Create Fake Handheld Footage in After Effects

LEARN TO USE THE WIGGLE EXPRESSION IN AFTER EFFECTS! | Use scaling and position expressions to create a fake handheld camera effect in mere moments.

In this After Effects tutorial, we will quickly create a handheld camera effect, complete with old school VHS style overlays in After Effects. It’s much simpler than you may think and if you’ve never used After Effects, this might be the perfect beginner tutorial for you to check out!

Tags: after effects tutorial, after effects tutorials, after effects wiggle, after effects handheld effect, after effects VHS, fake handheld camera effect, handheld camera effect, how to, wiggle expression, wiggle expression after effects, AE

Site Exclusive Tutorial Recording Notes:

Disclaimer: these are the actual notes I used to record this video and are written in a language you may or may not understand. Hopefully, you find them useful or cool.

1. Drag the video clip into the Project panel
2. Right click and choose to create a new composition from the video
3. Name the layer “video-clip”
4. Hit “P” to bring up Positioning and Alt/Opt click the stop watch to open the expressions panel
5. Type: wiggle(1,35) to get a good handheld effect (3,55) is a good effect for hand held while running effect.
6. First number is how many times the clip moves per second
7. Second number is how many pixels per second the clip moves per second
8. Hit “S” to open the scale options for the layer and boost the size of the layer to 107% or so.
9. Drag the PNG VHS overlay graphic into the project panel and drag it down and place it over the clip.
10. Pop open the Transform menu and reduce the opacity to 80%