I’m not sure exactly what you’re trying to accomplish, but it sounds a bit like the reverse of an effect I did a while back. I was creating a “blast wave distortion” that emanated from an on-screen event (in my case, a good football catch). I used radio-waves (or just masked circles), rotated them in 3D to match the angle of my footage, then turned them off and used their black-white values and Effects>Displacement Map to make the “shockwave” emanate from my touchdown pass.
Does that sound at all inspiring for what you’re trying to achieve?
This does sound inspiring, could I see an example hopefully you hit it on the nail.