How To Stabilize Motion In After Effects

hi guys Jordan with motion array and today we're going to be learning how to create the stabilize motion effect inside of After Effects so let's get into it this is a really simple but powerful effect we're gonna be using the stabilize motion feature inside of After Effects to create an unnaturally perfect framing with our character in motion some people refer to this as the Sherlock effect because it was featured in the second Sherlock film starring Robert Downey jr. while others refer to it as a David Fincher inspired camera trick as he's known for perfectly matching camera movement with the movement of the characters in his scenes either way the goal is to keep us perfectly in sync with the character when it would otherwise be impossible we're gonna start with footage that looks like this and it's gonna end looking like this so let's get started to start with drag your piece of footage over top of this icon to create a new composition from it once it's in place decide what part of the composition you want to stabilize with for me it's the character's eyes but depending on what your footage is you might want to select a different area to focus on maybe it's an item or maybe another part of the character with that let's have our footage selected and then go down to our tracker window if you can't find it go to window tracker now select stabilize motion to start out with I'd suggest seeing what just position will get you but as you try different pieces of footage try adding scale and rotation to see if you receive a more pleasing effect for your footage take your tracker marker and place it over top of the item of your choice try and place it over an area with high contrast so the pupil of our characters eye is a really good choice as it contrasts really well with the whites of their eyes and stretch out the first box to the edges of the area where the contrast begins what that means for us is that because the pupil is black we stretch out the first box here so that it starts to include the whites of their eyes then we take the second box here and stretch it out to give a bit of a wider context we're using the stabilize motion effect but if you want it to take a look at how to track objects in your scene we have a video dedicated just to that it's this one here and the link to find it is in this below with that you can go ahead and make sure that the target is the video layer itself by hitting edit target it's not a worry if this is the only layer you're working with but if you're working with this effect in a larger project it's always good to check go ahead and hit analyze forward and you can watch After Effects track a shot once it's complete hit apply and select okay and your effect has been added to your footage what you can see is that it's basically taken the place that you've designated and made sure that it's not moving really that much at all basically keeping that object in a perfect theoretical frame I'll show you what I mean by drawing a border around our character's eyes and then I'll show you that this outline isn't moving at all within the frame and when we play we can see that our characters eyes don't exit this box and just to show you the contrast I'll drag and drop the original footage back into frame and you can see what we had to start with okay so we're actually nearly done but we need to do a little bit of cleanup you can see that our actual framing is leaving the confines of our composition leaving us with edges of our frame being empty space and it obviously displays the mechanism that this effect is working off of but the solution is simple we're just gonna scale up our footage and move it to the most central position so that at the moment of greatest positional movement the footage still stays within the confines of the framing it may take a couple tweaks and a few rounds of trial and error but you should eventually find the sweet spot where your footage all stays in the frame and it looks like footage this should go without saying but now that you know you'll have to scale up you should always plan to shoot your footage that you're gonna use for this effect much wider than you anticipate additionally shooting at a higher resolution like 4k for example can give you more flexibility when shooting wider and being able to scale up tighter without degrading your footage as long as you're still exporting in 1080p but guys here at motion array we don't want to just give you the effect and call it quits we also want to show you how to take it to the furthest possible degree to make it as good as it can be so what we're gonna do to this footage is add some suspenseful ambient music to add the idea that we're entering into the character's mind a little bit and with that simple little addition we go from this piece of footage to begin with to our final product which is this [Music] [Music] and that's a simple way to get some added intensity to an otherwise normal shot but guys that's been a great way to use the stabilized motion effect inside of After Effects I hope you found this video helpful if you did as always we've got lots of tutorials here at motion to rate calm thank you so much for watching and I can't wait to see you in the next video [Music]

Channel: Motion Array Tutorials

Views: 341,854

Keywords: stabilize motion effect, after effects tips, after effects tricks, after effects tutorial, Sherlock effect, Sherlock Holmes effect, Sherlock Holmes stabilize motion effect, after effects stabilize motion, stabilize motion tracker, stabilize motion tracking, David Fincher camera effect, David Fincher, David Fincher camera motion, match camera motion with character, camera motion in after effects, warp stabilizer, sherlock holmes stabilize motion effect

Id: q2lzMKkq_cg

Length: 5min 32sec (332 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 04 2018