Cheat Sheet for Blowing Things Up

BOMB TUTORIAL CHEAT SHEET

The things he used:

A side fireball

Flames

Debris

Dust wave

Smoke (turned black)

Dust fall (off the ledge)

A flash/glow

When there is a harsh edge to some of the elements, he created masks on the elements with a little bit of feathering.

1. Making a matte:

Layer > New Solid, call it matte

Use pen tool on the matte layer

Toggle switches to have access to the Track Matte, and on the layer you want the Matte to apply to, select "Alpha Inverted."

(And actually, I was right in class, one of the advantages of using a matte layer instead of a mask is that you can apply the matte to multiple layers – you just need to specify which matte layer you're using through the "Track Matte" option)

2. Time remapping (to adjust the timing of any of your fire/debris/smoke elements:

Right click on layer, go to Time > Enable time rmapping

Set keyframes on the layer, which you can move forward or backward on the timeline to speed up or slow down portions of the footage.

3. Color correction

He used Effect > Color Correction > Curves and

 Effect > Color Correction > Tint

You can also adjust the Alpha channel in curves.

4. The glow effect

He added a new adjustment layer, created an ellipsis to mask it (with feathering), then:

Effect > Stylize > Glow

In the "Glow" effect, under Glow Colors he picked "A&B Colors," which allowed him to set the colors.

He keyframed the opacity of the adjustment layer to "flash" it up.

5. Using the smoke effect - changing its color from white to black

Effect > Color Correction > Tint

In the tint window, he selected "map white to:" and chose black.

Effect > Color Correction > Curves

In the curves, he boosted the aipha channel so the smoke appeared thicker

6. The "reactive lighting" – reflections from the blast

He created a new orange solid, and used the pen tool to draw the underside of the ledges.

He changed the layer blending mode to "classic color dodge"

Then to make the light fall off from the source, he selected the layer, took the ellipse tool and drew out a circle with its center at the blast source, did a subtract and invert on the mask, then feathered the mask. Then he keyframed the opacity of that layer. Note: the last ellipse mask should be at the bottom of all your mask layers.