Whenever I see a cool effect in a movie I always assume that it's too complicated for a VFX noob like me to tackle—and most of the time I'm right on the money, but sometimes I'm dead wrong. While many effects are going to take a lot of time, work, money, and experience to pull off, you'd be surprised at how many you can do with very little know-how or time commitment. In this video from Film Riot, host Ryan Connolly shows you how to create three very cool, very crazy, very simple visual effects using some clever camera tricks and a few tools in post. Check out the tutorial below:

I love these effects. Let's get that out of the way right now. The fact that the Film Riot team not only managed to recreate the "psionic blast" effect using the same techniques Logan VFX Supervisor Chas Jarrett used in the film, but managed to also replicate the look completely in-camera using a handheld massager is thoroughly exciting, because that means any one of us can do it.

For those without much VFX experience, that practical effect may be the one you can immediately add to your arsenal, but the other two that require some post work aren't so complicated that you won't be able to handle them. Get yourself acquainted with Warp Stabilizer, which is easy enough because once you take care of a few settings it kind of does its thing on its own—for the most part. It's a powerful tool that works great for stabilizing shaky footage, but once you understand how to control it, you can use it creatively for visual effects like this.

Source: Film Riot

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Editing & Post-ProductionCinematography & Cameras