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.

 

 

Creating a Vignette Effect

I wanted to create a vignette like effect for a clip I have which is of the house as the car approaches the driveway. I thought creating this effect would take the focus from the car and more on the house. The vignette effect creates a border that fades in from the edges so that the attention is drawn to a particular part of the image/clip such as the house. Below is an image of the raw clip with nothing applied to it.

This is the kind of effect I was going where the deer is the focus of the image, it keeps the viewers eyes on that part of the image. 

To begin creating this vignette effect I created a "black video" (New Item > Black Video) which creates as the name says a black video, I placed this on the video layer on top of the scene in the length of the video. I could continue and feather this and create a vignette but it would be square and I didn't want this so I came across a video effect with the name "circle" and applied this to the black video (I have not made any changes to the actual clip) which created a circle out of the black square previously. At this stage it had a small circle which was black and the rest was of the scene, this was opposite to what I wanted but I inverted the circle. The circle was really small so I changed the radius of the circle, I did it enough to hide the trees from the frame and the car. You may notice that the circle is not exactly in the centre either, I wanted to hide the car from the scene, I tried to fit it to the shape of the house also. I then feathered the edges which made the circle less sharp and was more faded. 

This was when I applied no feather to the inverted circle. 

This is like the after when I changed the feather settings as in the other one no feather was applied to it. As I like the look of this I may do a similar effect to another part of my trailer. 

Looking for Audio

Looking for the audio and using the right audio is the most important part of the creation of this promotional video as the audio sets out the mood for the film. This process is key to the success of this promotional video so a lot of thought needs to go into this. To begin with I looked a number of “horror soundtracks” back to back; there was video that was 30minutes long which played soundtracks from famous/popular films. I looked at existing horror trailers to see what kind of mood the audio had like if is loud or quiet and tense. I noticed to begin with the audio is a quiet beat and then when the story unveils it becomes more scary like. Films I looked at were The Woman in Black and Possession both followed this kind of track. From the audio I listen to I quite liked the Exorcist Theme Song to have at the start of the video and Poltergeist 2 Soundtrack to play towards the middle and going to the end but when I listened to the full I felt something was missing it didn't sound quite good enough but at this point I did have a certain sound I wanted to be played.

I was introduced to Incompetech by my tutor, which supply royalty free music, all the music is free and they have a variety of genres. I looked in the horror genres, weren't so keen on anything that I listened to so I decided to look at the different genre I went into “wonder” and I found Dreamy Flashback which would go perfectly and also another one by the name Frost Waltz. It was between these two but one had the edge and it was Dreamy Flashback, it fit more with the beginning and it was like the ones on the trailers I saw. This audio will go at the front of the video and will not be very long. As for the audio for the rest of the audio I will have the soundtrack from The Possession from Scala and Kolacny Brothers as I really liked this and couldn’t find an alternative. I think this will go very well with my clip.

The whole process of looking for the audio was very long because I wanted the perfect audio as I believe this is as important as the actual clip. In the end it worked out well as I have two great audio that I can imagine will go very well in my video. 

http://incompetech.com/

(The Possession)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmpNVgFMApQ 

Considered

(The Exorcist )http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5YQmUIIjvs

(Poltergeist 2)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gc2069s8nRU

Promotional Trailer Set Up

Now that the graphics side of it is complete, I have to create a 1 minute promotional video like a trailer to go with my cover and label. 

Once I created the project, I created a number of “bins” like files/folders in premiere for my workspace to remain organised as I wanted the audio to be kept separate from the clips or the folder I made for images. The folders I created are in the screen shot shown below.

I then imported files (clips/images) and placed them into the correct bins.

I started to trim the clips from the source footage in order to cut out the parts that I didn’t want and only get the bits I did, by opening the source footage and placing my start and end markers to each clip and finally dragging just the bits I wanted to my clip bin I created. Doing this meant that I didn't clip the original clip, and also was useful when I wanted different parts from one clip. 

Where I wanted just the audio and not the video or vice versa I unlinked the video and then deleted the bit that I didn't want either audio or video. 

Clips for Promotional Video

I began to start looking for clips I would use for my video bearing in mind that my film is horror and the whole storyline of the 1 minute promotion video should all make sense with my DVD cover(the description I wrote) but not so much of the DVD label as this is just an image. Whereas with the cover I have images and a short description. Fortunately I did not use any images of characters because at that stage I was unsure how I would go about things when it came to my promotion I didn’t think about this at that time. So my characters just have their names on my DVD cover but not any images.

I came across films such as The Possession, The Grudge and Amityville Horror which had a storyline quite similar to mine so I could use these as examples to look at. Out of these films I used clips from the Amityville Horror most but did look at the other films trailers for ideas on how I should create mine. These trailers were much longer than mine this meant it was a bit harder to fit the storyline in such a short amount of time but I think that I can do this. I wanted my trailer to have a family who have been tormented by a person from a different past which has come to haunt them and Amityville horror was a perfect film to use, this doesn't mean that I used all of my clips from this film but most of it is due to continuity such as I didn't want a different house, scene or people I wanted this to remain the same. I may download the whole film so that I can get clips that are on the trial or movie clips, so I can find better parts. 

I have provided below to some links to clips I may use for my promotional video. 

I used firefox to download the videos I wanted to use for my trailer, I tried to get different videos and from different films, I also made sure that the clips were good quality.  Before I began starting to create my promotional video I familiarized myself with premiere, the different tools and using the different effects. I tried to get good quality clips, minimum quality as 480p anything lower than this I would not use it, preferably 720p but if I liked a clip which was of lower quality than this I would therefore use it. 

LINKS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBh5nZ3SNz0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeBHPzqiUlg 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIMIz2z-1mk 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pd8RaVEZlyU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPYMUnJGURI 

Completed Label - Clipping Mask

My Label is complete now all I have to do is apply a clipping mask which will cut out all the unwanted parts of the DVD label such as where I have gone outside of the label. To do this I created another ellipse and selected everything then went to Object>Clipping Mask>Make. 

This is my completed DVD Label, the quality as you can tell is amazing this was the whole reason why I used illustrator because of the quality it gives the graphics. I am pleased with the results it is matching to my DVD cover which is good because this is all one package and it needs to all fit. 

DVD Signs

Using Pen Tool, Paint Bucket and Blend Mode 

In terms of the DVD logo age certificate and Lionsgate logo, they are all vector but the age certificate is not. To create these vector graphics I used the method to create the dripping blood for over my image. I created them using the pen tool and having the image behind to trace of but the image behind being a low opacity. I used the pen tool which was the best tool to use for this in my opinion,I placed points where I needed where it was curved this tool allowed me to create these curves. I noticed using less points for example to create a O like 2 the shape looked better and more round. 
From doing this first as like practice, I did the Lionsgate Logo without the trace and it looked just as good.

I had to change the colours of the two logos as I had a black background and the colours originally were not suited to a black background but this was easy to change.  

As for the age certificate, I used the same one as I have on my DVD Cover, except when I pasted this it brought a white background which I did not like so I removed this by going to Object > Expand and deleted the outside part. I thought that the logo with colour didn't go well with the DVD logo and Lionsgate Logo which were both black and white so I changed the blend mode to Hue which made it black and white and this fit well with the other symbols.