Camera shake / handheld sim
Small added camera movement that makes a locked shot feel handheld, or a short stronger jolt that sells an impact.
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What it is
Camera shake is added movement that makes a stable shot feel physically held or makes an impact feel as if it hit the camera. A handheld simulation uses slow, small changes in position and rotation; an impact shake uses a brief high-frequency burst that quickly decays. After Effects artists often start with the wiggle() expression.
Reach for subtle handheld drift when perfectly locked footage feels too sterile beside documentary or action material; the loud end of that style is Paul Greengrass on the Bourne films. Use the sharper version for a hit, landing, explosion, or bass accent. The movement should support an event or camera style, not announce an effect preset.
Gotcha: shaking only the footage leaves tracked graphics floating in place. Apply the move to a parent null that carries the plate and every attached element, add matching motion blur, and scale the result up slightly so moving edges never reveal the empty comp. Too much rotation or nonstop jitter becomes tiring fast.
Ask AI for it
Create a restrained handheld simulation in Adobe After Effects. Parent the footage and all tracked graphics to one null, add wiggle(1.2, 8) to the null's Position and wiggle(1, 0.35) to Rotation, and scale the final precomp to 103 percent to hide moving borders. Enable motion blur. For the impact at 2 seconds, parent that null to a second Impact null, add a Slider Control named Shake Amount to it, set its Position expression to wiggle(14, effect("Shake Amount")("Slider")), and keyframe the slider from 0 to 24 and back to 0 within 10 frames with an exponential-looking decay rather than sustained random movement.