Odeon Cinema Intro Remake

In today's online session, we learned a few after effects tricks, by learning how Odeon cinemas created their intro animation. The intro includes a large 'O', with smoke moving inside of it, with a different smoky scene behind the O, like a space nebula type scenery.

First of all, we used a PNG of an explosion, and masked different parts of the explosion, to create smaller explosion smoke clouds. Then, we positioned the smaller explosion into a corner of the composition, and started it as the base size, but after 5 seconds, increasing its' scale to fill the whole screen. This makes the smoke look like it is increasing its' size and moving over 5 seconds. We also feathered the explosion after creating the mask to make the outline more subtle. After this, we altered the opacity of the smoke cloud through the 5 seconds. The smoke starts at 0 opacity, then quickly turning to 100% opacity after 0.5 seconds, giving the impression that the smoke is forming, then staying at 100% whilst it is still increasing in size, and 0.5 seconds before it reaches its' maximum scale, the opacity is reduced back to 0%, making it look like the explosion has stopped and is clearing.

We then repeated this stage 3 more times, giving us 4 different explosions. Each time we did it, we masked a different part of the initial explosion, so it looked like a completely different explosion. We also colourized the explosions with hue/saturation, and made them all different colours. We then positioned the explosions at different parts of the screen, for my case, I put an explosion in each of the corners of the screen.

The next part was to alter the start times of the explosions, so that they start and end at different times, so it looks like multiple different explosions are going on, and increasing the time of the overall clip. You can either alter the key framing to accomplish this, or simply move the bar of the individual explosion by a few seconds, so that they all start at 2 or 3 second intervals, meaning that they also end at 2 or 3 second intervals. The explosions are now complete.

For the next stage, you need to create a new composition and this is a very important stage. In this new composition, you very simply create a text layer, with the letter 'O'. I used an Odeon like font for the 'O' and positioned it in the middle of my screen. I then positioned the previous composition of the explosions behind the current composition of the 'O'. The next step is very easy but is a huge creative tool with many possibilities. On the composition with the 'O', change the TrackMat to 'Lumar Matte'', or any of the other options available. This TrackMat is like the overlay function in Photoshop. In this case, the composition underneath the 'O' composition, the explosions, is placed into the 'O'. This results in the explosions going off inside of the 'O', making it look animated.

The next step was to place a separate clip of explosions behind the 'O', making it look like a space nebula scene. We had pretty much recreated the Odeon Intro at this stage, but we carried on playing around with effects, such as the twirl effect, of which I added to the 'O', which made the 'O' twirl around, making it look 3D.

This was a very valuable lesson, of which shows that simple selections and buttons/features in after effects can lead to very creative and easy findings. There is plenty more you can do with the TrackMat option, of which I will experiment with in the future. Below is the video I created of the Odeon Intro recreation.