Special FX Tutorials

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Laser Beam

Description:

You need a laser beam shooting from a ray gun, how do you do it?

Production:

Shoot your clip with the camera locked off, it is harder to add SFX when the camera is moving.

Digital Editing:

Draw a line via the title section of Premiere and superimpose it on an 'S' track and then alter the fade levels for transparency and to make it appear and disappear.

Another way is to create the beam in a 3d program which will animate it as well.

Computerless Editing:

Draw a line on a pice of white paper and use a video camera and the Down Stream Key (DSK) on the vision mixer to key the beam over the shot. What this means is the mixer will only select the black line, superimposing it over the camera/video footage so you can still see the actors underneath.

This is a lot harder than using a NLE computer as you have to line up the start point and end point for your laser beam. manually

Misc. Notes:

Many of the laser beams in 70's TV shows such as "Dr Who" and "Blakes 7" used this technique

Before computers SFX designers would either hand animate a laser beam or mix in some art footage for the beam.

Internet links:

Back to Index	Laser Beam
	Description: You need a laser beam shooting from a ray gun, how do you do it?
	Production: Shoot your clip with the camera locked off, it is harder to add SFX when the camera is moving.
	Digital Editing: Draw a line via the title section of Premiere and superimpose it on an 'S' track and then alter the fade levels for transparency and to make it appear and disappear. Another way is to create the beam in a 3d program which will animate it as well.
	Computerless Editing: Draw a line on a pice of white paper and use a video camera and the Down Stream Key (DSK) on the vision mixer to key the beam over the shot. What this means is the mixer will only select the black line, superimposing it over the camera/video footage so you can still see the actors underneath. This is a lot harder than using a NLE computer as you have to line up the start point and end point for your laser beam. manually
	Misc. Notes: Many of the laser beams in 70's TV shows such as "Dr Who" and "Blakes 7" used this technique Before computers SFX designers would either hand animate a laser beam or mix in some art footage for the beam.
	Internet links: