Levitation Effect Tutorial - AFTER EFFECTS

Have you guys ever seen those old videos where David Blaine tricked people into thinking he could levitate? Don't move. Why? When I was younger, I never quite knew how he was able to do that. Were they tricks for TV? Did he have actual magic powers that could make him fly? As I got older, I realized you couldn't really levitate and that those had to just be tricks for television. But then I found out, it is actually possible to levitate. Sort of. You can do it through the magic of Adobe After Effects, and it's pretty simple too. All you need is a green screen, After Effects, and someone who's willing to pretend like they're flying as you blast them with a leaf blower. The leaf blower part is optional, I just like the added element of the hair blowing like if it's some storm or Jean Grey effect from X-Men. So that's the effect I'm going to be showing you today, how you can easily make someone levitate using After Effects. Now we're going to jump into that, but first I want to thank the sponsor of today's video, Skillshare. Skillshare is an online community for creative people and those who are curious about learning. With a premium membership, you have access to thousands of classes on topics such as design, photography, and video. Sometimes if I'm having a bit of trouble feeling motivated to create new content, I hop onto Skillshare and see some of the great classes being taught, and it really helps inspire me. On Skillshare, there's never a shortage of creative people to learn from. Like Julian Klepper and his class, How to Make Dope Low Budget Films. His class is a step-by-step guide to creating cost-effective narrative films. He shows you great tricks and tips on how to get the most out of everything and everyone while sticking to a low budget. Right now, if you click the link in the description below, the first 1,000 people will get a free trial of a Skillshare premium membership. And then after that, it's less than $10 a month for you to continue using Skillshare to further your learning. So if you're interested in joining Skillshare, make sure to check out that link below and enjoy your free trial. Wait, do that again. To create this effect, I shot two separate clips. The first one, I had the camera on a gimbal so I could get a low tracking shot. I shot mine at 50 frames per second because I knew I wanted to have it in slow motion. I chose for this to be a moving shot because it helps the effect feel more exciting and realistic rather than if it was a static shot on a tripod. I'm going to track this footage in After Effects, so I made sure to pick a location that had some good reference points that I knew would be easy to track later. Areas with high contrast is what you're looking for, like these white spots on this tree or this black spot right here. These are perfect to use for tracking. For my second shot, I had the camera on a tripod and filmed my wife in front of a green screen. I made sure the camera was as low to the ground as possible and tilted it up at the same angle as the first shot. I also placed the camera at about the same distance away as the first shot as well. And I shot this in the same lighting so that the two shots were easier to blend together. Also, having your actor stand on something so that their feet are pointed down helps too so that it doesn't look like they're standing perfectly flat on the ground and that it looks like their feet are pointed and that they're dangling. My wife just stood on this branch that we found and it really helped with the look like she was off of the ground. Now for the wind, I used a leaf blower so that her hair would be blowing. I shot this at 50 frames per second and increased the shutter speed to 250. Anytime you're using a green screen with a lot of movement, it can be difficult to get a clean key because of all the motion blur. When you shoot with a higher shutter speed, the less motion blur you'll have and the easier it will be to get a clean key. So remember that because that's your quick green screen tip of the day. But okay, so that's it with shooting my footage. Now I can bring that into After Effects. In After Effects, the first thing I did was change both of my clips to 24 frames per second to get slow motion. I did that by right clicking the clip, selecting interpret footage, then clicked main and selected conform to frame rate and set that at 23.976 and hit okay. After doing that for both clips, I created a new composition and added the gimbal shot to it. Then I selected that layer and hit S on the keyboard to bring up the scale and increased it to about 107. I did this for the glitch effect that I'm going to apply later. So next I made sure the playback was set to full quality since I'm going to track this footage and the higher quality will help get a better track. I also made sure my playhead was at the beginning of my footage since that's the point where I want to start tracking from. Then I right clicked the footage layer, went to track and stabilize, and selected track motion. This will open up another panel where the tracking will be done. Next I came over to the tracker tab and made sure both the position and scale boxes were checked. Then I clicked and dragged each one of these boxes to the points in my footage that I wanted to track. Like I said earlier, I chose one of these white spots on this tree and this black spot on another tree. And both of those points should be perfect for tracking. Then I came over and selected analyze forward and let that track. After that was done tracking, I came up to layer, selected new, and created a new null object. Then in the tracker tab, I selected edit target and made sure it was applying the motion to that null object I just created and then hit okay. After that, I hit apply and made sure apply dimensions was set to X and Y and then hit okay. Now that tracking data from my footage was applied to the null object. Next I added my green screen footage to the composition and stacked it on