Using Adobe After Effects To Make The 8mm FIlm Effect

After gathering all of my footage and composing my sequence i wanted to add the 8mm film effect on top of my work to make it look old and authentic. To do this i searched around for an 8mm film effect that i could apply over the top of my sequence using Adobe After Effects. I found the effect on video copilot as i mentioned in a previous blog entry. So heres the software log for importing and applying it to my footage.

First of of all i had to import the files into my editing pane in order to go back and forth to the original files. To do this i went on file - import file - files. This then through up a loading pane wher eyou could load up/ import your clips simply my choosing them and adding them.

 The files i imported then are shown in the files pan where you can go back to if you need more footage or simply duplicate the footage in the editing pane apple cmd D.

As you can see from the image below i added/ duplicated more footage in order to edit.

Also as you can see from the image above the mode is set to multiply. This is the setting you want so you end up keying out the white background on the 8mm film. this the mode is not set to multiply then you can change it by clicking on the drop down box like so

After Selecting multiply my editing pane looked like this

 As you can see the white background was keyed out leaving the composed footage i created earlier behind it. I then added an adjustment layer as you see in the image below. An adjustment layer is a layer that allows you to add effects to it.

Adjustment layers are useful because they allow me to add effects, for example i then added a fast blur with the adjustment layer selected like so

 

i went to effect, blur/ distort anf fast blur. this gives the layer a nice blur, however i added mask to this layer so the blur would only effect the mask not the actual raw footage. i then wanted to adjust the colour because i thought it looked to modern so i went to effects, colour correction, hue and saturation.

This then through up a hue and saturation window that looked like this 

I wanted the footage to look old and as if it was shot ages ago. So i thought i would use sepia effect to give it that sort of tanned warm look. i also checked the colorize button. 

 After applying this effect to one of the footage takes, i then applied it to all of them.

I then duplicated them on the time line so that the effect would be over the footage the entire time.