Seriously, though. Recently, I learned about a very neat transition in Final Cut. Introducing… The Gradient Wipe!

(Disclaimer: Remember when I talked about cheesy transitions? A gradient wipe can be just as cheesy if you overdo it. Don’t.)

Okay, with that out of the way, let’s jump in. First of all, what is a gradient wipe? My local dictionary says nothing on the subject, so you can make up your own definition based on the explanation. Let’s play with a gradient wipe.

Add a gradient wipe between two clips just like you would any other transition. Now, for basic experimentation, find the second clip in your browser and drag it into the slot I’ve pointed out in the picture. Drag the softness slider up a bit, play the video, and you should see something pretty interesting. Here’s what I got:

Gradient Wipe from Phantom Moose Films on Vimeo.

Pretty neat, huh? Let me explain how it works. When you added the clip to the slot, you added a matte. Final Cut uses this matte to decide which areas of the shot to transition first. Darker areas at the beginning, lighter areas last. We can use this to our advantage to make a very artsy transition.

You’re going to need Photoshop or some similar photo editing application for these next examples. Launch Photoshop and create a new image the size of your video. Make sure your foreground and background colors are black and white, then do Filter>Render>Clouds. Save that image and bring it into Final Cut.

Drop your new cloud picture into the matte slot on your gradient wipe. Play it and see what happened. Here’s mine:

Cloud Gradient Wipe from Phantom Moose Films on Vimeo.

Let’s make this even more interesting. Remember the movie National Treasure? When Riley is explaining to Ben the security surrounding the Declaration of Independence, there’s a really neat shot of “kids on their eighth grade field trip.” The kids come in first, and then the background fades in behind them.

The filmmakers probably did a lot of motion tracking and matting and such to pull off this shot. Here’s a low-budget/lower-time way to get the same effect with a gradient wipe.

First, shoot some video of your people walking in front of something. Plan ahead more than I did and make sure they stand out against the background. The key to making this work without too much hassle is to have your subject stay still for a few seconds before they start to move.

Bring that video into Final Cut, and then export a frame of the part where your subject is standing still. Open the image in Photoshop.

Do a nice cutout job of your subject and get them on a separate layer. Get rid of the background and make it white. For the foreground, you have two options. You can either shade your subject all black to make them fade in all at once, or, as in the National Treasure effect, paint your subject in gradually lightening shades. Remember, darker fades in first.

Once you’ve saved that, bring it back into Final Cut and drop it in the matte slot. You may have to do some adjustments, but you should come out with something like this:

Complex Gradient Wipe from Phantom Moose Films on Vimeo.

As you can see, the possibilities are nearly endless. If you come up with anything interesting, leave a comment linking to your video. I’d love to see it!

The DV Rebel’s Guide: An All-Digital Approach to Making Killer Action Movies on the Cheap (Paperback)
by Stu Maschwitz
ISBN: 0321413644

Price: USD 31.49
85 used & new available from USD 15.68

Summary

A guide to doing things with your indie film that all other books tell you not to do. You will learn the basics of color correction, the basics of safely using guns, the basics of story, more than the basics of production value, and much more.

The Good

The DV Rebel’s Guide is very easy to read. There’s a lot here and you will likely put the book down with a plan to try almost everything in it.

Editing is introduced well, as is cinematography. I learned some new things about editing, something I tend to read books on and go, “I knew that already.”

This is the only book I’ve read that goes into production value in any depth. The entire first chapter (and the rest of the book) is devoted to this subject. Get that and story down, and you have the “killer action movie” specified on the cover.

The Bad

Occasional mild language. The section about faking a shooting is rather gory, as is the brief bit on blood. Tons of action movies I’d never seen (I likely will never see most of them) are referenced to explain effects.

I walked away from the section on squibs with plans to up the amount of objects destroyed in my next film. Guess that should be in The Good, since that sort of thing is the book’s mission.

Parts I Couldn’t Review

The book is supposed to include a DVD with bonus chapters, After Effects files, Excel spreadsheet calculators, and other stuff. I got the book from the library and they didn’t have the DVD.

Overall

As stated above, the book fulfilled its mission. I’ve been thinking about production value a lot more lately, and I’m excited about the possibilities of effects I had previously ruled out.

Your patience has been rewarded. Here, at long last, is the tower top behind the scenes video.

Behind the Scenes of the iSundae II Tower Top Scene from Phantom Moose Films on Vimeo.

You can also watch the video on YouTube.

This is the last behind the scenes article we have planned. Is there anything that you want to know about from iSundae II? Leave a comment and tell us, and we’ll see if we can accommodate you.