- What's up, everybody, Peter McKinnon here.
And today, we're talking about transitions.
Now this is Part Three in an ongoing series
on stepping up your filmmaking.
There's a lot to cover, so, let's go.
(upbeat rock music)
All right, guys, you've been asking for it, so today,
we embark on the journey that is transitions.
Now, there is a lot to cover with this.
I'm gonna break this video into several different videos
over the next couple weeks just because I could easily
make this video over like an hour and a half long.
And some of you guys would be like, yay!
And some of you would be like, stop talking.
So I'm gonna try and find some middle ground here.
But there's a lot to go over, so in today's video,
we're gonna look at only a couple transitions.
Specifically, I wanna show you guys how to do the Masking
and the FrameBlocking,
which is where something covers the frame
and you mask to a transition underneath.
You guys have seen this
on a couple of the videos that I've done.
I did it in one of my vlogs,
where I was at my friend's workshop
and we were showing his wood shop, that kind of thing.
I did it at Left Field Brewery a couple days ago in a vlog.
But whenever I can find a really good reason
or I'm shooting and I can work that in,
I 100% try to make the effort.
So that kind of leads into my first point.
My first point is, transitions are more than just
fancy edits and ways to make your footage look better.
Absolutely, that's what they do, but to get the most
out of your transitions and to make them feel intentional
and to make them feel like you meant to do it,
and they're perfectly suited for each other,
you gotta think ahead of time, you gotta shoot to edit.
Now I've talked about this before.
You gotta plan those shots,
you gotta shoot the transitional clips ahead of time
so when you bring those into post
and actually start editing them,
and adding the transitions into those two clips,
you're gonna get, it's like, aagh,
you're gonna get such a better result
because you planned for that transition.
It's not just finding two clips that happen to work together
and you're like, oh, sic, yeah, that worked out.
And sometimes that happens, but if it worked out because
you shot certain clips to do so certain transitions with,
it's gonna be that, so, so much better, okay?
Now before we get into the actual tutorial
of how these transitions work, it's important to talk about
screen direction and movement,
because there's ways to transition clips
without actually adding an edit into them.
So when we're gonna do Masking or FrameBlocking,
we have to actually go into that clip
and mask out clips underneath and then move things around
and actually edit the footage.
But before we even get into the editing,
like the meat of it, you can still get great transitions
just by matching clips together
or matching screen direction.
So if there's a car moving to the right,
the next clip might be someone running to the right.
And the next clip after that might be
something else moving to the right,
but if you transition those clips properly
between each other, and you carry out that screen direction
where all the movement is going one way,
those are still transitions, you're still keeping in mind,
you're still editing with that intentionality,
so that when people watch your films and your videos,
it feels cohesive,
it feels like there was thought put into it.
They might not subconsciously pick up on it,
some people might, but if they don't, it's still,
it's an easier watch, it's a better watch.
So not all transitions are fancy camera moves
or fancy editing techniques,
sometimes it's just putting the thought into
how you're gonna piece those clips together.
So screen direction,
and the way clips move in and out of each other,
using intentional shots, that's as every bit important
as actually learning how to edit in transitions in post.
The two things need to work together to get the best result,
essentially, is what I'm saying.
So, now that that's out of the way, let's move on.
So what Masking and FrameBlocking transitions
are really good at is making an edit feel
really just seamless.
Instead of just one clip whipping into the next clip,
which starts with the whipping,
of being able to Mask that out,
just makes it a lot more like,
whoa, it just flows real nice
and then give it as just like a nice flow
opposed to some turbulence in that flow.
We wanna remove all the turbulence
and sometimes adding these types of transitions
just smooth it out for a much less bumpy viewing experience.
No seatbelt required.
Now, if you're gonna do the FrameBlocking,
you have to shoot something that's in front of the Frame
so that you can actually Mask it out.
You gotta keep that in mind.
So it could be someone walking by,
it could be an object that is just Blocking,
where the term comes from, the Frame,
and you pan through it so that it is essentially
the divider that moves across the Frame.
That's the focus point, that's the anchor.
That's what we're gonna use to blend away,
so that we see the clip beneath.
So when you're shooting, you gotta keep that in mind.
You gotta look for those things.
