Fast & Easy After Effects Tutorial: Alien Tractor Beam

Published on November 13, 2020

After Effects Tutorials

After Effects, alien beam, floating, ropes, tractor beam

the first alien movie ever

We all want to know if extraterrestrial life exists but I think we wont know the answer anytime soon… Luckily we have Hollywood to help us out! They have been making movies about aliens for ages!

The first movie ever to showcase them is “Le Voyage dans la Lune” (A Trip to the Moon). This is a French movie made in 1902 directed by Georges Méliès. Here a bunch of astronomers travel to the moon. Here they find Selenite’s, the first extraterrestrial life shown in a movie.

Here you can see the aliens look like… well aliens. But its not always like that. Lets take Superman for example. Technically he’s also an alien since he comes from outer space, Krypton to be more precise. So with this in mind you can notice that actually a lot of movies feature aliens! Like Sonic The Hedgehog who came to earth via his ring portals!

Get abducted with ropes

In this tutorial we show you guys a way to start floating upwards with using a clever chair trick. Here you record yourself twice, once your upper body and another time your lower body dangling above the ground by using some chairs. We showed you guys this method because this is the most accessible way to achieve this effect.

Of course you can also shoot this in one single shot but you’ll have a few difficulty’s/restrictions. You can always attach a rope to the actor and pull him up to create an more realistic movement. Only downfall is that you need to be able to have a rope going straight up above the actor, which outside isn’t possible if you don’t have a structure above over the actor.

Storyblocks video

This video was sponsored by Storyblocks. It’s an enormous online library full of high quality HD and 4K stock clips, After Effects templates, collections and much more. We use the library on a weekly base to download overlay effects, like smoke, dust particles, flares,… You can download an unlimited amount of clips for only one price per year so it’s super useful to have.