Many times, especially if you work in the church production world like I do, you are faced with very tight deadlines and have to come up with something stunning with a very small crew. How do you accomplish this without spending your entire week slaving over one small project? Simple, use a project template.
Alot of people have asked me if it’s OK to use templates in their video projects. Short answer: “Yes.”
Templates are tools to help you do your job faster and be more efficient. Now, keep in mind that if you’re hired to create something completely unique and specific for someone, using a template kind of defeats that purpose. Also, if you are thinking about using a template for paid freelance work, you’ll have to make sure that the license that you are purchasing with the template lets you legally use it for paid work.
And, if you do use a template, I encourage you to customize the template to your project. Dont use it exactly as-is You can simply replace a background to match other elements; change colors, fonts, etc.
We recently had a big women’s conference at my church……not a conference for big women, but a women’s conference that was big…..anyways, I was given the last minute task of making intro video bumpers for the 4 different speakers. Instead of rushing something from scratch that would of turned out mediocre, I purchased an After Effects template. I customized the temple and adjusted the timing to match my music and voice-over and the videos turned out great. And it only took me about an hour. Here is one of the intros. I used a template from Video Hive called “System Error Promo.”
Project templates can also be things other than videos. Check out this overview of a DVD menu template from Precomosed.com.
Speaking of template resources, here are a few:
- VideoHive.net
- Precomposed.com
- VideoCopilot.net
- RevoStock.com
- AEdude.com
- Ruffkutmedia.com
- AEprojects.com
- AfterEffectsProject.com
- YouMakeMotion.com
- YourWeddingInMotion.com
- Fantazo.com
- BlueFX.net
- MotionArray.com
- FreeAEtemplates.net
- 10 FREE AE Templates (via PremiumBeat.com)
- 10 more FREE AE Templates (via PremiumBeat.com)