Excessive use of AE....a new trend?

[Wheee_It's_Me!]

I think that it's funny that people who have clearly never touched after effects are pointing their fingers at it and making rediculous claims. It has a big effects button? it has loads of 'default effects'?? Are you serious? Most of the videos that I've seen and considered to be over the edge effects videos had nothing to do with After Effects. Premiere is more responsable for 'effects videos' hands down.

Your confusing "effects" with "transitions" and yes, either one can be overused...and a lot of people do. In fact overusing them is a common mistake made my newbie film editors and directors. It's what's known as over-directing.

Commonly overused effects include lense flare, shatter, cell patterns, lighting, bulge and ripple.

[AMV_4000]

I think that it's funny that people who have clearly never touched after effects are pointing their fingers at it and making rediculous claims. It has a big effects button? it has loads of 'default effects'?? Are you serious? Most of the videos that I've seen and considered to be over the edge effects videos had nothing to do with After Effects. Premiere is more responsable for 'effects videos' hands down.

Your confusing "effects" with "transitions" and yes, either one can be overused...and a lot of people do. In fact overusing them is a common mistake made my newbie film editors and directors. It's what's known as over-directing.

Commonly overused effects include lense flare, shatter, cell patterns, lighting, bulge and ripple.

musnt forget piano keys... and "shatter" isnt that common of an effect because premiere 6 didnt come with it *to my knowledge* if its the shatter im thinking of its mostly found in AE and ulead..
and dont forget about the strobe lighting! strobes are annoying in most cases, but almost everyone uses them in partyish songs *or animix*
trackmatting is becoming very common and easy to do to, its not very hard to throw a video together now with trackmatting... but wheres the work?
anyways, just thought i'd post in here to give my 2 cents that nobody cares about. later!

[Bote]

Commonly overused effects include lense flare, shatter, cell patterns, lighting, bulge and ripple.

I didn't see many videos use those so far. Especially lightning. I have seen only one video using it so far.

[Joykiller]

I think that it's funny that people who have clearly never touched after effects are pointing their fingers at it and making rediculous claims. It has a big effects button? it has loads of 'default effects'?? Are you serious? Most of the videos that I've seen and considered to be over the edge effects videos had nothing to do with After Effects. Premiere is more responsable for 'effects videos' hands down.

Your confusing "effects" with "transitions" and yes, either one can be overused...and a lot of people do. In fact overusing them is a common mistake made my newbie film editors and directors. It's what's known as over-directing.

Commonly overused effects include lense flare, shatter, cell patterns, lighting, bulge and ripple.

Thanks for your attempt at enlightenment. I am in fact aware of the difference between the two. And just so that we are on the same level here, transitions are inherantly effects. The inverse may not always be true though.

Lense flare, bulge, and ripple are all standard effects in Premiere.

Lighting effects are simple to create in Premiere with *very* basic tools.

And shatter *is* a transition in Premiere. (though i'm not sure if you need a 3rd party plugin, I'm pretty sure it's standard.)

True cell patterns might require another program to generate them, but you can do something similar with a still image and position, scaling, and opacity all from within Premiere. Or just grab a clip of pre-rendered cell patterns (available from a multitude of anime as it is) and throw that in Premiere. Voila.

And that is my point. AE is totally non-nessesary to trash something up. If people are motivated, they can trash up a video with whatever they have at their disposal. Be it After Effects, Premiere, Ulead, WMM2, or even MSPaint. The proof is all around you.

But I'm not a fundamentalist, straight edge, purist. Effects are not synonymous with trash to me. They can be really beutiful even when they are more dominant than the anime. It's rare but it happens. ROS is a great example. Despite the number of effects, I find it elegant. I've also found some fades to black to look out of place, rediculous, and distracting. It kinda goes both ways.

I'm not going to lie to any of you. I'm a sucker for eye candy. If I get it from the anime footage, or something completely hand crafted by a skilled artist makes no difference to me. And I'm not alone. The top 10% list supports that. I think what is REALLY a trend is SAYING that you think effects are gay....

But that's just my take.

[Joykiller]

I'm not going to lie to any of you. I'm a sucker for eye candy. If I get it from the anime footage, or something completely hand crafted by a skilled artist makes no difference to me.

I just realised that this statement was ambiguous...

By "skilled artist" I meant AMV editors specifically I wasn't attempting to make a contrast between "skilled artists" and those that create anime. Anime is inherently created by skilled artists in my mind.

[ANTDrakko]

The biggest realization, however, is when I saw the AnimeNext 2004 AMV contest. I'de say a good 70% of the videos that competed were a sloppy mix of AE effects done to a random action song/ anime.

Uhh... did you see the same contest I did... ?

I guarantee you about three/four people in that contest, total, have ever opened Adobe After Effects.

Ok, I admit, I overexaggerated a bit. Remember, 85% of all statistics are made up on the spot .

However, since the first catageory was Action, the Naruto video (which I understand won?) had me, my g/f and a friend wondering why a lot of those effects were used. We didn't see any need for emphasis or anything of the such. But, it was a great video 'cause it did manage to use some effects to emphasize great points, glad to hear it won. Anywho, the only reason I say "AE videos" is because once you hear After Effects you immediately think effects, hence the name. I honestly only stayed for the first 15 or so videos because this year's contest was just flat out boring, but hey, thats my opinion.

Joykiller: 0_o.......you seem to be gettin a bit worked up over this topic. I'm not bashing any video, I'm merely making an observation about the use of effects now-a-days. Yah have to admit man, there are a lot more people experimenting with effects now-a-days. Like I had posted before, there are a lot of videos that use effects strictly to use them, with no apparent purpose. I can't think of anything else to say, I just got done work and me = teh sleepy.

p.s.
I can't believe there are so many replies to this topic, although a good 45% ( [poke] VegettoEX [/poke] ) of the posts are kindaoff topic, glad to see everyone is having fun, Wooie!

~Seen