Hey everyone,

Read up on this interview with James Dejulio, president and co-fuonder of one of my favorite crowd-sourcing sites, Tongal.com.

Click below!

Clipped from: www.huffingtonpost.com (share this clip)

Some people have told me they are aspiring filmmakers or they’ve gone to film school but they still don’t feel they have all the tools they need to make a great commercial or short film because they don’t have the After Effects knowledge. Motion graphics composting is indeed extremely useful in putting the “icing on the cake” when doing a commercial or if you are doing an animation commercial, it could be the main ingredient. Let’s not forget 3d. Knowing a good 3d application is priceless but that can be a whole new ball of wax as the learning curve on leaning Maya or 3D Max is pretty intense.

Here’s my advise. Adobe After Effects is a program that can be learned fairly fast with a little dedication. Am I talking about knowing everything AE can do? Heck no. The program is extremely robust and you can easily invest years into learning it and not get it all. What I’m saying is getting to know the basics. A title sequence, a lower 3rd, a bumper and basic animation can be picked up pretty quickly and they are invaluable for those of us making commercials and short films.

As far as a 3d programs are concerned and you are a filmmaker that mainly wants to spit out commercials and short films, I would steer away from unless you are a cyborg who can pick up things really fast or you don’t have a day job and are looking to fill up that immense amount of free time.

Remember, there is always someone we know that knows 3d that would love to collaborate with you to turn that particular scene into reality.

Okay, so where can you start learning AE? I’ve compiled 3 great sites for the beginner.

1. Lynda.com will teach the basics of what each tool does and AE’s core functionalities.

2. To learn what is possible creatively, there no better place than Andrew Kramer’s site Videocopilot.net.

3. Aetutsplus.com is site of tutorials and links to everything AE.

~dre

I’m currently working on a video for Sport Authority. It’s for an event called Sniagrab. I’ll post it soon!!

dre

Hey everybody, thanks for coming to check out the site. I gave it a makeover for aesthetic reasons as well as easier navigation. Got the theme from themeforest.net.  Hope you guys like it. Feel free to leave me a comment.

dre