• Adobe After Effects

  Horror flash – stalker

  Posted by Kenan Demirsay on January 12, 2011 at 1:06 am

  Hi guys,

  I don’t know if any of you have seen the film Mirrors 2008 with Kiefer Sutherland. But right at about 1.25.46 there is a scene where something flashes behind the principal character. It is lightning fast, sort of like how an object/person would appear if you were speeding on a train and glanced up for a millisecond before it/they disappeared. It’s a common effect i’ve seen in loads of horror/thriller films. The foreground version of this would be a lot simpler i know. But any ideas how you could create this flash or if there are any tutorials on this subject? Advice would be welcomed

  kd

  Tudor “ted” jelescu replied 15 years, 7 months ago 3 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Michael Szalapski

  January 12, 2011 at 2:11 pm

  I haven’t seen the movie you’re talking about. However, from your description, I can give some suggestions.

  Directional Blur will get that “speeding by on a train” look. Then it’s just a matter of keyframing the opacity to make them appear and disappear.

  If you need them to be behind something, you’ll need to do some rotoscoping. But since it’s a quick flash, you won’t have to do that many frames so it shouldn’t be a big deal.

  – The Great Szalam
  (The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

  No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.
• 

  Tudor “ted” jelescu

  January 12, 2011 at 5:56 pm

  Also, if you have CS5, RotoBrush is perfect for providing a quick mask for the character in the foreground so that you can put the flash behind. The rest is timing- experiment a lot.

  Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
  Senior VFX Artist

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