Process and Production (year 2) - Year 2 Showreel

This was the last After Effects workshop of year 2 and since we have learnt quite a few new skills this year and some of us are looking to get placements, it was a good idea to create a showreel to show off our work. The showreel would show our strengths, diversity and as I have no intention of showing it to potential employers I would say it will show my progression in this Adobe program. Personality is injected into the piece through style and choice of music to accompany the visuals. In terms of the order of content, we were advised to put a strong piece at the start to give a good initial impression, in the middle is your weakest pieces and then to end it on another strong piece to end on a high. A showreel can show your style, expertise and what potentially you can create for a future client. 

As always we were shown an existing clip to show what a showreel is and give us inspiration for our own. Sara chose to play showreels from Adam Gault; it was good to watch his as gets the timing spot on when matching up the visuals to the beats in the music. 

First we began in illustrator to create our title and end screen; these would introduce the showreel and who I am then conclude at the end with the chance for the audience to look further at my design through the provide links. Each element had to be placed on a different layer so that when it was transferred in to After Effects you would be able to animate/edit each element separately. I also decided to create a page changer slide which was used to transition from the opening slide; it gives the piece a bit more movement and flow. The overall style is quite simple and the colour scheme reflects the identity of my personal brand. 

These files were imported in to After Effects; I edited the opening slide, changer and end slide at separate compositions so I could use them in the final showreel/comp. By editing them in a different comp it made it easier for me to continue to edit them later rather than having complications in the final comp. I started by creating a new comp titled 'Final' which is where the renders and audio would imported and dragged into the timeline. I worked with the audio in the timeline first before working with any videos; I had to listen to the music and add markers ('*') to highlight the main beats/changes in the audio. The markers were there to pinpoint the beats in the audio enabling us to cut the footage at the right time in order for us to achieve a smoother outcome. In terms of the videos to be added to the showreel I decided to add my Cinema 4d pieces in addition to the After Effects pieces I have done as I felt these pieces were stronger. At this stage the videos were placed in the timeline and lined up with the markers, this ensured that the videos cut with the beats of the audio. The next stage involved playing around with the order of the videos and cutting them down to the best sections. Once I was happy with the outcome I rendered out the showreel using the usual settings but when I opened it up in quicktime I rendered it out again at 1080 dpi. 

Short Cuts

Sara decided to give us the shortcuts in this session, these help to speed up the process of editing which will come in handy in the future also. 

[ to cut to the beginning
] to cut to the end 

use the * button to add markers to the beat on our audio 

j - is for jumping back to markers 

k - is for jumping forward to markers.

layer selected - use cmd up and down curser which change the layer selected.

i - in point and o - out point of layer selected on the keyboard 

shift + cmd + d - cuts it and repeats it

My thoughts:

As this is the last session I will evaluate the year in After Effects workshops and the progress I have made throughout the year. Overall I'm pleased with the outcomes I have produced this year and you can see the progress I have made when I have become more confident working the program. This showreel shows how much I have developed throughout the year and if you were to look at my work from year 1 you would see a bigger improvement. This gives me encouragement to continue to use this program and improve further with more time put in. 

In terms of this session, I would say that it was pretty simple in the sense that we already had produced the content to work with; it mainly focused on the editing and timing. Although I would say that I learnt the importance of timing when creating a showreel and if the timing is out it can make the outcome look unprofessional and lower quality. I would say that I'm fairly confident with using this program at my current skill level but I would like to improve my skill set so that there is more option with what I can do with the outcome. All these skills I have learnt will only continue to improve me as a designer and prepare me for a future in the industry. 

Showreel 2016 from Jade Irving on Vimeo.