Force Push Tutorial (first person)

Alright, so today I'm going to be talking about a force push effect that I did for my Star Wars Saber Duels video back in 2016. This is a pretty simple effect that you can do all in After Effects and without any third-party plugins. So here's that effect really quick so you know what I'm talking about. Okay, as you just saw this is an effect for a first-person video so you're probably going to be using an action camera like GoPro or an Osmo. I used the GoPro Hero 3 Black Edition way back in 2016 so that's why the footage looks a little dated. But okay, so first things first you're gonna have to shoot your footage of course and I shot three different clips. For the first clip I took my GoPro and mounted it to a monopod, held it about eye level, ran up to the actor playing Kylo Ren and stopped suddenly like they stopped me with the force and then as they raised their arm like they were raising me up I raised up the monopod slowly up as high as I could go above my head then they acted out the force push and as they did that and kept their hand there I walked backwards slowly while I lowered the monopod and then when I got as far away as I wanted to be I jammed the monopod into the ground and whipped the GoPro back getting some motion blur in there so that I can transition from the first clip to the second clip. Then for the second clip I took the GoPro and mounted it to my head. You can do that with a head strap or if you don't have a head strap you can use a really cool children's bicycle helmet that doesn't fit your head properly if you have one lying around. But so as I was doing the transition from the monopod to the head mount I made sure that the actor kept their hand in the same place from when they did the force push kept their arm in the same place they were standing in the same place so that I can match up perfectly to the second clip. After I had the GoPro mounted to my head and made sure I was standing in the same place where the monopod went into the ground I just simply threw myself on the ground whipped my head back and there you go that's the transition from the first clip to second clip. And then for the third and final clip I shot my hands holding a lightsaber in front of a green screen and then layered that over the top of the monopod footage. But first we're going to jump into After Effects and I'm going to show you how I piece the first and second clip together because it makes it a lot easier when you watch that footage as you're recording your green screen plate so it matches up perfectly. All right so I have After Effects open now and I've imported the monopod clip and the head mount clip. I'm going to create a new composition just call it final effect make it 1920 by 1080 drag down the monopod clip trim that do it right about when I start running up to Kylo Ren just for the sake of the tutorial just to show you the part where I'm going to do the effect on it and then trim it at the end to right where there's a good motion blur spot. Next I'm going to make another cut right when Kylo Ren does the push so right there I'm going to add a time stretch I found about 22 was good for my clip yours will vary depending on how fast you walked back or the speed of the the effect that you want. Okay so so far it looks like this absolute trash just awful okay so we're going to add warp stabilizer to the bottom clip the part where I'm flying through the air I just leave it at 50% smoothness don't touch anything else just let that analyze really quick okay warp stabilizer is done analyzing now it looks like that so warp stabilizer rescaled the image so I'm going to have to align both of these clips I shot in 2k so I knew I was going to upload in 1080 so I can move these clips around and reposition them where I need to so what I do is I just extend the top clip a little bit bring it down to 50 opacity so I can see what I'm doing and then the bottom clip just reposition it over there and then I can scale up the top clip to match it so that right there should be good enough bring the opacity back to 100 and there you go this is looking pretty good okay the only thing is see right there his head goes out of frame so you can just position your clip if that happens right about here I'll just bring it down just to make sure that he stays in the frame there you go all right this looks good looks real good okay now we can bring in the head mount clip drag that down just clip that out there and just there so remember when I said earlier how I wanted to end on a blurry frame so I end here for that clip and then it's transitioning from monopod right here into the head mount so I go through frame by frame to find a good matching motion blur spot of the next clip let's see what that looks like all right and just like that it looks pretty good it's matched up you can't even tell that there's a cut in there look at that okay so now the next effect what we're going to add to this clip the part where you're flying through the air it's going to be cc radial blur it's going to be set to centered zoom I go to the beginning of the clip just keyframe the center point make sure it's on the hand I start at zero the amount go about halfway through I can bring it up to maybe it's like 20 make sure the center is still on the hand so you see what it's doing it's doing this really cool like warp effect to just enhance the feel that you're getting pushed through the air then I bring it up to about 30 just kind of like it's getting more intense as you're getting pushed through the air make sure to recenter the effect okay let's see what that looks like that looks so good okay and then what I like to do is put another radial blur on the bottom clip make sure the center is there mount I'm gonna do centered zoom and then just have the amount be the same of what you left off on with this clip and then just start at 30 or wherever like I said start wherever you left off at go through a few frames and just bring it down to zero just so it's a smoother transition and then just make sure the center point it just helps the the two clips blend even better all right that's what we have so far and looks pretty good okay and that's the first part okay so what I do at this point is I record this part with my phone so I can have it some reference footage to watch when I go outside to shoot my green screen footage it really helps matching up the hands and the lightsaber movement of when I run up to Kylo Ren and act like I'm gonna hit him just makes it a lot easier and more seamless to match up the footage together so I'm gonna pre-compose this just call it force push and then bring in the green screen footage create new composition just call this key 1920 by 1080 there we go bring in the green screen footage into the key composition and what I do here is I bring in the final effect composition underneath so that let's turn the audio off so I can see exactly where I need to be just have some reference footage in this composition okay so I went through the green screen clip and clipped it right when I come down with the swing and then I act like I got pushed like my arms get thrown open that really helps sell the effect too okay so now we can key this out you can add key light and so this isn't a green screen tutorial or anything like that I just do it pretty simply I just I drop this screen color and then for screen matte I just clip the black it's about there and that looks fine for me there you go we have a pretty clean key I'll just create a mask here around since my green screen didn't fill up the whole entire frame there we go okay now I dragged the green screen clip over the reference footage and matched it up right where the swing comes down so I move the position of the green screen element around a little bit right there so it matches up okay so this part looks pretty good where I come down with the swing and then get lifted up in the air the next part we're gonna do is right there right when he does the force push what I do is I just keyframe the scale back a few frames and then just bring it up maybe like 120 it should look pretty good there you go see it just looks like my hands move towards the camera and fly open past my chest just adds to the effect okay so now we can delete the reference footage and we just have the green screen plate by itself you can go back into the final effect composition add in our key comp on top and now okay there you go we have a matching green screen element on top of our other two clips matching perfectly right there all right so we're almost done next thing I'm going to do is right here just add a force warping effect as if the power of the force is just warping the air around his hand so what I'll do is add a new adjustment layer just trim that right around this area should be good and then on the adjustment layer I'm gonna add turbulent displace there you go it just warps the whole footage um I'm not gonna get too specific with the settings over here you can mess around with that see what it looks like but let's add our mask real quick so we can adjust it from there do the ellipse tool hold down shift to make a perfect circle I will mask the path of this to enlargen over the course of a few frames as if the force is just extending out and making like a shock wave effect I'll just make it bigger than the frame okay as you can see that's already looking pretty cool it's warping the space around Kylo Ren as he does the effect let's set the feather to about 10 a little more let's see what that looks like but what I like to do to make this look even better is add a second mask inside of the first one that we made I set that to subtract I'll mask this path as well and as the first mask that we created increases I'll increase this one as well but I'll leave it smaller than the first one maybe about there just to so you can see Kylo Ren a little bit more like the area that's being affected is around him because he's pushing it out and let's increase the feather on that one as well 100 all right I think we're almost done yeah it looks good okay that's it only things left to do is add your sound add the lightsaber effect of course I also added some dust impact when I land here add some grunting sounds and after all that it will look like this all right that's it for today's video this is my first After Effects tutorial so hopefully you're able to follow along and that you learn something and you can apply this effect to your future Star Wars films so thank you for watching and I'll see you next time