Passing the Time: After Effects Tutorial

While video effects isn’t exactly my job description, I’ve always been fascinated by post-production effects.  In my line, video work is usually limited to cutting, cropping, merging and re-encoding video content for the web (commercials, casting reels, screencasts, etc).  Graphic effects; to green screen and motion tracking and 3-D work were usually applied upstream from me.  But with my new-found free time, I’ve decided to dabble with some Adobe After Effects tutorials.  Armed with a pause/rewind button and some cheesy stock footage I want to try to recreate some of the common effects you see in post-production.  Here are a couple that came to mind:

• Basic Green Screen Effects (I’d love to build a good, mobile GS rig time/money allowing)
• One person standing still or walking slowly in a crowd of fast blurs of other high speed objects.
• One colorized object or person in an otherwise b&w scene (and vice versa).
• Title and Trailer demos (Coming this summer from Richer Than You Studios…)
• Freeze motion and pan around (the poor man’s bullet cam).

Any other suggestions?  I am working on a modest computer and basic footage (and a digital camcorder), so keep them modest.  🙂