VideoCopilot/CreativeCow/Learning the Hard Way

So I thought I'd have another look and sit down and try out the Video Copilot tutorials that Matt suggested, but of the hand full that I've looked at, a lot of them start off pretty fast paced and jump straight in rather than starting from the basics so I was struggling to even start a project up and work out what goes where let alone catch up with what the guy's talking about in the next 5 seconds.
So I think I need to stick with CreativeCow for now..

So I had another scout through CreativeCow, and it's difficult to pick what to do - I don't want to spend 2 hours doing something irrelevant that confuses me even more... After reading the email from Andy, he made a good point of learning something helps if you've got something you can work with/sell at the end of it, rather than another tacky demo... Therefore I need to decide what I want to do; then find out how to do it myself - great news if I can find an online tutorial exactly for that, but if not then it's trial and error all the way.

So, I've decided I want to get to grips with the use of the camera in AE; I have an image in my head; I want to have a series of houses that the camera seems to go through the open doors, like the camera is passing through them, one in front of the other... if that makes sense?...
I made a few house shapes using recycled paper.. [I'm pretty green so I like to reuse things:)]

(hopefully the open door thing makes sense with the photos..?)

Well, here was my first attempt; I tried just placing the houses in the same spot, each house only in the frame for about 1.5 seconds at a time, and changing the camera Z angle to 'zoom' into each doorway, then flicking the camera back and zooming in again for the next house.
I soon realised this was the wrong way of doing it, as you can see by the lack of flowing movement, the jump to each new house and the general failure.... But at least something's starting to tick in my little lost head.

Houses - trial 1 from Jodie Curley on Vimeo.

So this time I tried placing a series of houses at staggered positions by the Z angle through the frame, and then bring the camera through the open doors by altering the Z angle of this... It was just as fiddly as the last one, but there's a much more fluid motion in comparison. There's still plenty of things going on that I don't understand; the camera kept going funny angles, so I was obviously moving something I shouldn't have been for what I was trying to do....

Houses - Trial 2 from Jodie Curley on Vimeo.

So the last few hours meant I'm slowly getting to grips with what I'm trying to achieve - which once I have managed, then I can add in a background/sound/other objects etc.. but I think I've learnt one very important thing through doing all this fiddly business.
It's ok to ask for help - it's going to save a hell of a lot of time...

So tomorrow, I'll pay Matt a visit in the AV Room and ask how the hell I can do what I'm trying to do...


(Sigh of relief...)