Hello everyone, I’m Zach and welcome back to another HitFilm tutorial.
Today I’ll be showing you how to create this slow-motion effect inspired by The Flash
from Zack Snyder’s Justice League. You can find the project files for this
effect in the video description if you’d like to follow along.
The most important step when recording your footage for this effect is to record using a
high frame rate. Instead of the usual 24 or 30 frames per second, I would recommend at least
60 or even 120 fps for a super smooth slow-mo effect. This footage was recorded in front of a
greenscreen to make it easier to place various effects on the background behind the actor.
I’ve already gone ahead and keyed out the greenscreen.
One iconic part of the Justice League Flash effect is lightning bolts. Lots of lightning bolts.
Create a new black plane and add the Lightning and Electricity effect, setting the layer’s Blend Mode
to Add. Move the Start and End points to position your lightning bolt, then remove all the Branches.
Also remove the built-in glow; we’ll get a better-looking result if we stack
some custom glows later on. Goodbye built-in glow. You won’t be missed.
Animate the End Growth from 0 to 1 to make it quickly appear,
then animate the Core Opacity and Feather to fade out the bolt after a few frames.
Customize the various Lightning parameters such as Width, Seed,
Wave Scale, and Twitch Scale, then reduce the Speed and Jitter of the Animation.
Duplicate this Lightning effect multiple times, changing the Seed to produce a unique look for
each bolt. Move the keyframes on the timeline so the lightning strikes at a different time.
To make this lightning look much more interesting and less CG,
I’ll start by adding an Energy Distortion effect, followed by a Zoom Blur.
The Zoom Blur almost fakes the appearance of motion blur.
I’ll stack up a few Glow Effects, then add even more Energy and Heat Distortion effects.
I’ll add another Zoom Blur, a Curves effect to adjust the brightness and color,
and end with a Chromatic Aberration effect.
Remember to reduce the speed on any distortion effects to keep the smooth slow-mo look. If
you disable and re-enable these effects, you can see what a difference it makes to the lightning.
To integrate the lightning into the scene better, I want there to be some distortion on
the background. Make this lightning into its own Composite Shot, moving the effects with the layer.
Drag this lightning comp into another new comp and add a heavy Blur effect.
Also add a Demult effect as we need the background to be transparent.
Bring this comp back onto our main timeline.
If you set the Blend Mode to Screen and lower the Opacity,
this layer can also act as an additional glow. Add a Heat Distortion effect to the
background layer, reducing the detail in the distortion’s noise and slowing it down.
Select the blurred lightning as the mask. We now have some interesting interaction
between the lightning bolts and the background. To further match the look of the Justice League,
I’ll add a Zoom Blur effect and some strong Chromatic Aberration.
While it may have looked super cool to have Tom actually throw a Batarang prop at Sarah
in slow motion, we decided it would be safer to use a 3D model instead.
I created this Batarang, or, FXarang, using Blender. There are various other
tutorials on YouTube showing how to turn a logo into a 3D model, which you can find in
the description. Importing the model into HitFilm, I set up the materials to look
like metal using the Metallic-Roughness shader and some image textures from CC0 Textures.com.
Make sure to set the Metallic Strength to 100 and to increase the Roughness Strength.
Turn up the Reflectivity settings to see some reflections on the model.
Drag the model onto the timeline, and adjust the Orientation controls for the initial alignment.
Then animate the position and rotation to make it slowly fly across the screen.
Add in some lights to match the real lighting in your footage and background,
then use some additional lights with the Intensity animated
to add blue flashes whenever a lightning bolt is on screen.
Also make sure to choose an Environment Map, enable reflections, and enable Ambient Occlusion.
Check out the tutorial in the card onscreen for more information on
working with 3D models in HitFilm. Since this object is closer to the camera,
I’ll add a Lens Blur effect to make it appear out of focus. Set the Source
Channel to Full On to apply the effect at full strength across the whole layer.
When you are happy with your model, duplicate the layer and add the Motion Trails effect to
the lower layer. This effect can be quite slow to render, so I’d suggest replacing the Lens Blur
with a regular Blur, and disabling reflections and Ambient Occlusion on this model layer.
Set the Blend Mode to Screen, and add some Heat Distortion and Chromatic Aberration.
Now we have a cool ghosting effect on our moving object.
To add more interest and movement to the shot, we can use the Particle Simulator to
create some slow-motion spark explosions. I started with the built-in Sparks preset,
then deleted the Sparks particle system leaving only the Stars.
I adjusted the speed settings to make the particles much slower,
scaled them down, and extended their lifetime so they would stay on screen longer.
I also added a force to act as gravity, then increased the number of particles.
Position the particle effect over one of the lightning strikes,
then adjust the emitter’s trajectory to fire the sparks in the desired direction.
If your background is very out of focus like mine,
add a Lens-Blur effect to the sparks to make them more realistic.
Let’s add some light flares flashing along with
our lightning to add even more energy and detail to the shot.
I ended up using the Custom Light Flares effect in addition to the regular Light Flares effect.
For the regular flare, I used the Chromatic Hoop type with the hotspot brightness turned down
as I was only interested in the rainbow hoop. I also softened it with a Diffuse effect.
For the Custom Flare I actually used the default preset but removed the Rays and Iris as I just
wanted a blue glow. Position these flares just outside of the frame where the lightning is,
then adjust the Pivot Position to make the rainbow hoop appear.
Animate the flare intensity to flash with the lightning,
then duplicate the layer, move it along the timeline to the next lightning strike,
and reposition the flares.
You may be tempted to dial in the exact color of your effects now,
but it’s important to keep in mind how they will look once the final color grade is applied.
I’ll bring in the grade that I created for the final shot. The final look was created using a
few Curves effects and a Bleach Bypass to adjust the color and add contrast.
The Curves make the footage a lot more green,
resulting in the lightning appearing more cyan. To make the scene a little more blue,
I added a Blue Plane with a Blend Mode of Soft Light, set to a low opacity.
To finish off the shot, I added a subtle and slow Shake effect,
even more Chromatic Aberration, Lens Dirt, Lens Distort, and Film Grain.
And that’s how you can create your own Justice League Flash VFX
in HitFilm! Feel free to explore the project file provided in the video description and to
leave a comment if you have any questions or if you learned something new. Don’t forget to
check out our other Justice League tutorials, including Cyborg and Superman Heat Vision.
Subscribe for more tutorials like this, and be sure to give this video a like. See you next time!