Hey there and welcome to another Stranger Things tutorial, today we’re going to be
using Imerge Pro to make a really cool poster. But don’t forget, we’ve got our Stranger
Sale on right now so you can get 25% off storewide on any of our products so do go and check
that out.
So before we even get started this is actually the next version of IMerge Pro, version 4.0,
which is coming out later in July. As you can see the team here have created this really
cool poster and I’m just gonna go through some of the ways that we do it and what new
effects are being used here. So first of all we have the image of the road. It’s got
lots of contrast it’s very interesting already and we’ll use this as the basis for the
style as we move forward.
Next we have the sky, so we have this very dramatic, very Stranger Things sky and this
is made up of a bunch of different elements so let’s just dive into that. So first of
all we have these clouds, they obviously didn’t look like this, if I disable all the effects
we’ve got some very basic, very normal clouds. And then through us applying some Curves,
and then also some Exposure, and then some more Curves, we’ve actually created this
very red, very contrasty dramatic sky. We’ve also of course applied a sort of soft area
mask but we’re still seeing those mountains coming through behind, but we’re going to
cover those up as we go.
So the most problematic area here is the transition between the ground element and the sky element.
So we start covering that up a little bit with this sunset. Now again we’ve applied
Curves just to pull it into line with the rest of the sky, and then we have a simple
area mask that’s helping us with the transition between the two. But what we actually want
is a tree line here, so we have another image that we’ve comped in, and this has got a
vector mask and an area mask. Little more complex than the last ones. And then some
Curves again to bring it in line with the other images. Then things start getting a
bit crazy, and we add some lightning. So these are all Screen blended layers. And if I just
stack them on they’re very subtle and the important thing here is to sort of layer things
up subtly, rather than all in one go, so that you can actually tweak the effect. Normally
if you work on something and you keep on working on it you want to draw it back about sort
of 25% as you get towards the end because you probably end up going too far, and I think
that’s what the guys have done here.
But what they have used is our super cool new Glow effect so if you actually look up
in the sky here where elements are glowing out and getting overexposed like we want from
lightning, this is using an all new effect in Imerge 4.0. So do check that out, it’s
got chromatic aberrations, it’s got hotspots, it’s got all sorts of stuff going on, but
this is a very cool Glow effect, the best Glow effect that we’ve got.
The next thing of course is the foreground element. So we’ve got some little shadow
spots here just to give some sort of ambient occlusion shadow underneath where they’re
standing. And then we‘ve got our green screen elements. We of course all know how well Imerge
Pro deals with green screen, but there’s something very interesting here and that’s
these shadows that are falling off and this is a requested effect that we’ve added to
the software so if we jump into this folder, I’m gonna switch off this little fake shadow
directly below them. We can actually click on these individual layers and see that they’re
layer groups, inside those groups we actually have the green screen element, then we’re
basically precomposing them into a folder, and on that folder we’re adding this long
shadow effect. So if we look at Oli’s feet here I can then move this shadow around and
place it where I want it to be like I’m moving the sun around in the scene. We have
this baseline at his feet but then we also have this sort of horizon line and this also
dictates how the shadow will be formed, so where the sun is relative to Oli. And then
of course the dial over here allows you to reposition the light around him. So I’ll
just switch on the shadow below them again and move to the next layer.
So next up is the blue grade, and we’ve got two significant areas of blue grade here.
One of them is the road, which we’re kind of going more for a bleach bypass kind of
look, and the other is the sky, where we were directly trying to copy the Stranger Things
poster where there’s kind of a blue element in the top right of the poster. If we look
at the road it’s just an area mask over that bottom portion of the image. Then we’re
using the Curves to sort of boost the blue. If we look at the sky there’s the same thing
there’s an area mask defining the circle up top, and then another area mask basically
cutting that or removing that area away. And we’re using our new Hue Colorize effect,
so that’s taking the colors and recoloring them to a different hue that you define, and
then you can set the strength and the lightness and all sorts of things on that so that’s
a really great new tool as well.
Next we have all the signs in the background, these are all just different images where
we’ve cut them out to use them as different elements. And if I just zoom in a bit here
what we can see is in this folder we have the different images here, they’ve been
cut out to create these signs, and again we’re using the Long Shadows effect over top, and
that’s how we’re getting these shadows down here and a little bit down here as well.
Just adding that sense of realism and giving the same shadows that the guys have in the
foreground.
Then we’ve got a grade, this is basically a red overlay and then a gradient as well.
And we’re just trying to get that same kind of red and orange look, going through to the
pinks and the blues that they had in the Stranger Things posters, and then just to beef up the
horizon line we’ve added a Glow effect, just in the middle here and it just brightens
up and draws the eye towards the center of the image. So it’s really really simple
to put together what is quite a complex composite. As I say, we’ve just been showing off some
of the new effects as well that are coming to Imerge 4, we have the Long Shadows, we
have the Hue Colorize, and we have the Glow effects. Do check those out there’s a bunch
of new features coming too, and that’ll all be later on in July.
For another Stranger Things tutorial do click the link in the card over here somewhere,
and do remember we’re running our Stranger Sale at the moment which is 25% off storewide
on any of our stuff. Check for the link in the description.