Maybe it's a telephone pole,
maybe it's a car that drives by the Frame
and completely blocks the Frame, like that,
but you want something that goes right in front
that you can Mask away, that's the kind of thing
you wanna look for when you're shooting.
So if we're in my office, for example, right now,
and we just wanna hand-hold a clip,
just for explanational purposes,
and let's say we start the clip moving to the right,
and then we film another clip,
if we just put those two clips together,
you can see how it doesn't seamlessly, it's just not,
it works, but it's whatever, it's forgettable.
You're not gonna think anything about it.
But if we FrameBlock
and we move the camera in front of something
and then the next clip,
we continue that transitional movement,
but now we're gonna Mask away that first clip
to reveal what's underneath,
look how much better that clip looks now
as a seamless, just cohesive, saying that a lot today,
but it's the best way to describe it,
but look how much better that looks.
It looks so much better, it's visually appealing,
it makes the edit flow,
you don't feel like anything is broken or skipped,
nothing like that, it just works.
So let's get into how we can do that in Premiere Pro.
Okay, so let's jump into Premiere.
This is how we're gonna do this.
We're gonna be using this clip
and it's going to Mask into this clip.
Now, how do we do that?
Well, by creating a Mask.
But this kinda goes back to what I was saying originally,
when you need to make sure
that you shoot these types of clips
so that they work for you when you're editing
versus just trying to find something
through stuff that you've already shot or old clips.
And if you go and shoot intentionally
to make this transition, it's gonna be way, way easier.
What I mean by that is this clip here
is what I shot at the Brewery.
I went from the left side of this Control panel,
panned to the right side and made sure
that it passed in front of the Frame completely
so that I could Mask out this section
and put a different clip underneath, okay?
And that's what we've done when you see the clip here.
All right, so how do we do that, pretty easy.
We're gonna go to the first frame,
where you see that right side starting to peek through,
which is right there, and you're gonna cut right there.
Let's zoom in on this.
So that is the first frame we're gonna do.
So make sure that your screen size down here is set to
about 75% so you have a little bit of room to work,
and then come over to Effect Controls,
and select the Free Draw Bezier,
and what you're gonna do is you're gonna make a little shape
around that little sliver of life that we see there,
boom, just like that, and come over back over here,
click Invert, and then we're gonna toggle
Mask Path, Feather, Opacity, and Expansion.
Now essentially what those do,
if you keep your eyes on the right side there,
if we move Mask Expansion, see how it whoop,
makes it a little bit bigger,
so we can kinda play with that,
expand that a little bit more.
We can Feather those edges so that it's not so harsh.
We can expand it ever so slightly more
so that it's nice and covered.
And just like that,
that is our first Frame of this section Masked out.
Now what we need to do is come over at this point,
and select this little Play button that says,
Track Selected Mask Forward One Frame.
We're gonna do this Frame by Frame by Frame
until the whole clip is masked out.
All right, so with that being done,
make sure this is selected,
make sure your Mask is selected up here.
And then what I like to do is just go back a Frame
to make sure I can see it, and I can go forward,
and then I like to click so I can get that Mask back.
Now you're just gonna drag it back up
and you're gonna make a new shape.
You can do that by adding a new Pen Point here.
It's just your cursor right here, if you select this,
it gives you another Pen tool,
and we can click another point and drag that back up,
drag this back down.
I like to just pull this back a little bit,
just so I can see where that edge is
to make sure it lines up nice.
Same thing with the top corner,
make sure that lines up nice.
Boom, happy with that.
And we're gonna track forward one Frame.
Go back down here to the Timeline,
make sure that's selected, and go back a Frame to see.
Go forward one more Frame, come up,
actually click on the window, which selects the Mask.
And then we can drag that over.
So essentially, we're just adjusting this,
dragging this out, these little handlebars here
tweak the roundness and stuff like that.
So if you've got a shape that's curvy,
or you're masking something out
that isn't just a straight line,
you can use the Pen tool to really kind of curve,
and get jagged lines and stuff like that,
so it's really, really helpful.
But again, we're just gonna peel this back,
make sure that everything is selected nice and neat.
And same thing, I'm happy with that.
And we can track forward one more Frame.
Go back, make sure that looks good.
Forward again, come back up here.
Click on the Mask.
