You guys are always asking me to make videos on how I do
some of the animations and graphics in my explanatory
videos, so today I'm gonna do just that.
I'm gonna show you how to turn shapes and images into masks
in Premiere Pro-- like this and like this--
quickly and easily, so that you can use it
to add some cool effects to your videos.
Let's get Undone.
[offbeat music] ♪ Gerald Undone ♪
♪ He's crazy ♪
Ahoy, matey! I'm Gerald Undone,
and let's get right into Premiere.
So the first thing you’re gonna need, obviously,
is some footage, so I've got a couple of video clips here.
This first one is just from a previous video that I made,
so there should be lots of derp faces in there
as we skip around, and then the second thing I've got is just
some footage of some water and stuff like that.
So we'll drop that in here, and we'll just work
with this smaller portion so that we don't need
to take up our entire timeline, and this will just be
where we're-- where we’re cookin’.
Let's say that we wanted to use this water or sky
and put it into the previous video, but with a fun shape.
Because if we were just doing a simple mask,
you wouldn't need to follow any of this,
because you can just, you know, use your mask.
Come over here, use the Pen tool if you want.
I don't know, draw a shape and then there you go.
Now you've got a mask and you can do whatever you want.
But it's when you want to emulate a shape or an image
or something like that that you can't really use these tools.
And before you guys fill up the comments,
I know that there are other ways to do this
with Blend Modes and with different Keys,
but there are limitations to those--
which we'll touch on as well-- involving transitions
and dissolves that don't really work as well,
as well as different Blend Modes on top of those
Blend Modes because of the limitations in Premiere.
But the method that I'm gonna show you, two ways of doing it,
they don't have any of those limitations.
The first thing you're gonna need is a transparent image.
Now, you can do this in anything: Photoshop, GIMP,
or any other free software,
as long as you can create a file that has the shape
or image that you want and a transparent background.
That's what's key here.
I'm gonna get rid of this mask.
Now, what I like to do to make sure that
the framing is correct is, I'll take the layer here
and I'll extract a frame from it.
That way, when I pop that open in Photoshop,
I'm already using the exact same frame as my video.
So in this case it's going to be a 3840x2160.
It doesn't matter even if we keep this layer
or not, but if we wanted to, say, pull something out
of this or use a specific shape here--
maybe in our video we had our face and we wanted
to cut out our face, well, we could do that.
But instead, let's just make a new layer
and delete this one, and then now we're all set up.
Now, just for the sake of keeping it easy,
I'm not gonna make anything crazy.
I'll just use a Photoshop shape.
Okay, we'll use this one, it’s the “do not enter,”
“no,” sign or whatever, so we'll go with that.
Now, it doesn't really matter so much
what the colour of the object is,
as long as it's defined and separated
from the background with the transparency.
So let's just save this out like that,
and we'll know how big it's gonna be,
because again, we're using the same size frame,
because we exported the frame from Premiere Pro.
So, when we save this out, we want to make sure
that we save it as a .png or some other form
that keeps the transparency,
and we'll call this, uh, “Don't.”
And... now when we pop back into Premiere--
so let's import that image, and we'll pop it in
on top here, and we’ll expand that across.
So now we have the shape that we want to use
as Video Layer 3,
and then we have Video Layer 2 is this water,
and then Video Layer 1-- if we hide these other two--
as you can see, is the video of me making a silly face.
OK, so the first method I'm gonna show you is,
go to the effects and look for “Track Matte Key,”
and you're gonna want to put that on the layer that has
the video that you want the shape to resemble.
So in this case it's gonna be Video 2,
and then when we come over here,
you can see that on Video 2 we have the Track Matte Key,
and you choose what layer you want the matte to come from,
which is Video 3 in this case,
because that's the layer that has the shape on it.
So you can see what happens-- we have a "do not enter" sign
that takes on the characteristics
of the video underneath it.
Now, if we use Motion on the layers,
it's gonna have a different result.
If we use Motion on the top layer,
it's moving sort of what you see,
so what part of the frame underneath that you see.
But then if we use Motion on the layer underneath,
the one with the actual water, that's gonna just move
the sign around without changing
what portion of the water scene we're capturing.
So then we can just move that over here, and...
I don't know, resize it how we want,
and then there you go. Now you have--
I don't know why you'd want this specific thing,
but apply to anything, any shape you want:
a smiley face, you want a leaf,
whatever, you can put it in there.
And you can also use-- the reason why I use this mode
instead of different types of Key,
like an Ultra Key or whatever, is that you can also use--
it can blend out in a gradient and it doesn't cause
weird lines. I'll show how to do that right now.
We'll keep with this "do not enter" sign.
So if we go back into Photoshop and we take this shape
and we go to “filter” and apply...
let's say, a Gaussian Blur to it--
I’ll have to convert to a Smart Object--
and if we add a 15-pixel blur,
now we obviously have a gradient as it fades out.
Now, if we save that out again, and, uh...
actually, a little trick in Premiere:
if you click somewhere else and hit “save,”
then you're allowed to copy over the file without it
telling you that it's being used, so we'll just do that.
And now as soon as we click back on the video,
the symbol will be updated to the blurry one.
And as we can see, if we zoom in a little bit,
it is... smoothed out with a gradient,
so that can make it nicer than the hard line.
And all the other principles still apply--
which layer you move, if you move the under layer--
you're gonna move this thing around like that.
One of the reasons why I use this method,
like I was saying, is with Blend Modes.
