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Understanding and Creating ‘Realistic’ Camera Shake In After Effects

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Some short require camera shake for authenticity, but are so much easier shooting on a tripod. Think about any effect where you need to cut between two shots, or wanting to shoot something quickly while still making it seems like it was shot hand held. This gets even harder if you want a significant shake.

Now of course, some will say, just get the camera off the tripod and shake it as you shoot, but if you tried that you’d realize that shooting while shaking a camera is not that trivial. There are many things to consider, like focus, framing the way the camera moves, and having the shake look realistic.

Sam & Niko share a relatively simple method for adding the camera shake in post. The secret to making it look real? They break the shake into its individual components and add them as linked NULL objects.

Why Computer Generated Effects Seem So Cheap To Us?

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As someone who covers a lot of photoshop action (no pun intended) it was quite interesting for me to see this talk about the equivalent of what photoshop is to stills on cinema. CG (Computer Generated) effects. Pixel peepers and sharped eyed viewers are fast to catch on #failed photoshop disasters, but all and all I think it is fair to say that we are satisfied with how photoshop plays a role in our industry.

CG effects are a complete opposite though. If you watched any big summer blockbuster, you probably have some complaints on how poorly the CG effects are. Heck, Star Wars VII has taken into practical effects because fans were so deeply disappointed with the amount of CG in the 1-3 prequel.

Create Demon Black Eyes in Photoshop

We all love the dark demon eyes looking back at us from a picture or movie. It just tells you that that model you’re looking at will devour your soul, damning it to hell for all eternity.

And here’s how you can turn your models into soul-hunting demons and have them look cool at the same time. It’s a subtle trick but it will give great impact to your image.

If you are lucky to have a good concept you’ll probably make sure you have some black sclera lenses for your model to put in. But if you don’t have them there’s an easy way to get the effect in photoshop as well.

In the video below I’ll walk you through the steps to create such dark eyes.

Recreating The Aurora Borealis With A Piece Of Fabric

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So, what if you have to create an Aurora Borealis right the middle of anywhere but the North Pole? Usually it means that you’re done (unless you actually go to the north pole). But Joey Shanks really needed some Borealis for his movie production – SPECTRUM.

What he did was quite clever, he used pieces of colored fabric and pieces of lit fabric dancing in the wind as a base and then he composed them into the final movie.

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