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What up, beautiful people?
It is your homegirl, Ms. Shameless,
back with another Tech Talk.
And this video is all about special effects,
as they pertain to my channel, my videos,
and not anyone else's channel and nobody else's videos.
But for me, how do I add text animation, graphics,
and smoke and fire and glitterati realness?
And I'm-a break it down for you.
So there are three things, and it's equipment,
programs and plug-ins.
Now, the first one that I love to use is my fog machine
that I bought on Amazon.
I'll put all the links in the description box below.
If you do click on any of these links and make a purchase,
I will get a commission.
I'm hooking you up. You hooking me up. It's all good, boo.
But yeah, I love this fog machine.
It's great for Halloween videos,
anything that you want to add a kind of eerie-ness to it.
You could also use it in photo shoots.
Winning.
Especially if you have a black background.
And I use it in my Nefertiti video.
Yes.
Happy Halloween.
It's small, and it comes with a remote,
and all you got to do is step on it,
and I like to place it by the camera,
or it could be by me, depending on
what kind of effect you want.
But it's really nice,
especially when you use it in front of a black backdrop
so you can really see the smoke.
Or you could use a white backdrop.
That would be really cool,
very newborn smoke child, you know what I'm saying?
I come from the old-school thinking of,
try to do as much as you can with what you have
in the physical sense,
so I like to use a fog machine.
I like to add the actual props necessary for
a special effect.
But I'm not big on green screens unless
I'm trying to go for a cheesy look.
That's just me personally.
Now, the next one is graphics.
I'm going to be very honest.
I do not do the graphics here on this channel
that you've been seeing as of late.
I have two amazing editors that I work with
at House of Shameless, and they use After Effects,
which is a program.
For me, though, what I've used in the past are plug-ins,
and plug-ins for Final Cut Pro.
Final Cut Pro is a pro version of an amateur program,
and I know they're going to come for me when I say that.
I say that because it was an upgrade for me from iMovie.
It's very similar to iMovie,
and when I got to a point with iMovie
that I wanted to keep pushing --
I couldn't do certain things in iMovie --
I went to Final Cut Pro X.
You can buy plug-ins, and I love to buy plug-ins
from Pixel Film Studios.
I found that they are the most affordable.
There is other ones out there, but they're affordable,
and they have great tutorials.
Let's get into my program to show you how I use those.
So this is my computer. Welcome to my home.
I cleaned up my room, guys, before you came over.
As you can see, everything's organized. [laughing]
If you're interested in this desktop wallpaper,
read the description box,
because we're doing a rewards program
so you can get points and get free goodies like this.
So I'm going to open Final Cut Pro,
and here we are.
Let's make this bigger for y'all.
This is a layer of effects,
and that's basically a video file that I bought
from Pixel Film Studios.
And it's really affordable. It's like $24 or $29.
And it's cheaper when you buy them in bundles.
But if you're using any footage,
you have to have permission from the owner,
a license of some sort.
But yeah.
So on the desktop, it came in like this.
You can hit space.
That's basically what the MOV file is.
Oo-hoo. That's pretty.
So I would take this and drag it onto my timeline.
And delete this.
And see this orange line? It's just rendering.
So just kind of leave it alone.
You can also change the rendering options
so it does this at the very end.
You are wondering, where is the video file?
It's underneath.
So I just got to go to the blend option and move it to screen.
And that will allow you to see
the beautiful goddess underneath.
So there.
Super cool.
So that is a special effect.
And this video was on my Instagram feed,
if you want to check it out. Info box.
Now we have the Cinderella.
Now, this is my so-called wand,
so I want to kind of make it magical.
So I hit -- there.
So I'm going to take some glitterati, some of this stuff,
that, again, I bought from Pixel Film Studios.
I'm going to drop it on.
And again, it's, quote-unquote, a special effect,
but it's really just an MOV file.
And I'm going to go to the blend mode,
go to screen, and now you can see.
But I want to do it when I hit my wand.
There.
So I would move this and put it here.
Cute, right?
And then you can make it shorter,
because I just wanted little moments of magical realness.
See?
And then I could copy and paste that
so it happens every time she hits her wand.
And then it was, again, over here.
Hit. Hit.
Cool, right?
And then I could zoom in and make that even shorter.
Hit. Hit.
[laughing]
So if you want to see what that looks like fully done,
you can watch the video.
Now for some graphics of text.
Again, Final Cut actually has a lot of effects
and transitions for text, animation,
but, again, I found this from Pixel Film Studios,
and it's very clean and sleek.
Bam.
So all you got to do
is change that here, and it could be like --
oop --
shoes.
Nike.
And then I could put more text here, but that's really tiny.
I can delete it.
Cool, right?
And then, again, when you buy them, it has a tutorial.
The other option is B roll.
So, if you go out into the wilderness and you film,
for example, a storm,
you can just layer things.
And layering is really --
for me, I love doing that.
I love layering videos when I'm doing transformations,
when I like to be super artistic.
But again, I shall move this to screen,
and it just makes the video that much more cool.
And you could do little things with plug-ins in Final Cut,
so this is the transitions.
I think we had like an old TV.
Let's see TV.
Oh, yeah, you can even add that.
Other little things that you can do
include slow motion.
So this video is slowed down.
You can also layer this video on top of each other
and create a delay.
So to see that -- there we go.
Just lower the opacity.
Cool, right?
And we can disable that to see what it looks like.
Wow.
Cool, right?
That concludes the tip of the iceberg of special effects.
If you are more advanced, I don't know why you're here,
but if you want to get more advanced,
I would suggest that you learn After Effects,
and there are a bunch of tutorials online.
And the plug-ins for After Effects --
I go to this website, VideoHive.net.
I don't know how to do things from scratch.
I leave that to Tyler and Leah.
They are awesome. You can check out their channels.
Everyone's link is in the info box.
But they go ham on this.
But again, that's just the tip of the iceberg.
There is so much more.
You can delve into this rabbit hole.
But this is just a little sample.
And again, links in description box.
And I hope you found this helpful.
If you have any questions, put them in the comments below.
And, you guys, let me know what kind of videos
you want me to address.
This is also part of a Tech Talk playlist,
and, again, info box.
I have so many videos.
So until next time, remember to do you, boo.
Be shameless.
Be fierce.
Be a geek. Be a tech geek, okay?
You might think your iPad doesn't fit, but it does.
Don't get discouraged.
So now you can adjust things.
So say my video starts here.