top of the gimbal footage. In the effects and presets tab, I searched for the key light effect and added that to the green screen footage. I selected the eyedropper for the green screen color in that key light effect and selected the green screen. After that, I came up to view and changed it to screen matte. Then I opened up the screen matte settings and adjusted the clip black and clip white amounts until the subject was completely white and the green screen was completely black. Then I can change the view back to final result. Next I made sure the green screen layer was selected, then hit G on the keyboard to bring up the pen tool and I created a mask that got rid of the edges of the green screen and the log that she was standing on. After that, I dragged the green screen layer over so that it starts at around three to four seconds in after the video starts since I want it to look like she's glitching in and appearing into the scene. Then I adjusted the position and the scale of this layer so that it fit in properly with the scene. Next I parented the green screen layer to the null object by clicking and dragging the pick whip. Or I can do this by opening up this tab right here and selecting the null object. Then when I play that back, you can see the green screen layer is tracked perfectly into my scene. Now I want to animate this layer so that it looks like she's raising up and levitating. So I went to the beginning of the green screen layer and opened back up the position and hit the stopwatch to create a keyframe. Then I brought the playhead to the point in the clip where I wanted her to stop rising and adjusted the position to how high I wanted her to levitate and this creates another keyframe at that point. Then I selected both of those keyframes and hit F9 on the keyboard and this turned them both into easy ease keyframes so that the movement would be smoother. So to add the glitch effect, first thing I did was come up to layer and created a new adjustment layer. Then I added the VR digital glitch effect to that adjustment layer. Now you can mess around with these settings to get the exact look that you want, but I'll go ahead and show you what mine were. I changed the frame layout to stereoscopic, over, under. Then I opened up the distortion settings and changed color distortion to 100, geometry distortion X to 22, geometry distortion Y to 5, and distortion complexity to 75. Then since I wanted my scene to start out glitching, I made sure the playhead was at the beginning of my composition and hit the stopwatch to create a keyframe for the master amplitude with it set to 100. Then I went forward 7 frames and created another keyframe at this point. I opened up the settings on the adjustment layer right here and opened up the effects and then the digital glitch tab. And through here it's easier to create and adjust keyframes. So I added that other keyframe with the amount set at 100 and then went forward one more frame and set the amount to 0. Next I needed to add some movement to the distortion. So at the beginning of my scene, I hit the stopwatch for the distortion evolution with it set to 0. Then went to the end of my scene and increased the amount to 2. Now it'll look like there's some static and movement to the effect. Next I selected the gimbal footage layer and duplicated it by hitting CTRL D on the keyboard. Then I trimmed that duplicated layer down to 7 frames and renamed it glitch frames. Next I made sure I was at the beginning of the glitch frames layer and brought up the position and hit the stopwatch so I could create some keyframes. And what I did here was go through one frame at a time and repositioned this layer so that it jumps and moves around the frame. Get creative and move it around however you want, this doesn't have to be too specific. This just adds the look like the image is glitching and jumping around a bit. So now, remember when I first added the gimbal footage to the composition and increased the scale a bit? I did that because next I opened up the position on that layer and did a similar thing with keyframing the position to move around the frame. Increasing the scale gave me the wiggle room I needed to move the position around. I repositioned this layer for another 7 keyframes and it helped it look more jarring and like the glitch was more intense. After I was done creating those 7 keyframes, I went forward one more frame, then came over and right clicked the position and selected reset. And this resets the position on that keyframe to where it first started. I then duplicated my footage one more time and renamed this freeze frame and trimmed it down to last about 8-10 frames. Then I right clicked, selected time, and freeze frame. I did this to add the look like if the footage was randomly freezing and wasn't loading properly. I made sure to increase the master amplitude amount back to 100 for about 2 frames during the freeze frame to add the glitching look. You can add the freeze frame in for wherever you want it on your effect. I also made sure to turn on motion blur for the green screen layer. But alright, so that's pretty much it, I just repeated those same steps for when I wanted her to appear in the scene so that it looks like she's glitching into frame. I also cut out a few random frames on the green screen layer which added to the look of her glitching in. Like I said, get creative with it and adjust the glitching look to however you guys want it. And for the glitching sound effects, I got them through Artlist which has so many great options. I use them a lot when I need a specific sound effect. They have an awesome library of music that I use for my videos as well. I'll leave a link down in the description so you guys can check out Artlist. But alright guys, after all that, I was finished up and had my final effect. I'll end this video by showing you that one more time. Thank you so much for watching, I hope you enjoyed the video and that you learned something. Take care and I'll see you next time. Peace.