Custom Transitions in Premiere

Custom Transitions

1. Two images in Premiere, on separate tracks.
2. Go to New Item in the Project tab on the left hand sign and click black video. Drag the black video to the timeline and place it so that it overlaps both photos.
3. After creating an image in Adobe Photoshop that you want to use for your transitions, save it. The image can be anything you want to use in your transition.
4. Right-click on the black video and click on After Effects composition. Import your Photoshop image into AfterEffects.
5. Drag the Photoshop image down to the AfterEffects timeline and check the left-most box.
6. Keep dragging copies of the photo down in the same manner until you have enough images for your transition. Resize when appropriate.
7. To adjust the timing in which each image will show, you can toggle the gray bars in the timeline. Use the play button in the upper right corner to play the AfterEffects composition.
8. When you are satisfied with the timing of your images, return to Premiere. Adjust the black video so it overlaps with your first photo. Position the second photo so that it begins right where the black video ends.

Animating Stills Using Keyframes and the Bezier Curve

In my video, I want to animate a certain moment where I talk about how when I was little, I thought the moon followed me everywhere as I drove. To do this, I use the pan effect on an image of driving at night, and then I use keyframes to make a different image of the moon move on top of it.

First, I set a keyframe at the end of my clip to show where I would end up with the driving background.

Next, I moved to the beginning of the clip and set a new keyframe.

This gave me the pan effect for the background that we have talked about in class.

Next, I dragged my image of the moon onto my timeline and scaled it to size. I created a keyframe for the moon showing where it would be at the beginning of the background's pan.

I went to the middle of my clip (since my clip is 14 seconds, I went to 7 seconds). Even though the moon moved along with the pan background, I wanted it to move along a curve as well. I moved the moon's position, creating a new keyframe. The orange line on the picture of the moon indicates the curve that it will move along.

Finally, I went to the end of the clip and moved the moon again, setting the final keyframe. Again, the orange line shows the path that the moon will follow as the video plays.

Here is my video tutorial if you want to see it actually being done (no sound though). It's pretty easy but if anyone has questions, let me know!

Creating an Old Film Effect

Here is the video turtorial where I show how to create this old film effect that I'm still kind of experimenting with in the video. This method just relies on a couple of Premiere Filters.

1. Posterize Time

Drag this onto the clip and change the frame rate anywhere from 12 to 18 frames per second. This gives it the slow choppy feel that old films often had.

2. RGB Color Corrector
Change Gamma to 1.6
Change Pedestal to .2
Change Gain to .8

3. Tint
Change the White one to a Dark Orange Color
Change the Black one to a Light Orange Color
Change the Percentage from 100 to 40 so that there is only a slight tint and its not completely overwhelming.

If you want to add this effect to more than one clip but don't know which color you used, then when you're selecting a clip, copy and paste (or memorize) the color code in the bottom right of the color choosing screen and use the same code for the other clips.

Pan and Zoom with Ease In and Out

The First clip provided below is a tutorial of using the zoom feature in Adobe Premiere Accompanied by the ease in and ease out features. The clip first displays how to scale and position photos at the appropriate start and end points to create a linear zoom. The ease in and ease out features are then displayed.

The second clip shows how to use both pan and zoom along with the ease in and out features in Adobe premier. The clip shows how to set multiple pan and zoom points within the clip with linear motion. Additionally, the ease in and ease out features are displayed. It is also important to note that by decreasing your frame rate blur can be reduced while images are in motion.

Bruce Lee Push Animation

Peep the latest in CGI animation: I will be doing the description in class so don't skip if you can't understand what Im doing here. K have a good week everybodyy

Finding Footage Tutorial

When looking for footage to use it is very important to think about the look and feel that you are trying to portray. For my story, I wanted a more dark feel. Because of this, I tried to find footage that had more bluish hues and darker lighting. 

When finding my footage, a simple thing that I did was just google the things I wanted to see in the video and see what came up in a video search. From this, I just began to look through these sites and search these sites themselves. Some sites that I find useful are YouTube.com and Vimeo.com

Finding my stock footage was more difficult. The first place I looked was archive.org. On here I again searched what I was looking for in the video and scrolled through some to see if they had what I was looking for. This can be very time-consuming and difficult though. Another thing I did was thought of various old films I had seen that might have clips I could used. I looked those up in YouTube and used them. Then I would look at the related videos to find other similar videos. 

Once I found the clips I wanted to use, I put their url into clipconverter.cc which converts them to an MP4 on your computer.

Suggested websites:

YouTube.com

Vimeo.com

Archive.org

Clipconverter.cc

"Twirl In" Tutorial Adobe

Image twirling – Adobe Premiere

I was going to put together a tutorial for you all about my application of my video, but lost my voice so that isn’t exactly help to you. Instead, I’ve put together some helpful steps below detailing how I edited my swirling rabbit hole video, as I was originally going to show you.

1.     Place your image into the sequence in the desired area. Go to the “Video Effects” section in the bottom left hand pane on the screen and drag the “Twirl In” effect onto the image.