So let's say, for instance, that we wanted to have
this thing-- I don't know, Random Wipe in,
that's a transition I think is kind of fun.
If we put the Random Wipe on-- let's zoom in here--
if we put the Random Wipe on the image layer
that's the "do not enter" sign and we see what happens...
see how weird this is?
And then boom, all of a sudden it's fine.
So, during the transition it's very peculiar.
And then it's fine once it's done.
Well, that's not the transition you want.
And I believe that even something as simple
as Cross Dissolve will produce a strange result as well.
So let's say-- yeah, see?
And even if I move these things over--
So let's move these layers over a little bit
so that we still have some content going on all the time,
and then we transition in this thing... boom, it shows
the full image, and then shows the white thing, and then...
it's just-- it's an awful transition.
So the way that you're gonna want to work around that
is to first nest the layers, but you still have to have
the transition in, and I'll show you why.
If we nest these layers like--
so we choose the two layers here, and then we nest them.
Now, if we add a Cross Dissolve to the front of this,
let's see what happens.
Works fine, right?
It fades in nicely and it's good to go.
And I think the same will work for the Random Wipe,
which is a bit trickier of a transition.
We bring that in... yeah, look, it still builds it perfectly.
So that's how you can do that simply.
But now when you add Blend Modes, it gets worse.
And this is a reason why you have to do things in a certain
way if you want to really stack on all of the effects.
So if we take this nested sequence and we come over
to the Blend Modes, and maybe instead of just having it
look like this with the water, let's do, uh... Linear Light.
So now we have a different look all together, and we're like,
“oh yeah, I love that look for some reason
on this Do Not Enter sign, it's gotta look like that!”
But now look what happens when we execute that Random Wipe.
So it'll start to wipe in, but it doesn't have
the Blend Mode on, and then when the wipe finishes,
then the Blend Mode just kicks in.
So again, it's not smooth, and again,
that's not what you want.
And I think that it might be fine with Cross Dissolve
for this one, but let's check, so...
yeah, with Cross Dissolve it's fine,
but the more complicated ones-- say if you were to use
a Gradient Wipe, which I also like that one--
it'll be the same thing as the Random Wipe.
It'll Gradient Wipe in, but without the Blend Mode,
and then boom, the Blend Mode just kicks in.
And that's no good. It's jarring, right?
So, in order to fix this, we're gonna have to go
back in the history, before I nested the layers.
So here we were... [laughs] look at that face on me.
What you're gonna wanna do first is put the transition
on the correct layer before you nest them.
Now I'm gonna show you the difference here.
So let's use the Random Wipe again.
If we put the Random Wipe on the image layer, it--
as we said, it's this garbage, it's no good.
Now, instead, if we put the Random Wipe on the layer
with the water... you get a much better result.
Then you nest them. Not the other way around.
Don't nest them and then add a transition.
So now the nested sequence, if we look into it,
we can see it has the Random Wipe that builds into it,
and then there's nothing, it’s just black.
But over here on the regular sequence,
now we can change the Blend Mode,
so if we change it now to Linear Light and we look,
it's doing the Random Wipe but with the correct Blend Mode,
and there's no more jumpy thing.
Now I've shown you shapes, but we can also do this
with images. It doesn't have to be
just white or just a flat colour like that.
As I showed you, it can have a gradient--
which is great, ‘cause that's better than keying--
and it can also have textures and stuff like that.
It doesn't need to only be a flat colour.
So let's get rid of this, and I will bring in that
water footage one more time, and we'll zoom in on it again,
so we just see a bit of the water.
Now, I've got this fence image
that I'm just using because it's...
I don't know, simple. And if we look at it,
it looks like this. So, it's a fence...
I'll hide the other layers so you can see what it is.
Just a fence, but it has texture and it's cut out,
I just cut it out of a white background.
So it doesn't matter, though.
The only part that matters is that
it's on a transparent background,
and so the exact same principles apply.
You can resize it, of course.
So we could, you know, bring it down smaller,
and then we could put it-- I don't know.
Now we've got this... nature-themed fence.
Then we want to change our Blend Mode to...
let's go with Color Dodge.
And so now we got this funky fence that comes up like that,
and we can see the water kind of rolling in on the bottom,
and it's all purple, and it's wild.
Anyway, I think that's all you really need to know about that.
The rest, like I said, is gonna be up to your imagination.
The purpose that I use this for a lot,
and the reason why I'm recommending it is, I use it
for picture-in-picture stuff and sometimes with text effects.
So if I want to say, you know, “here's a previous video,”
or, like, you know, “here's how a lens goes into this thing,”
or, like, when I talk about optics sometimes,
I'll put, like, a graphic up on the screen.
But if I want to show another video inside of that
or if I wanted to take up a portion of the screen,
that isn't easily done with-- just by drawing a mask,
‘cause that can be kind of tedious, you know?
You put all these different points and you have to
move it as it goes. Anybody that’s ever done
complex masking in Premiere Pro knows that it's tedious.
Ahoy, matey. I’m Gerald Undone.
Ahoy, matey! [chuckling]
Ahoy, mate-- [laughing]
I can’t even say it with a straight-- OK.
Ahoy, matey! [snickering]
But that's gonna be it for me.
I hope you found this video helpful,
or at least entertaining.
And if you did, make sure you leave it the old thumbs-up,
and consider subscribing if you haven't already.
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feel free to hit the dislike button twice.
Alright... I'm done.