This year, Mother's Day in the UK is the 14th March and elsewhere it's May 10th. Whether you're panicking for a last minute gift or have a little more time, you can never go wrong by making a personal video for your mum, gran, or other special mother-figure in your life.
In this tutorial we'll show you how to make a special Mother's Day greeting quickly and easily with a professionally created After Effects template.
Resources Used
Here's a list of everything that was used in the tutorial, it's all available as part of a subscription to Envato Elements.
Template
Here's a preview of the template we'll use. We're going to start from this template and make a personalised video.
Images
- Mother
- Family looking in family album
- Little girl with enjoying spending time with mother
- Family on mother's day opening present
- Happy mother's day!
- Mother and daughter working in the garden together
Footage
Audio
How to Make a Mother's Day Greeting Video in After Effects
1. Open the Template
In the Project panel you’ll see organized folders and the final composition, which is usefully called ‘Final Composition’. In the Assets folder you’ll find elements that makeup the template effects, things like bokeh, transitions, the rose petals and so on. In Photo-Media there are the image or footage sub-compositions that you’ll be altering.
Pre-Comp is more sub-compositions, things like the background and heart effect. These make up the core of the template so you won’t need or want to alter them. Solid contains one white and one light red solid colour. This is part of the template background effect, if you’re adding footage then you won’t really see it much, but if you were to leave gaps between media in the template then it creates a nice effect and there’d be a gap without it. Text is as you’d expect, text sub-compositions where you’ll write your message(s).
2. Add Images and Footage
Now let's start adding media.
Open the Photo-Media folder and go to Photo-Media 1. Ignore the individually numbered ones as these contain the decorative elements around where your media will be placed.
Drag your footage or photo into the Project panel. It doesn’t matter where you put it but if you like to keep things neat you can create your own folder. From there, drag it into your Timeline, at the top. Below, there’s a text placeholder just to show you where to put the footage. If your footage is above it you won’t see it anyway (unless you’re using alpha channel) but it’s probably best to hide it just in case.
Repeat the previous steps working down the ‘Photo Media’ list and inserting your photos or video. If you don’t want to add 10 items you can hide the extra ones. Don’t delete them or you’ll delete the Solids and other effects and end up with a weird gap in your video. Remember to hide the text placeholder that shows you where to put your footage or you’ll see ‘Place your photos’ appearing in your film.
3. Resize Images or Footage
Your images are likely an assortment of sizes and resolutions, so now we'll conform them all to fit the video.
In Timeline, drop down Transform and make Position and Scale adjustments until your media fits.
In Project go to Final Composition and preview your video to make sure everything fits properly and works well.
4. Add and Change the Text
You'll need to add your own message too, of course.
In Project go to the Text folder and open Text 1.
You’ll see text on a transparent background, and also that text in your composition timeline
Double-click on the text you want to change and type your message.
In the Character panel you can then make changes to your font, colour, style and size.
The text at the end in the heart is editable too but you’ll need to check any changes you make carefully to make sure it still fits the template.
5. Add Music
Now we add some backing music.
In the same way as you did with your footage, drag your music into the Project panel and then into your final composition timeline.
If you need to adjust your music, then in the Effects panel you’ll find quick adjustments like fade in and out.
6. Render!
When you’ve checked your changes, go to File > Export and render out your video. Remember to keep file types and sizes reasonable if you’re sending it out as a greeting. Anything too big or too difficult to open might be a stumbling block for a potential recipient.
Here's the finished example video:
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