Camera Flash transition or Over Exposed Transition?

[Ben G unguren]

Briefly, you can do a pretty nice imitation with levels, blurs, and time remapping — maybe a little gradient. The “camera flash” comes from a film camera when it is turned off — the film doesn’t immediately stop — a few of the frames slow down, causing (1) overexposure, (2) increased motion blurriness, and (3) the transferred footage to be sped up (that is, if the film is slowed down while shooting, it appears to speed up with projection).

So as the camera “turns off” you use time remapping to take, say, 10 frames (of “real time”) and crush them into 2 or 3 (it speeds up). At the same time, apply an increasing blur. Then take your levels effect’s input white and animate it all the way to 0 (so it animates over the 3 frames). Mess with the gamma levels of red green and blue, just for fun. Applying a SLIGHT gradient is handy for the “light leak” look (one of the sides lightens up before the others). When the camera “turns back on” (if it ever does) you do everything the opposite, and if it’s the same footage, make sure that you take out at least a second or two in between. Here’s something I made a long time ago; I’m not sure where the actual file that made this is:

-ben

[Aharon Rabinowitz]

Here’s my recipe:

1 – Create an adjustment layer above everything else.

2- Add the following effects in this stack order:

Fast Blur
Levels

At your in and out points (each should be about 4 frames from your exact tranisition point – i.e. where the footage cuts to the next scene) for the transition, Set key frames for both 0 blur, and and the histogram – so basically, the in and out points are set to normal.

Make sure to have repeate Edge Pixels activated in the Blur effect.

Right on the frame where it cuts onto the new footage, set the blurriness up really high, so that things are really blended together. Also, in the Levels effect, grab hold of the input white arrow and slide it almost all the way to the left towards the black arrow, so that everything turns almost completely white. Alternately, you can just set the Input white value to a really low number – it’s the same thing, but it’s easier to work with visually.

A few other things to help:

I like to play with this a bit – I often have it go out of focus (blurry), just a little, and also get a little brighter, then bring it back to almost normal, and then do the transition – all of this over maybe 3 or 4 frames as well. This creates a nice effect, and can also be done in revers on the way out.

If my footage is just too dark, and the levels effect isn’t making enough of it bright, I also add a white solid (below the adjustment layer, but above the footage) to fade up from 0% to 25% and then down again, matching the adjustment layer’s keyframes.

I’ve used this trick for braodcast a otn of time, and it works much faster then any plugin.

Also experiment by adding in the glow effect in the mix, if you want.

—————————————-
Aharon Rabinowitz
aharon(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
http://www.allbetsareoff.com
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Creative Cow Master Series DVD
particleIllusion Fusion Volume 1
available @ http://www.pIllusionFusion.com

[Chris Smith]

Check the archives as well. This has been asked and answered many, many times. I know I’ve given my recipe a handful of times myself in the past.

Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com