After Effects Animation using Mattes and Mettle Freeform Pro

I’ve had an obsession with the opening to the HBO drama True Detective. I must have watched the opening sequence a hundred times, picking apart all the little details.

I’m most drawn how they use mattes in After Effects to reveal clips. It gives the opening a mysterious quality that creates questions and sets the stage stylistically.

One of the tools used to make the True Detective opening is Mettle’s Freeform Pro. It’s used in the opening to make a background appear to shimmer from the heat of a fire layer over it. Like you are seeing through heat waves.

This is a test I made using that technique. The background layer is a still photograph I made of Monument Valley.

Above it is a matte layer of smoke where the white part of the smoke is being used as a track matte. There is also a fire layer that is being used as a displacement map in Freeform Pro to as heat waves to the background.

One of the personal projects I have in mind is to do an Arizona version of the True Detective opening. What would that look like? What might that story be about? Hopefully this year I’ll get around to making it.