The blink test and using the opacity transform tool in After effects.

Since finishing with all shooting of the film, I have placed each animation in chronological order, to analyse what needs to be cut shorter, changed in colour brightness/saturation ect. This is the third draft of the final outcome...

There is obviously still a lot of room for improvement in terms of consistency in colour/lighting and better transitions. However, in particular i needed feedback on the blink effect I had to the first scene in the aftermath of the metamorphosis. It was important for the audience to understand that they were seeing from the point of view of the character. One of my peers stated that they were confused why the character only looks to their right side for a fraction of the time they look to the left. This distracted them from the purpose of the shot. Taking this criticism on board, I went back to photoshop where I essentially cut out the extensive look to the right, then re-added fading in and out to re-create a blink. I am much happier with this result.

Blink test edited...

I have found the opacity tool extremely useful for creating transitions between shots as well as creating a blink in the waking up scene. It works particularly well in the transformation animations going from one to the other. I think it creates an almost dream-like atmosphere as well as depicting time passing.

I had previously been taught how to use the transform tool in the after effects workshop at the beginning of term. Putting this knowledge in use for the blink test in particular needed time for trial tests to see what looked best. As well as using the opacity tool on this shot, I needed to time freeze the frames at the beginning to give a better depiction of the character waking up disillusioned. This technique I learnt from an online tutorial on youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qA1VvCeZV5c. Using this technique was very straight forward, however getting the right frame frozen and then connecting it to the rest of the animation was fairly tedious. Here are some screen shots during the process of this technique.

Step 1: Set the time indicator to the layer in which you want to freeze a frame and highlight the layer.

Step 2: Zoom into the timeline moving the indicator with the mountain icon next to it.

 Step 3: Your timeline should now show you the number of frames instead of seconds. Move the time indicator to the frame in the animation that you want to freeze frame. Press CMD + Shift + D to separate the layer into two. Highlight and delete the layer you don't want.

Step 4: Hover your mouse at the end of your layer and a transform icon should come up. Drag the layer to the number of frames you want to have the frame frozen.

Step 5: Now you can drag another copy of the animation from your project collection into the timeline and adjust the layer so that the two layers flow as if they were one.

After I used the time freeze tool, I then applied my previously used fade in/out technique to the new adaption of this animation. Here are two of the results of these techniques...

In the above video, I tried to apply time freeze frame to two areas of the previous animation. The first being at the beginning where the blink would be and then a freeze frame as the view goes to the left. This was to try and slow down the view. This proved far too jumpy and didn't work as a smooth animation. In fact I believe it made it more confusing to watch. In the next experiment, I only applied the technique to the beginning of the animation to concentrate more on the blink being right. The opacity was applied both layers as it made the transition between the two much smoother and make it hardly noticeably edited.