Filmmaker's VFX Guide

Last week I had a call with my business mentor.

I asked how to stay afloat during the recession.

Here are 4 strategies we talked about.

1. Make yourself visible but NOT everywhere.

Where are your customers? YouTube? Pinterest? LinkedIn? So why are you posting on Instagram? ;)

Focus on the right social media.

2. Stand out among the competition.

If you are like everyone else, customers will choose the cheapest one from the group.

So stand out! Learn different skills than the rest of them know.

After Effects will be an excellent choice.

3. Customer diversification.

Customers are going to cut extra expenses i.e. video ads. So you can't work with one type of client anymore.

Be open to different niches than your usual. Mainly working with entrepreneurs? Get to small businesses too.

3. Money diversification.

Think about creating your own digital product to make a passive income.

Maybe a course about mobile video? Or how to shot real estate videos and make $$$?

The exclusive paid group on Discord for video editors only?

What’s your recession strategy? 🤔

You don’t really NEED to know Photoshop to start learning After Effects, but it can be helpful!

If I try to explain to someone ‘What is After Effects?’ I just simply say ‘It’s like photoshop, but for Video’.

While there are obvious differences, there are a lot of similarities between them, and since they’re both owned and made by Adobe, they even have similar functions! (Like content aware fill, layer system, blending modes etc.).

When would you use Photoshop as After Effects editor?

A very common use case for After Effects is object removal. And the simplest form of removing an object is to make a screenshot, remove the object in Photoshop and then take back this cleaned up frame and track it onto the video so it matches the movement.

Why not remove it in After Effects?

Well as cool as the clone stamp tool and content aware fill are in AE, the PS counterparts are WAY more effective and flexible.

So if you want Photoshop to be a helpful tool in your pocket while editing, just look for tutorials that teach you how to remove an object in Photoshop, and that’s 95% of everything you need to know. The remaining 5% would be something like layer management and how to work with client’s graphics files if you’re working on a motion graphics job for them.

So to sum up - you don’t need to know Photoshop, but if you want to have a really neat tool for some specific cases - learn how to remove things from a picture!

Click to see a few photos I’ve edited in PS. (Before editing videos I did some photography as a hobby)