[ This is an excerpt from a recent PowerUp webinar: “Ask Larry Anything!” which is available as a download in our store, or as part of our Video Training Library. ]
EXCERPT DESCRIPTION
This is a very fun trick! In the earliest days of film, silent movie cameras were hand-cranked, yielding jittery, unevenly exposed film. This was especially noticeable on title cards.
In this short video, Larry Jordan show hows to create a similar look by animating parameter behaviors in Apple Motion. This sounds complex, but it is surprisingly easy – just really hard to find.
How to Create a Jittery, “Silent Movie” Look in Apple Motion 5.1?
TRT: 4:08 — MPEG-4 HD movie
SESSION DESCRIPTION
“Ask Larry Anything!” is a free-form discussion of media production and post-production questions submitted by viewers. Hosted by Larry Jordan, subjects range from simple beginner questions to very specific issues of features, media, and editing techniques.
“I really liked this session,” Larry Jordan comments, “because it covered a number of subjects I always wanted to talk about, but hadn’t yet had the time.”
This session focused on five key subjects: Business, Export, Apple Final Cut Pro, Motion, and Adobe Premiere Pro. Key questions included:
More than 20 questions were illustrated and answered in this 53 minute session. The complete subject list is below.
AUDIENCE LEVEL
Subjects range from beginning to advanced. If a particular subject doesn’t interest you, just wait a minute and it will change.
4 Responses to How to Create a Jittery, “Silent Movie” Look in Apple Motion 5.1?
This is super! I’ll bookmark it for sure.
Thanks Larry,
Constance
Constance:
You are most welcome! I had such fun playing with this. Enjoy.
Larry
Nice demo on the silent movie title card.
To sell it even more, that dirty background needs to rapidly loop between a number of variations, each one only up for a handful of frames : you are creating the illusion that the film emulsion is stained and the stains would be different in every frame.
You can cheat and make the one background do the work of four by just flipping it alternately in vertical and horizontal orientation, each for perhaps two to three frames. Motion can automate that as part of your effect and loop the background for as long as you need it…
I know in Final Cut there is an “old movie” effect prebuilt that is drag-and-drop; it already does all this for you plus has settings for dirt and scratches on the film stock as well, and a parameter gate weave, all of which are also keyframeable. I use it from time to time in my music videos as well as the “Bad TV” effect, which does similar things to look like analog broadcast reception, with vertical rolling, static, and variable scan lines. Both effects are set up well, right out of the box but also easy to adjust. If you can import or access the Final Cut prebuilt effect into your Motion project, you can make the old timey projection work across your entire program.
Mark:
Good to know. But… if I used the FCP plugin, I wouldn’t have had the fun of creating this in Motion. Sigh… there are always tradeoffs.
Larry