Lightning effects

[Todd Terry]

Hi Rick…

I’m not sure of any actual plugin to do what you want (although there may be), but I’ve always found fairly realistic lightning strikes easy enough to do without it.

Normally, I just way crank up the brightness and lower the contrast for about two frames, then skip a couple of frames (i.e., leave them normal), then do it again to one additional frame. That looks pretty good. Or you can make double strikes, or even triple. It’s also helpful to skew your color grading a bit to the blue side on those affected frames as well.

You can take it a step further, too, if there are objects or people in the room that you want to see the effect more on. Just export those affected frames as stills (.bmp files or whatever), then take them into Photoshop so you can tweak on them, giving people and objects more of the effect on select areas, such as one side of a person’s face. Such as, one glow a bit heavier on the side of someone’s cheek, another on the nose, one on the forehead, etc… obviously, from the direction of the light source (window, or whatever).

It’s easy breezy, maybe five minutes.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Rick Wise]

Thanks, Todd!

Rick Wise
director of photography
San Francisco Bay Area
and part-time instructor lighting and camera
grad school, SF Academy of Art University/Film and Video
https://www.RickWiseDP.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rwise
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com

[Bob Cole]

Don’t know about Vegas, but it would be easy in After Effects. For an actual jagged lightning simulation, you could luma key a dark window (or do a quick matte) with another layer from an effects generator like BorisFX Lightning. Making it look believable is another matter. Good sound effect is just as important.

Bob C

[John Fishback]

AfterFX has at least 3 or 4 standard lightning presets with full control of position, direction of strike, look of the lightning and more.

John

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