Sophia Westrop portfolio - Project page

I gathered my stock footage, picked a song that would build suspense and tension, and brought the vision to life. I also explained my dream to ChatGPT and asked it to turn that description into something that sounded like a movie synopsis, and then made changes as I saw fit. For some scenes I wanted to include that I couldn't really find the perfect stock footage for, I generated still images of my specific vision using Abode Firefly, and brought it to life using After Effects by overlaying static footage on the TV for example, and creating 3D layers out of the hallway. I think the most exciting new thing I did in After Effects was the transition where the image burns away to reveal the next one.

The first challenge I encountered was just finding footage that would work for this. I created this title sequence with a very very specific vibe in mind, and there is limited horror stock footage as it is (free stuff anyway). Using Adobe Firefly did help as I could create images from a specific time period and with a specific composition.

The other challenge I encountered, honestly, was time. The aforementioned burning transition seemed simple enough, the tutorial was 28 minutes long. With some tweaking for my video specifically, it should only take about 45 minutes, right? Wrong. It took me 3 hours. For a 1 second transition. It was worth it and turned out good, but either way, it's a good thing I absolutely love working in After Effects! One little issue I did run in to as well was that I did my colour correction last because Lumetri colour has slowed down my computer pretty badly before. When I applied the colour grading to that composition, it wrecked the saturation of the burning. Was I going to go back for another hour or two digging through the multitude of compositions that made up that transition? No. So I just used keyframes to fade out the Lumetri colour before that transition came in. Work smarter not harder!

Overall, I absolutely love how this video turned out. I think I achieved the atmosphere I was aiming for and feel like the video is fairly engaging and builds tension. I'm also happy I achieved the burning effect transition I was imagining. If I could fix one thing, I would just bring the whole thing to life more and add more effects.