Re: After Effects fire

I suspect their project brings in some footage that was not generated in After Effects. My favorite fire effects that I have made in After Effects came from shooting real fire. The real thing looks much better than anything computer generated. Get a camera (I got some great results just using a DV camera), and some green or blue colored paper (I have found large origami paper works great). Suspend the paper from a bent coat hanger or some other metal rod with clothes pins. Shoot against a black backdrop and key out the green paper with Keylight, set the blend mode on your flame layer to "add" to get rid of the black backdrop. You can get some great flame footage that you can scale distort and use for a number of projects. You can also use the green paper as a matte to burn up any image... the Bonanza effect. Plus its fun to play with fire, although do be careful and keep other flamables away from your set up, and keep a fire extinguisher handy.