Following on from my post about double exposure and how to create it in Photoshop, I have now developed the skills I learned by using the effect to create an animated sequence. Firstly, here are some important things to know about creating the ‘ghost effect’ in After Effects:

One of the most essential steps in the method involves Alpha channels, which control the opacity, and what parts of a digital image are transparent.

 

 

It is also important to understand what track mattes are, especially for me, as I would use the footage related to them most when creating this effect in AE. A track matte is an invisible layer that controls the opacity of the layer directly beneath it. It must have either transparency or B&W colour values to work. Examples of what it can be are a black and white image, or footage that has been keyed.

 

 

There are two forms of track mattes used in After Effects:

1.  Alpha Matte – Uses the transparency (alpha channel) of a layer to cut stuff out
2.  Luma Matte – Uses the brightness values (luminosity) of a layer to cut stuff out

It is in fact, possible to make your own track mattes to use but a few factors have to be considered when shooting, such as high contrast, considered lighting and one-colour negative space, which have to be included and used correctly in order to make a successful track matte plate for your work.

This is a great example of how the effect looks and how it can be used in a title sequence. It’s so simple and minimalistic, but also has so much more depth than just using the imagery separately.

 

 

When it was finally time to try this out for myself, I used Pexels and Pixabay to find suitable footage. I was looking for clips that correspond with each other in some way and would work well when merged, so I had my eye out for any interesting colours/elements that link to one another as I was browsing. I found a collection of some really cool clips of a woman posing and doing various actions in front of a blue screen, and in one of them, she looked very cinematic and cool with her hair blowing in the wind, something which is often seen in film and tv. I then looked for videos of branches or leaves blowing in the wind because I thought if they were blowing in the same direction, it would link in nicely with the hair, but I didn’t find any of those – instead, I find a nice timelapse of clouds moving in the sky, which is what I ended up using. I imported them both into a new composition and keyed out the background of the woman using Keylight. I also went into screen matte and clipped away at some of the black, as well as enhanced the white, just to make everything more refined and clearcut.

 

 

 

Once that was done and the subject layer was prepped, I selected the layer underneath and did the most crucial step – I went into track matte and selected ‘alpha matte’, which instantly merged the layers, and showed the clouds through the silhouette of the woman. This, however, was only single exposure, so to make it double, I duplicated the top layer, which of course resulted in the subject covering up the sky footage, so I either had to use blending modes or select specific parts which I wanted only to show up. I went with the latter, because although the effect was cool with her hair, not having the face or body made it seem a bit pointless. I went ahead and traced around the areas I wanted to keep with the pen tool, which resulted in two masks because I wasn’t sure if I wanted just the face, or more, at the start. I think it looks much better seeing her head and body, as it makes more sense to see who the person is, and a floating head would be bizarre and random. Once I had my masks, I used the feather tool to soften the edges and make the visible parts blend in with the background, and look more like one composition, instead of two cut-outs slapped on top of some cloud footage.

 

 

 

I was pretty satisfied with what I had so far and I didn’t feel the need to use tracking to match up the movement of both clips. But, I did feel that more could be done with it, so at first, I played around with blending modes for some of the layers and liked the ‘soft light’ mode, so applied it to the duplicate of the subject. It made everything feel lighter and almost ethereal, and I really liked it. Then I noticed that the clouds were moving at a different pace to the hair blowing, so in order to fix this, I used ‘time remapping’ on the bg footage and made it faster, so that the speed of both matched up, and it made sense to the viewer’s eyes. I think that making it faster also made the sequence more dynamic, as there is not a lot of movement from the woman, so the sped-up timelapse helps balance it out.

 

 

After this, I decided that I wanted to make it seem like a scene from a title sequence, so I keyframed the position and scale to make it more interesting to look at, and replicate an interesting, and added text. At first, I used a ‘normal’ font and made the text white, to keep it simple, but an idea struck me – to make the text double exposure as well and have the clouds moving within the letters too. For that to work, however, I need to give the sky more space to be seen. So, I chose a bolder font, and enlargened it a little, before duplicating the cloud layer and moving it directly underneath. Once that was done, I selected the text layer, went into channel -> set matte, and then selected a track matte so that the clouds showed up and the effect was created. After some adjustments, like choosing a blending mode that made the sky more vibrant within the text, I finished everything off by animating the text to fade in, and moving the woman to the right side, and my double exposure animated sequence was complete!

 

This was so fun to create, and a lot easier than I thought. I really like the result, and I think that even though it’s quite simple, there’s enough going on to keep the viewer engaged if this was part of a real title sequence. This has really helped with my fantasy brief, as I now have a complete understanding of double exposure basics in two programs, which gives me a lot of options/opportunities to create art and add to already existing production. An example is how I created one of my posters without really intending to from the start, and how I plan to use double exposure in my title sequence. In my opinion, it is a really unique and versatile effect because of the limitless options that you could do with static/animated elements or even a mixture of both. Merging layers is a great way to create depth, evoke an emotion, or convey a message/idea/characteristic, and it’s a very artistic method of combining multiple components.