2.     Next, you double click on the image and it will bring that up above the sequence. Go to the effect controls in the top left pane and it will bring up the same window in which you find the “Opacity Options.” You should see a tab for the “Twirl In” effect and should click the little triangle next to the words to open all of the editing options.

3.     If you were to make no edits, the image would remain a square and it would twirl into the center as seen above, showing the outside of the image first and slowly revealing the rest as it progresses. Below, you can see that the twirling will end at about half way through the image’s life in the project.

4.     When I was editing my rabbit hole picture, I played around with the twirl angle and twirl radius by dragging to two white buttons above. Instead of placing them in the same place, I dragged one to the left and the other to the right to give the distorted, fantasy-like twirling effect where the center moves before the edges.

5.     I also changed the twirl center to get the edges to move as seen below. If you leave it in the preset conditions, the image will remain a square throughout the entirety of it being shown.

6.     Note: I’ve found that the velocity above looks best when it is slower than 3 or 4/second.

If you have any questions or would like me to show you anything else regarding the twirl, feel free to let me know.

Revision Plan

As my project currently stands, there are a lot of directions that I can contemplate going in and each little detail that I change or add seems to slightly change the way that I view the story that I’m telling. My story stands around two and a half minutes, though I could still slow down my speech a little more – that is one of my biggest problems, as I tend to be a relatively quick speaker. I plan on slowing down a little more but I also want to re-evaluate all of the descriptive words in my piece and make them more sensory because it was such a sensory experience. I have begun to add music, specifically that of the artist it is about, and had placed other small sounds into the piece, but I need to make sure that those sounds are not overkill that I’ve placed in there just for the sake of adding sound. That won’t make up a good project and the timing of all of the audio is key. I am adding video in the place of some of the still images from various places and plan to look at the project as a whole to make sure that it doesn’t look too computer-processed like the rabbit hole portion of my first draft. One of the biggest things that I want to change, though, is that I want to add to my story. After rereading it a little bit, I understand as an outsider why the narrator is telling you the story, but I don’t completely get that magical, almost surreal feeling that I was trying to convey to the audience and I’m trying to find the words to do that. Every aspect of the piece will have changed in some way since the last draft, as I’m sure it should. I want to take out the “I” words and replace them with group actions as the piece progresses and focus in on specific little details. I believe that the biggest challenge will be the narration-music combination. I’m such a visual person that I understand how to make my images and video convey a feeling, but the audio will be a little bit more difficult to tweak.

Revision Plan - Forme

Story Text: After revising and line-editing last week, I got the audio down to three minutes which gives me enough room to add the videos, images and sounds. As far as the text is concerned I will probably have to edit it again in the coming weeks when I receive feedbacks from the class.

Audio Images and Videos: I was able to find a solution to get a clean recording. I will have to rerecord again after feedback. Since I am working my own video clips, I always have to re-record the video each time I change something in the story. So I am planning on getting most of my video online. I tried University of Pittsburgh archives videos but I did not find what I am looking for yet. I will still be looking for the right ones. With what I have so far, I will work on re-structuring the story to have a clear plan. I will still have couple shootings of myself telling the story, but it will be limited to 3-5 clips. I will have one at the start of the story, another one showing me looking around. There will be 1-2 scenarios, comic I hope, depicting me asking myself questions and trying to understand what is happening to me.

I will also have still pictures. So far I have what I want to use. I don’t think I will be working on them unless I feel the need to do so after I receive feedbacks from class.

Background Sounds: I got a lot of sounds online and I have already inserted them to my story. It seems a bit noisy though, especially the classroom noise and chatter I inserted. I am playing with the volume, but I still feel like it is distracting. I am thinking it might be due to the fact that I am not being able to take my focus away from the background sounds. I hope I will judge better in the next couple weeks when I work on the rest of the story.

Revision Plan - Gabriela Tremont

I’ve made a few changes since our last copy was due. I shortened my audio clip and made sure I incorporated only sentences that I felt were necessary to tell my story. I removed a sentence that began with “I realized,” and I tried to ask more meaningful, less-cliché questions. I kept all of my pictures from France in black and white, but I changed the pictures from Italy back to color. I also incorporated a few new videos that I took while abroad. These include videos from France and Italy.  I’m still working on editing those.

I plan to find more relevant still images for my video. I want them to be authentic and genuine depictions of my family. I’ve found that I have a solid number of pictures from France because I was there so long, but not enough from Italy. I mention several names of family members in Italy, but I don’t have photos of all of them to show. In the near future, I’d like to obtain some old family photos to incorporate. I’m having a bit of a hard time accessing these because they’re at my house in New York.  When I go home for thanksgiving break I plan to find a multitude of these photos and add them into my project.

I think my old family photos will illustrate an interesting and authentic view of my family. I mention how the last time I met my family in Italy, I was only a year old. I’d like to incorporate pictures from that event. Other than that, I’m also interested in adding more sounds to my video. Perhaps the addition of city sounds in the very beginning would render themselves well. I’m currently working to remove photos from my video that feel too impersonal.