Hey guys!
I hope you are all having a great day today. Today we’re going to learn how to create this
cool little foreground wipe transition that Mr. Kolder used in his memories of Saudi video. It
is a fairly easy one, it looks good, and it could be a nice addition to your next video.
So I’ve used this type of masking transition in two of my films, one in my Papua New Guinea video,
right here, and one in my Sri Lanka video, which happens right here.
The hardest thing about making these kind of transitions is just spotting opportune
sections in your footage where you can create them. The best thing to do is to keep ideas for
transitions like this in mind while filming. I assume Sam did this. He probably shot this
fire cave shot with that in mind. He knew he would do some sort of wipe or an easy camera
blocking transition with the fire and torch, so he has the person filming record, he swings
the torch and fire in front of the camera and enters the frame and continues down the cave.
Okay so let’s learn how to do it in the editing room. So I have my two shots here.
The second shot is not perfect by any means. I was shooting manual and as you can see,
my shot isn’t even in focus until about right here, and even then, it’s not in focus. But, these
shots are going to flash by quickly so it won’t be all that noticeable and it’ll do for this example.
The important thing about this shot though is that something comes into frame and covers nearly all
of the frame, that being his arm in this instance. I ended up just using the shot until his wrist
came into focus so I’ll make a cut here just to show this example and I have these last two clips
just to finish the sequence. We won’t touch those and they’re not really needed for the example.
Because some of his arm is already in frame and to make my masking job easier,
I’m going to scale in until most or all of his arm
is out of frame and also to get rid of my dumb finger or arm right here.
The next thing I’m going to do is speed ramp the beginning of the clip. Since I shot in slow
motion, I dont want his arm to be moving slowly into the frame. That doesn’t look good and it
would take longer to mask. So I’m going to find the point I want the point that I want things to
start slowing down again, press shift B, and increase the speed to a point I think
looks good. I don’t want it to come by to quick, so about 2 times speed should work.
After you’ve played around with the speed of your shots, head to the effects browser
and grab the draw mask effect, tool, whatever you want to call it. Drag it
onto your second clip and start making the outline selection of the area. Hold down
command and drag to curve your point. Dragging these points will give you a broader curve.
Once you’ve drawn your mask, that section should turn black. Basically you cut a hole in your
video. Now we want to animate that cut out section so it follows the mans arm as it comes into frame.
Click original so we can see what we’re doing,
and not just animate the mask blindly. Also make sure to press the keyframe buttons under
‘transform’ and ‘control points’ are pressed so our adjustments are saved.
What I do when masking is skip 2 or 3 frames, and adjust the mask,
skip 3 frames and adjust. Final cut pro calculates the path of your mask and moves it for you,
but it’s not always perfect. Basically once I get to the end, I’ll go back and make
minor adjustments to the mask to make sure it’s lined up. Feather and mention dumb hand in way
After that, we’ll click composite, I’ll place the second shot over top of the first shot and
add a gap underneath the clip so my magnetic timelines doesn’t take over here. The next
thing I’ll do is feather the shot so the lines aren’t so harsh. Feathering just adds
some gradualness to the edges of your mask. Just find the amount of feather that looks
best for your shot. I ended up making some extra minor adjustments to the mask because
I wasn’t totally satisfied. I also added a shape mask to bring down the color and
exposure of my dumb arm that got in the way so it doesn’t distract the viewer.
To blend these two shots together a little better,
I’m going to match the out of focusedness of the first shot by adding a gaussian blur and
having it gradually get blurrier when the second shot comes over top of the frame.
Add some sound effects and you’re done!
I hope you guys enjoyed this video. I’ll put another transition tutorial from one of Sam’s
films below if you guys want to learn some more. I hope you guys will consider
subscribing if you want to become a better creator and enjoy your time doing so in the
process. Press the like button if the video helped you out, and I will see
you next week for another video. Have a great day peeps!