Lost Footage from "The San Francisco Encounter" (1983)

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Hey Y'all!

Coming back with a new update for 2019!

The theme of this post is: ALWAYS BE LEARNING NEW SKILLS!

It's the new year and I'm attempting to do just that: harvest the power of a new skills. I dove head first into After Effects in mid-2018 and I really want to learn 3D compositing for 2019. It's a powerful skillset for creators, filmmakers, AE artists and anyone wanting to implement 3D into their video or film workflow. I'm excited to take this skill further!

So, last Saturday I spent the day working on my first (halfway decent) 3D composite. I downloaded a free animated 3D model from Sketchfab and dropped it straight into Cinema 4D lite - which comes bundled with AE CC (sadly, most people don't know this). From there, I applied texture (some free textures come with the download), aligned my model and camera to the scene, lit the model using a three-point lighting rig and exported my render over to AE via Dynamic Link. This probably took me the longest to complete since I'm a total amateur in C4D.

From there, I animated the sci-fi rings with masks in AE and added some cool sci-fi glow/energy effects with the Saber plugin (highly recommended if you don't have it. It's also a free download). Over the next little bit, I moved back and forth between C4D and AE until I perfected the animation (...the best I could at least). Then, in AE I added some camera movement and color to the scene before I sent that entire project over to Premiere.

In premiere I added added the VHS overlay and some sound design then exported the final render. And Voila!

In total, it took me about 4-5 hours to complete this shot (I'm certainly not breaking in land-speed records here). It's a bit rough and hiding the fact that this is a 3D model laid against a still is pretty obvious, but overall I'm pretty happy with the final render. It was a fun little project, but I still got A LOT to learn!

Hope you enjoy!

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