Vignette Skills Development

1. After Effects: Vignette
Hayley McCarthy

2. Due to the alpha layer of the double exposure, this created a transparent background which appeared as black. The overlaid footage here was shot at night, creating a very low contrast between the footage and the background which is unsuitable for this double exposure effect. Instead of having a plain coloured background which can make the footage appear quite flat, I wanted to add a vignette to this layer which will draw focus to the centre of the frame.
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3. After creating the solid layer, I edited the ‘Solid Settings’ to create a light cream background which will contrast against the predominantly black mask. In this particular footage, when the lightning appears, the purple colour is complimentary to the cream (in the yellow spectrum) which lead my choice.
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4. Here is the result of the solid background. This layer was placed at the bottom of the sequence to form a background, which is only visible due to the alpha layer (transparency) of the footage above, created through keying out the background of the green screen footage when creating the double exposure effect. Whilst this does contrast against the double exposure footage, it does appear flat, so I used a vignette to add depth to the sequence.
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5. In order to create the vignette, I added a solid black layer using the same technique outlined in the addition of the cream layer. I placed this layer at the top, so the vignette will be visible when working.
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6. Selecting the solid black layer, I then used the Ellipse Tool found in the Shape Menu. By having a layer selected, when the shape is drawn this creates a mask rather than a shape which can be used in animation for example.
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7. By double clicking on the Ellipse Tool, a circle is drawn which fills the screen to hit each midpoint of the sides. This oval mask will become the vignette.
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8. Changing the layer mask to ‘Subtract’ removes the area selected by the mask, in this case the centre of the ellipsis. Had I selected ‘Inverted’ this would have deleted the area outside of the ellipsis, in this case the four corners. This is very similar to the selection tool in Photoshop. As this layer is on top, this creates a harsh black frame around the footage.
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9. To remove the harshness of this mask and create a soft vignette, I edited the Mask Feather and the Mask Opacity to form a gradual gradient.
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