How to do a film-like fade where the darks get brighter first and then midtones get brighter?

[Walter Soyka]

[Danny Mulen] “This has to be a simple effect like Levels or something but Im not sure how to pull it off nicely. I see this kind of fade in hollywood films a lot like Harry Potter where the darkest parks of the image get brighter first”

It’s called an additive dissolve — and I think you could use the Gradient Wipe effect to achieve it.

Apply Gradient Wipe to the top-most clip, make sure the effect’s gradient layer is set to its own layer, and animate the completion from 100 to 0. Tweak the softness as necessary.

You could also duplicate the clip, tweak it with levels and blurs, make it invisible, and use that as the gradient layer for a gradient wipe on the original footage.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Danny Mulen]

Walter, thank you for the response. What im finding is that gradient wipe does the opposite of what I want. When I animate completion from 100 to 0, the highlights reveal themselves first instead of last. Any thoughts?

[Walter Soyka]

Sorry, I misunderstood — I thought you were looking for the highlights of the incoming clips to come through the shadows of the outgoing clip first. You can tick the invert checkbox in Gradient Wipe to reverse that, but that may not yield the result you want.

Do you have a link to a reference clip showing the transition you’re looking for?

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Danny Mulen]

Walter, perhaps I misunderstood how the effect I want actually works so here’s an example:

https://vimeo.com/28885242

The fade is seen at 0:03 and 0:24 and throughout. Now that I think about it gradient wipe might be what I need but it still doesn’t look like the filmic fades im seeing in the video. Perhaps it’s the vignette animation? (if there is one).

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[Thomas Leong]

The way these old eyes see it, in a fade in, as in your Video example at 0:03, the bright parts are visible first followed by the dark parts – the reverse of your description.
This would be logical as a dissolve in the old days relies on the luminance of the lamp in the projector – applying an increasing voltage to lamp towards full value, and vice versa for a fade out. That’s the way we used to do it with slides (transparencies) and slide projectors.

To achieve a similar effect in these pixel days, I apply a Luminance filter to both the out-going and in-coming footages. In After Effects, I suppose this would be the Blending Mode for both footages.

my 2 cents,
Thomas