Compositing LCD Texture to Computer Screens in After Effects

First off, if you haven't seen the documentary "Catfish" you really should rent it.  It's a funny look at a quirky love story that developed over Facebook.  Because a lot of the communication of that film happens with computer screens, they decided to do something cool to give it texture.  It's almost like a color grade for computer screens.  I love the way it worked in the film so I had to figure out how to do it myself.

I tried shooting close ups with a video camera of LCD screens, which doesn't give you much control.  We also tried using a simple grid created in photoshop and composited that which also didn't look real.  Anyways, it turns out there is a great script available from aescripts.com that does just the job (and really good to boot).

LCD effect can be downloaded here and is a simple file script that runs in After Effects.  The only tweak that I recommend is to also place a copy of the "computer screen" image on top of the effect stack and dial the transparency to 90% or so.  This will give you the desired texture, but still make it legible.

Thank you to llcheesell for making this so easy for everyone!