Creating an Epic Sky Transition in Premiere Pro CC

Gone are the days when Premiere Pro was just a basic video editor with a bunch of pre-made effects and transitions, and some simple color grading tools on top. Today it’s not only one of the most powerful NLEs in the world that boasts some impressive color grading capabilities as well, but also provides a plethora of fantastic tools and assets that can take your creativity to a whole new level.

The next custom video transition showcased by Kyler Holland is a brilliant example in that regard. In the video below we’ll find out how you can create a stunning sky transition that could impress even the most difficult and demanding customers you have.

Keep in mind, though, that this effect would work best only when you have a similar element in the shots that you want to blend like the sky in the given example. Once you have all the clips on your timeline, select the point in your first video where you want to start the transition.

Then drag the second clip over the top of the first one just as shown in the video tutorial above. Change the rotation to 180 degrees to flip the second clip upside down. Now, by creating a few Position keyframes in the Effects Panel, you can animate the transition itself. Optionally, you can right-click on each of the two keyframes to smooth out the transition further by using the Temporal Interpolation method.

Finally, you have to blend both layers and make the hard line between them disappear. To do so, select the top clip, go to Opacity and create a 4-point polygon mask. Drag it to the crossing line between the two clips and make sure it’s covered from end to end by dragging the handles of the mask that you’ve just created.

Within the Opacity tab, change the Mask Feather to 150 and then enable the Invert mode.

Now that you have both layers blended with the seamless transition in the middle, you can tweak the scaling and rotation of the second clip further to add some extra motion to the overall composition and then build on from there by throwing in more layers while using the same technique.

The more clips you add, the more complex and appealing your sequence would look like. All in all, you can use this transition for a wide variety of creative applications such as title sequences, commercials, experimental films, music videos and everything in between.

[source: Kyler Holland]

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