And drag that out to continue masking out this clip.
Make sure that corner is not cutting in.
We want that whole Frame to be selected, so we're good.
And we Mask forward one Frame.
Make sure it looks good by checking, go back,
select your Mask
and drag that out to continue masking.
Okay, and you do this, basically,
for the entire thing until it's done.
Now if you did make any mistakes,
you can always come back and you can look.
Like, see right down in here,
there's a little bit of a hole there.
I can select this, make sure Mask is selected over here,
and you can just adjust that.
You can bring it a little bit back,
you can bring it a little bit forward,
to make sure it's good
and then you can check that out again.
Then you can Frame by Frame to make sure it looks good.
And once you're happy with that,
you can select and you can change that Mask at any time.
So once you've done the whole thing,
it should look something like this, let's disable that,
once you've done the whole thing,
every Frame should be masked out so that the whole clip
just goes black and then at the very end,
your Mask covers the entire Frame.
So when you enable the clip underneath it, essentially,
you've got a beautiful new FrameBlocked transition.
All right, another really easy transition to do,
and this one doesn't take a lot of work,
it's just panning into that is the same color
and panning out of something that's the same color.
So a lot of the times, I'll do this with black.
I'll pan into someone's shirt,
and then all I have to do for the next clip
is start somewhere that's black, and pan away.
So when you add those two clips together,
it looks like this weird transition just happened
and you think to yourself, well how did that, that's cool.
You don't necessarily pick up on it,
but it's just another really, really cool way
of seamlessly blending clips together.
The same thing is done,
which you guy see a lot of probably, on YouTube,
is when someone puts their hand on the lens
and then they come away in a different area.
That's the same thing, all you're gonna do is
put your hand up to the lens, and then you're gonna go
to wherever you're gonna go, you put your hand back
on the lens to start the clip, take it off,
and when you edit those two clips together, boom,
it just looks like you put your hand up to the camera
and you're suddenly in a new place.
The same thing goes for the whip transitions.
If you just hold the camera,
and you whip around to your left,
and then wherever you're going, you get to your spot,
you begin that clip by continuing a whip to the left,
and then you cut those two frames together in post.
The same thing goes for when I do the transitions
where I move the camera down and I start the clip
doing the same thing, I prefer that one,
because I can add a little body motion to it.
I feel like it looks more realistic,
like I just actually landed in some clip.
The downwards motion combined with my acting skills,
they're not very good, but (laughs) whatever, it works.
It just adds for a more enjoyable experience
when you're watching, it's just one of those things
that you're like, oh that was cool.
It kinda looks like this.
♫ So gone in you
- But you can see how my body reacting to the transition
kind of introduces a new dynamic
that goes beyond just that of an edit.
Now it's kind of like I was physically affected
by the transition that happened in post.
You guys know what I mean?
It's like you went one step further,
and instead of just visually watching something happen,
that transition actually affected what was on the screen.
That's why I prefer to do it that way.
So that's it for me today, guys.
I hope you guys enjoyed this tutorial
and got something out of it.
There's a lot of really good information in this video.
It's a lot of stuff that I'm really proud of,
it's a lot of stuff that I feel
is important that you guys learn.
It's not stuff that I invented.
I did not create FrameBlocking or Masking.
That is not, it's an old technique that's been used
by so many filmmakers and so many filmmakers
and content creators teach it and use it because
it's awesome, so you should be doing it too,
because it will help improve your films 100%.
If you use it the right way.
So hopefully you get something out this insight.
If you did, hit that Like button, show me some love.
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trying to ramp up the, you know, trying to ramp up
the amount of videos that I'm posting for you guys.
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And other than that, I will see you guys,
hang on let's rewind, I did that wrong.
And, and, I will see you guys in the next video.
Thank you for watching.
Still missing my hat, we'll use my sweater.
♫ Fallin', I'm fallin'
♫ I'm fallin' I'm fallin' for you
♫ I'm fallin' for you
♫ I'm so gone, I'm so gone
♫ I'm so gone, I'm so gone in you
♫ I'm fallin', I'm fallin'
♫ I'm fallin', I'm fallin' for you
♫ Fallin' for you
♫ I'm so gone, I'm so gone
♫ I'm so gone, I'm gone in you