Running your lyrics with a black background & looking to spice things up a bit?
Short on cash & can’t afford buying stock video loops?
You’ve come to the right post.
We’re going to show you how to create from scratch those abstract video loops that you see on sites like SermonSpice, or WorshipHouse Media using Adobe After Effects.
Some things to keep in mind when creating loops:
- Create loops with specific songs in mind. Try to match speed of animation & use of color with the pace of music. You may not want “hyper-visual overload” with a pensive worship song.
- If you’re displaying white text, adding shadows or outlines to the text may help separate it from the motion background.
- Start with what connects. Work towards “coolness”. If you come up with a loop that looks visually amazing, but is ultimately distracting from the worship experience? Nix it. Coolness doesn’t matter if it’s distracting.
So, what about you?
Do you use graphic loops on Sunday mornings? Do you create or buy?
PS – And for you math-gurus out there… here’s CreativeCow’s deeper look into fractal noise. 
Pretty cool tutorial, but how many churches can’t afford stock video loops but can afford After Effects?
That is a nice tutorial. But, alas, no AE for me. +1 for what Andrew said.
Now if I could just rock some stuff like that from my Ubuntu notebook using free tools.
I meant what Luke said.
Luke, True that.
My hope is for people to make the leap into creative space & see it isn’t all that scary.
AE is absolutely more expensive up front… I do believe passion for learning how to do it ourselves will start to weigh out the stock-free clips one $20 bill at a time. Just me, though
Instead of changing transparency, you can twirl down the “Evolution Options” and check “Loop Evolution”. Then set your “cycles in evolution” to the same number as your evolution amount and it will loop for you.
I have an whole episode that covered looping fractal noise here: http://churchmediadesign.tv/looping-backgrounds-fractal-effect/
Great tip on using brain storm!
Brad,
That is PIMP.
+1!!
we use the Final Cut Pro Suite, so i am not used to AE. For those that do use FCP, there are some easy ways to do it…
If you had the older version, you have LiveType – which includes many stock background loops that can be tweaked and exported. You will eventually use these up, but you have a good start.
We have done a few in Motion as well. It takes some experimenting to find things that can be looped seamlessly though…
We have done hybrid backgrounds too – take a still of the sermon series graphic and loop it with a motion loop by playing with the blending options. you can come up with some decent loops that way and they coordinate with your sermon graphics.
Another thing i have done is comb through the Motion templates for idea and/or useful media. We created a flame loop for a series out of some stock media that ships with Motion.
Yes. We use motion backgrounds in our main services and in our youth services.
The #1 resource we have found is: http://zachfonville.com/worship-backgrounds
Zach works for New Life Church and gives away these things for free.
At last count, it was over 5GB.
The only thing, is that since they are hosted on Vimeo, there is a download limit (per user per day).
Hey, thanks for the compliment!
I’ve made some edits to the site, so now there’s no download limit since they’re all hosted locally. The new address is http://zachfonville.com/downloads – the link above will get you a pretty 404.
@zach… hey man, I checked out your website, and I’m really digging your work! Very fresh and clear. Just wanted to let you know you’re doing a great job. Looking forward to seeing more stuff from you in the future!
Just made a new loop for this weekend. Thanks for the tip!
Where did the tip go? it isn’t showing for me.