Heatwaves are one of those small things that you don’t notice until they are gone. They can make or break a scene in terms of realism. Add them in, and people will believe it’s warm. Take them out, and people will feel it’s off. They are caused by small waves which influence the air, and therefore bend the light just the smallest amount. Today we are going to go over how to create these waves of heat in Premiere Pro CC!
Creating Heatwaves in Adobe Premiere Pro CC
Create the Wave
- Create a new sequence or open an existing sequence. Import your footage. I use Envato Elements, a great subscription based service to download a near unlimited amount of stock footage.
- Grab Lumetri Color and bring up the warmness of the shot ever so slightly. This warmth is equally important for selling the effect!
- Go to Effect->Turbulent Displace and add this effect to it.
- Go to the Turbulent Displace effect and go down Displacement. Change this to Turbulent Smooth.
- Go to the Amount and reduce this something in the 5-10 range.
- Size should go down to 15-30 range.
Animate the Wave
- Go to Evolution and click on the stop watch next to it.
- Add about 1 revolution per second.
- Go to Turbulent Displace and click the pen tool to create a mask.
- Mask around the dark surface that is generating the heat waves. Give a little space on the top.
- Add some feather to the mask. Somewhere around 115.
We have now generated a nice heat wave in Premiere Pro. The displacement is fully customizable and you can tune it. The key here is to make it look natural. Keep looking at it to see if it feels natural or not. If it doesn’t try to find out what is wrong. Is it moving too quickly? Too slowly? Your eyes and intuition will be able to tell you with a few watches!
If you have any questions or comments, leave them below or on the video itself!
