In film and media, there is almost always a meaning behind everything – every decision made is thought over and directed towards the purpose of portraying something/relating to the piece of media in some way. In film, there are obvious things like costume design, using certain props or elements and of course scripting, but there are also meanings behind the more subtle things, like the lighting and camera music, and some cases the music (not always subtle), which add to the scene so well, if made to seem natural, can go unnoticed.

That being said, there are two categories of camera movement:

Movement: Where the camera is positioned (how it is physically moved on set)

Aim: Where the camera is aiming at (how it moves on the spot)

 

 

 

 

Now for important notes to understand for working with the camera in After Effects –

• There are 2 camera types in AE: 1 node, point of interest not active, user has to manually orient the camera and 2 node, point of interest is active, automatically orients the camera
• Separating the dimensions makes animating the camera much easier (being able to see the X, Y and Z values individually, gives you more control)

 

In After Effects, I created a new composition and added a 1 node camera and 3D solid layer. This allowed me to move it back, which I could clearly see in 2 view (custom view and active camera). I didn’t mind if the solid was plain and the animation boring at the end, as it was merely for practise and to get used to working with the camera.

 

 

To have more control of the camera, I separated the dimensions. This allowed me to see the individual values for X, Y and Z and animate them this way as well, if I wanted.

 

 

Once I got round to moving and animating the camera, it involved a lot of experimentation, as there were a number of different combinations that could be made, just from the position values alone, let alone the rotation values too. I decided that for my first animation, I was going to keep it as simple as possible and animate the camera to move in the most basic techniques. The finalised keyframes are what you see, but there were many beforehand as I was playing around, which I then deleted.

 

 

Once I was satisfied with what I had, I added Easy Ease to all of the keyframes, just to make the animation a little smoother and more professional.

 

 

The camera movements are: Dolly, truck, and then pedestal at the end. I realised that it is a little hard to tell that the camera is animated and not just the rectangle, but as the first animation, it helped me understand the very basics. For the next one, however, I wanted to get a little more complicated and work with aim as well, not just movement. So, I created a new solid layer (a star this time, for some variety) and went through the same initial steps, but this time, I had a play around with the rotation values and how they were different to position. Some of them were quite similar to certain position values, so I had to go through each a couple of times to figure out the differences and the opportunities they offered. An example is the ‘orientation’ and ‘Y rotation’ which were essentially the same thing, with Y being more specific and orientation more general and inclusive of other directions.

 

 

My favourite part of custom view 1 and being able to work with the camera in that angle, is that I could see all of the values and animate them straight on the screen instead of down below. This also helped me with learning them and seeing how different they were from one another. I think that this perspective also offers you more freedom, as you can animate XZ for example, which is dolly and truck at the same time, instead of one after another.

 

 

Movement and aim here: Dolly and pan to the left, into a truck and then a dolly and roll, when the star is tilted. Out of my three attempts, I was most sceptical about this one because even though it helped me understand how to animate aim, it still looked like I was just animating the star to move. I was looking for a specific movement that really showcased the camera animation, but this was quite hard as the solid layer was flat. For my next try, I went back to the tutorial and tried to replicate the example used as I remember thinking that it looked really professional and realistic, and you could tell it was the camera that was animated.

I created another solid, this time more similar to the first, but a square, and animated the X position, Z position, and Y rotation to try and have the camera dolly forwards but also pan right at the same time. Animating this didn’t take long, but I still wasn’t satisfied with the result because it looked unrealistic and weird, almost strained. To fix this, I added easy ease, and went into the graph editor, to play around with the handles and adjust the bezier of some of the movements to my liking.

 

 

This helped a lot, and I even made one of the curves over-reach, which can be seen at the end when the camera abruptly jumps back. It made the animation more interesting, and I was much happier with it, but I still didn’t feel 100% confident that I had mastered 1 node.

 

 

Combination: Dolly and pan right. This is probably my favourite animation out of the three that I made, just because it has a smooth finish and an interesting dolly back at the end. Despite this, however, I didn’t move on trying a 2-node camera, for two reasons. Firstly, I feel that I am okay at animating the ae camera, and I can create basic movements, which are the most important and rudimentary. However, I am still not fully confident with how they can be combined in order to make effortless animations, and I think that I could do with some more practice in this area. Knowing my time limit, however, I have to push this to another time. Secondly, I think that for my title sequence (and animating skills in general) knowing movement and aim for 1 node is quite enough. From what I have seen and worked with, this type of camera encompasses all of the movements I would want, especially for the title sequence, in which there won’t even be a lot of opportunities to animate the camera according to how I have planned it out.