Emerging Zombies”
tuts workshop

Aetuts+ Weekend Workshop #5 – “Emerging Zombies”

on Mar 10th 2012 with 6 comments

We’ve recently started a new weekly community project where we’ll be posting a video created by one of our wonderful readers, then ask you all to offer constructive feedback on the work. It’s a great way to learn more about video, express your viewpoint, and have your own content critiqued! Submit your own videos at the bottom.

Quick Ground Rules

  1. Play nice! We’ve deliberately chosen videos that aren’t perfect, so please be constructive with any criticism.
  2. Feel free to offer any type of advice – movement, lighting, color, pacing, etc.
  3. You can also link to videos that you feel offer a great example of this type of content done exceptionally well.

Without further ado, here is this week’s candidate for critique!

“Emerging Zombies”

Story Behind the Project

This was created to showcase my daughter and her photography project of pin-up zombies. It was used as a piece to promote her work at Gallery Night in October of 2012. The work is intended to resemble an editorial/mocumentary piece. Zombies were being photographed at night in a number of different locations with a variety of lighting situations. I used a Sony Handycam HDR-SR11 with night vision on. There are a couple of pieces of footage that were shot by my friend Christopher Cote. His was not shot in night vision and I had to create a look for it in order for it to blend. I used AE to stabalize the footage, but I didn’t want to over-do it because I still wanted some rawness in it. I also used a plug-in “neat video” to smooth out some of the grain. The music was an added bonus; an original track from my friends Lora and Kevin.

I would love any tips for shooting at night with little or no light. Any other comments or suggestions are welcome!

Please let us know what you think in the comments – how would you have approached this project or done things differently?

Interested in submitting your own video? You can do so here!

Adam Everett Miller is everettoptions on Videohive
 
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I am the editor of Aetuts+. I also run Hello Studios as my 9-5 job. I'd love any feedback about Aetuts+ so don't hesitate to drop me a line. ae@tutsplus.com  

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  • Klovis

    I have deliverately re-read the ground rules before starting to write this.
    Trying to be constructive.

    With all the respect to the author of this video, I’m still asking myself:
    is this about VFX? is this a project that I should evaluate considering the concept behind these nice teenage sexy zombies? The photographic and lighting quality? The stabilization in AE? The editing?
    As far as I understand, it is a making of, and as a making of, it’s just fine.
    It seems that all participants had fun doing it.
    Night vision is a good choice for this type of subject…
    Which could be my other suggestions?
    (Despite the fact that the make-up artist should be fired inmediately).
    However I do like the music, I see talent here.

    • http://perfectfx.wordpress.com PerfectFX

      Yeah, it almost has nothing to do with AE, except the editing, lighting and composition part and there are no “special effects”, as we know it.

      But still.. very comprehensive and fresh-looking idea/work :)

      And I think I fell in love.. :S That girl on 0:15-0:32.. Ohh, she’s Goddess.. :S

  • Pam

    Thank you guys for taking time to comment on my video, I really appreciate it.

    I would like to point out that After Effects is a robust program and is used for a lot of other things besides visual effects, such as stabilization, tracking, and color correcting to name a few.

    In my project I had less than perfect lighting conditions and was freely holding my camera while video taping the photo shoots. Night vision was used on my camera, but there was another videographer working with me who was not shooting in night vision. To pull this off for a cohesive look, I used After Effects for treating his footage to try and seamlessly blend the two together for a night vision effect. I also used After Effects for stabilizing some of the footage.

    Regarding the night vision look, i did become frustrated because even though you can grade your footage to look like it, there are some nuances that I could not reproduce. If you look at the zombie eyes in the footage that was actually shot in night vision, you will see there is an eerie glow in the pupil area – to reproduce it, grading alone will not get you there (at least not that I could tell).

    I did find that the warp stabilizer did a very good job in most instances.

    I submitted to this forum in hopes that I could get some other ideas of how I might use After Effects to work with these conditions because I have some other projects coming up that will be similar to this one. I’m pretty sure there are other areas of After Effects to explore!

    Thanks again! I think the critique series is a fantastic way to learn from each other.

  • dan

    I would say that you should not feel beholden to the green cast of the night vision footage. You can desaturate the footage and then add in a different color cast if you like. Take a cue from early filmmakers, before true color film, and play with each shot having a different hue to accent the feeling of that shot. Perhaps each girl could have her own color to match her personality?

    As for the zombie eyes… I see roto in your future. Not sure there’s any other way to do reproduce that.

    I think that the night vision look works well for the subject matter, but it does get a little monotonous by the end. Also, your transitions feel like they are all the exact same length, that starts to feel a little clunky by the end. I like that you worked some of the stills in at the end, maybe think about working those in earlier. Maybe use a flashe as a transition to a still? It’s a little bit of a tired style for photography behind the scenes, but I think it can be still be used well.

    Your daughter has a cool idea, i like it.

  • http://vimeo.com/hesedmedia Ward

    Subject matter is spectacular ^_^

    In photos in which there is a high contrast between foreground and background, it’s fairly quick to cut out the FG character in Photoshop, then however many BG layers, distribute them in 3d space and do a quick little camera move to fake some parallax. Could do that with a few of these photos, or use the FG element as a transition wipe as the camera comes across it. Might be a bit lighter feel than what you’re going for there.

    Someone already mentioned desat and recolor. The eyes you might be able to track with mocha, if you shoot at higher shutter speeds to avoid motion blur. Then attach your favorite lens flare to the eye with low brightness/higher scale? Something like that.

    Again, subject matter is brilliant.

  • christopher

    Sure they had fun with ketchup or whatever and some intereseting photos was produced, but for me this was a total waste of time, how does this relate to ae tuts?