After Effects work

[Joe 90]

I'm currently working on a project using 3Ds Max and After Effects.

First time I've had to use AE so a few things I'm not great at and also the first time I've had to use Max with a background so had issues rendering without the background... you'll see what I mean...



Anybody any good with AE?
would appreciate a few tips on how to make it look better :/

Also, I've shot in 1080i and then its required to be SD widescreen, but that comes out like this... squashed and not very wide

Oh, and any ideas how to make max render a scene without the background so that the next scene will hopefully render quicker.