Get an "Old Film Look" with After Effects Standard Plug-ins
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There are many plug-ins which create amazing film looks, like Magic Bullet Suite SD and DigiEffects Cinelook, but after the purchase of Adobe After Effects, you may not have enough money to buy some others plug-ins for a while. Here is a tutorial to get an old film look with AE standard plug-ins.
Note: You can get more natural results with more variation by using a third party plug-in such as Magic Bullet Suite or DigiEffects Cinelook.
- Create a new comp (mine is 320x240, 5 sec long, 24 fps). Import your picture or video into it.
- Create a new white solid (size: 1x240) and call it "line".
- Create another solid which is the size of your comp and call it "particles". The color doesn't matter.
- Turn off the visibility of the layer called "line" by clicking in the eye on its left.
- On the "particles" layer, apply Particle Playground (Effects > Simulation > Particle Playground) Settings:
Cannon
Canon position: middle bottom (x: 160, y: 240)
Canon radius: 160 (set it to make that the canon is in the center of your comp)
Particles per second: 15
Random direction: 0
Velocity: 5000
Layer Property
Choose layer: "line"
Gravity
Strength: -200 - Now it's time to preview. The object is to have lines which appear and disappear quickly. Is it what you have?
- On the "particles" layer, apply Noise (Effect > Noise & Grain > Noise) and set the amount to 80%.
- Be sure that you are at the first frame in your timeline. Drag your video or picture into your comp. Your video or picture must be below the particle layer .
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Apply the strobe light effect to your picture or video (Effect > Stylize > Strobe Light) with these settings:
Color: white
Blend with original: 90%
Length (sec): 0.09
Period: 0.15
Random Strobe Probability: 80%
Strobe: Makes Layer Transparent
Strobe Operator: Add - Apply an offset to your picture or video. (Effect > Distort > Offset). Set a keyframe at the first frame. Go to the end of your composition and set another keyframe where you'll add 3 pixels to the X position (if your layer position was x: 160, y: 120 at the first frame, set it to x: 163, y: 120 at the last frame).
- Select the Offset keyframes that you just added (Shortcut: click on your layer and press u - known the über key - then hold shift and click on the keyframes). We will randomize the value by applying the wiggler (Window > The Wiggler). Apply with temporal graph, jagged, frequency: 8, magnitude: 1.
- Still on your picture or video layer, add Hue/Saturation (Effect > Image Control > Hue/Saturation). You may want a black and white video (click on colorize), or lower the saturation of your video (set master saturation to -60 and contrast to 10, amount: 12%)
- Add Noise to your picture (amount: 20% - follow the procedure in step 7).
- Save and preview the result!
Yep, that the end of the tutorial, but if you want you can add an ellipse which will appear, grow and disappear quickly.