Struggling with creating 3D effect

this is really something for After Effects or Motion because you can move things in 3D space and create a virtual camera.

for FCE, the closest thing you can do is try to emulate the camera movement by keyframing the movement/scaling of each layer. for a camera pan, you'd keyframe the foreground object to move across a lot and the background to move less.

 

Yeah, it's possible to emulate the look but I don't really know if it's worth the effort. Perhaps download the After Effects trial and have a play with that?

 

The title of that video is a little misleading, as it almost implies that this effect can be achieved without doing a whole lot of work. Unless I'm missing something, to create this effect you need to spend a lot of time in the photo editor of your choice cutting out each separate layer you want to move independently. Then, depending on how far you move your camera off the center axis, you have to paint in the background behind the foreground layers that you already separated. Otherwise, you'll just end up with a duplicate layer separating from itself. Sorry, I know that sounds confusing...hopefully it makes sense.

Once you separate your layers and paint in the areas behind them, the movement is pretty straightforward. Just make scale and position keyframes for each of your layers. The closer the layer is to the camera, the faster it should scale up. The effect definitely looks cool, but it takes a lot of effort to make it work.