Creating a Lightning Effect

Using Lightning Effect, Lighting Effect, Pen Tool and Blend Mode

I had a scene of the house and wanted this to be more eye catching and so it can draw the attention of the audience, to really bring a horror like sense to the trailer as usually rain and thunder is associated with horror and often used in trailer. From being a fan of horror films and watching a few in my time I know a lot of the horror conventions and this is one and I wanted to include this into my trailer. The scene to begin with had little lighting changes to look like lightning but not much, I thought instead of creating a whole new lightning effect to a clip which didn’t have any lightning like effects. Before I could start creating this I made sure that this was possible, looking at the different effects that Photoshop provided, I found a Lighting (Video Effects > Adjust > Lighting Effects) one which changed the brightness which will come in good use when I have the strikes as the lightning in the sky needs to change. I also came across another effect which was called Lightning (Video Effects > Generate > Lightning) which I looked at created the lightning strikes; this was exactly what I was looking for.

To begin creating this effect I copied the clip and placed this in the above layer and went in video effects and changed the Blend Mode to Linear Dodge which gave the image light and a darker blue earthy look more like a sky with lightning would. When I applied the Lighting Effect I changed the light type to Omni.

I changed the position of the lighting change, it is near the house. I could have changed this at different points in the clip but I wanted this to remain in the same place. Lightning affects parts of the sky sometimes, I made sure that I didn’t have the lighting to bright as this would look to fake and unrealistic. On the lighting effect I also changed the radius of the circle which the lighting changes and also the intensity of the lighting.

(Before)

(After)
The before photo is when I applied no lighting effect and the after this where I did.

You may notice in the image provided I created a Black Video but this wanted black, I changed this to Screen on the Blend Mode. I created this so I can apply the Lightning Effect to it; it’s like a different layer. To this I applied the Lightning Effect and changed the size and position of the strike to go downwards rather than across, there was lots of other options such as the speed that I changed. I used the Razor tool to cut the clip up, I used this tool because it was the easiest tool and it cut exactly where I wanted it, from looking at the line. I cut my clip as I deleted some parts where I didn’t want the lightning strikes to continue throughout the clip as this is would not be realistic so I cut the bits I didn’t want the strikes like where the lighting effect didn’t take place and then deleted this. Doing this allowed me to change the positioning of the strikes only slightly, because naturally lightning strikes change position a little. This also meant I could change the positioning of the lighting to be where the lightning strike is.  

Finally using the Pen Tool, one of the simpliest tools on premiere which can be used to change the brightness of a clip very easily. I did this to the actual footage of the house, the one which I didn't apply any effect to. I placed pen points and this changed the brightness of the clip which made it dark at some parts just like a lightning with rain would.