artbeats - vignettes

7/28/2019 Artbeats - Vignettes

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Vignettesby Chris & Trish Meyer, Crish Design

(formerly known as CyberMotion)

Techniques for artfully focusing a

viewers attention.

Tips & Tricks

More available at artbeats.com

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A popular technique is to create a vignette. Often as-sociated with very old footage where the brightnessfalls off as you near the corners of the frame, vi-

gnettes can also be used creatively to draw a viewersfocus to a particular area of the screen. In this article,well discuss several different approaches to creatingvignettes in a program such as Adobe After Effects.

Vignettes Using MasksThe most common way to create a vignette in anumber of different programs is to create a full-frameblack solid, and create an oval or rectangular shapedmask either in the middle of the frame, or aroundwhere the point of interest will be in the underlyingfootage. Invert the mask so that the area inside theoval is transparent, and increase the feather amount

on the mask to create a nice fall-off from the trans-parent center to the black edges. If necessary, adjustthe size of the mask to compensate for how the feath-ering eats away at the transparent center; in AfterEffects, there is a parameter called Mask Expansionthat allows you to control this effect without editingthe mask shape itself.

Then, adjust the transparency (opacity) of this layerto control how dark the edges are in the nal compos-ite. Note that you can also create more than one mask

Figure 1: In the original footage (a), the sequined shawls in the backgro

compete with the actor for attention. We created a black solid, added an

oval mask around the actor (b), inverted and feathered the mask, and dia

back the black solids opacity (c) to reduce the emphasis on the backgrou

and draw attention to the actor (d). Note that in a widescreen format,

framing your point of interest to one side leaves space on the other side t

add text overlays; adding a vignette will make the text more readable. Cl

FWR132H from the Artbeats collection Faces of the World HD.

Figure 1b

gure 1a

Figure 1c

Figure 1d


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Figure 3: Apples Motion also has simple shape layers: Look for the Crea

section of its toolbar. You can edit the gradient under Inspector > Shape

Fill tab.

Tips & Tricks


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Figure 3

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Using a Shape Layer plus the Gradient Editor al-lows you much ner control over deciding how yourvignette falls off compared with the normal Mask

Feather parameter; you can even click between Opac-ity Stops to create new stops. The downside of usinga Shape Layer is that a gradient must be a perfectcircle; with the classic mask approach, you can drawany shape you like. You can work around this by scal-ing the Shape Layer, but its admittedly clumsy.

Vignettes Using PaintSometimes you will have more complicated sourcefootage where the point of interest cannot be dene

with a simple feathered oval or circular shape. Al-though you could always draw a complex mask shapwith the Pen tool in After Effects, lets look at how ymight use the paint tools inside of a program like AfEffects (or Motion) to create a vignette with a morecomplex shape.

If you thought masking blind in the Classic Vignettetechnique was difcult, its even harder to paint blinSo rather than starting with a black solid, instead doble-click on your layer in an After Effects compositioto open its Layer panel (painting may only take placin the Layer panel not the Comp panel). Select theEraser (not Paint!) tool; the Paint and Brushes panewill automatically open. In the Paint panel, make suChannels is set to RGBA, Duration to Constant, andErase to Layer Source & Paint. Next, in the Brushespanel, set the Diameter (brush size) and Roundness(feather) to taste. (If youre not happy with a strokeyou can always Undo, or even better: edit your set-tings per stroke after the fact in the Timeline panel.Then start drawing your strokes in the Layer panel,blotting out the areas of the original image that youwant to be unaffected by the vignette.

Once youre nished, re-select the layer you paintedon and press E to reveal the Paint effect. Select anCut it. Then create a full-frame black solid, and pastthe Paint effect onto this solid. It will now behave lika classic vignette with a complex mask; as before,reduce the solid layers Opacity to alter the strengththe vignette.


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Tips & Tricks


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Figure 4: Select the Eraser tool in After Effects, and set up the Paint optias seen here (a). Choose a large, soft brush, and start erasing the area of

terest of the source footage in the Layer panel (b). Once done, cut the Pa

effect from the source footage layer, and paste it onto a full-frame black s

or shape layer, setting the layers Opacity to taste (c). Note that we painte

hold outs for both the monk and the statue in the source footage (d). C

FWR110H from the Artbeats collection Faces of the World HD.

Figure 4a

gure 4b

gure 4c

Figure 4d

Vignettes Using Effects

All of the above vignette techniques require two layers. Thats often not a problem, but occasionally youwill nd yourself in a situation where your source foage is being moved, scaled, and the such and youneed your vignette to move with it. You could parenthe two together, or you can use the following niftylittle trick employing the Circle effect, creating thevignette directly on the source video layer:

Select your source footage and apply Generate >Circle. Make sure the Effect Controls panel is visible(the shortcut is F3), enable the Invert Circle option,change the Color to black, and set the Blending Mod

to Normal (rather than the default of None). Edit theCenter coordinates to pick the center of your pointof interest, and increase the Radius to set the size oyour point of interest. Then twirl down the Feathersection and increase the Feather Outer Edge value tset the softness of the transition. Finally, scrub Circlown Opacity value to control the depth of the vigneteffect without altering the opacity of the overall laye

Now that youve created a vignette effect, save this an Animation Preset so you can reuse it in the futurwith only minor tweaks required.


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Tips & Tricks


fgure 4

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gure 5a

gure 5b

gure 5c

Figure 5: Say that we want to focus our storytelling on the girl in the

foreground (a) and we want to do it without extra layers complicating

composition. In After Effects, you can apply the Circle effect, and edit its

rameters (b) to create a vignette overlay on the footage itself (c). Clip FLfrom the Artbeats collection Family Life.

Vignettes Through LightingTheres one more trick for creating vignettes, whichwe outlined in a previous article: Using 3D lights. Ifyou aim a spot or point light at a piece of footage, tarea where it is aimed or centered over will be thebrightest, and areas further away will fall off into daness. This is a great way to re-light footage after t

fact. Rather than repeat the detailed steps here, takan extra moment and read Relighting Footage:http://www.artbeats.com/assets/articles/pdf/relighting_footage.

Figure 6a

Figure 6b
http://www.artbeats.com/assets/articles/pdf/relighting_footage.pdfhttp://www.artbeats.com/assets/articles/pdf/relighting_footage.pdf


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Tips & Tricks


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Zooming OutIn this article, we shared a variety of techniques forcreating basic vignettes. If youre thinking to yourselfokay, ne but Ill only use that occasionally thenmake sure you check out the following article, whichshows how to extend these basic techniques to selec-tively add effects, as well as blend together differentpieces of footage.

###Chris and Trish Meyer are the founders and ownersof Crish Design, an award-winning motion graphicsstudio that has created a wide variety of work for lm,

broadcast, corporate events, and special venues. Theyare one of the original development sites for After Ef-fects, and have two books currently in print: CreatingMotion Graphics and After Effects Apprentice.

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