How to Create a Heat Wave in Premiere Pro CC (2022)

Heat waves are one of those subtle visual details that you don’t consciously notice until they are missing. When you see footage of a hot desert, a barbecue grill, or asphalt on a summer day, those shimmering ripples in the air tell your brain it is hot. Without them, something feels off. They are caused by hot air rising and bending the light, creating a wavering distortion.

You can recreate this effect in Premiere Pro using the Turbulent Displace effect combined with a mask to control where the distortion appears. Today we go over how to create heat waves in Adobe Premiere Pro CC.

How to Create Heat Waves in Premiere Pro

Setting the Mood With Color

1. Create a new sequence or open an existing one with your footage.
2. Apply Lumetri Color to the footage. In the Basic Correction section, increase the Temperature slider slightly toward warm. This adds a subtle orange warmth to the shot that helps sell the feeling of heat. Don’t overdo it, just a small shift.

Applying the Distortion

3. Go to the Effects panel and search for Turbulent Displace (under Video Effects > Distort). Drag it onto your footage.
4. In Effect Controls, find the Turbulent Displace settings and make these adjustments:
   • Displacement: Change to Turbulent Smoother. This creates a smooth, organic-looking distortion instead of a choppy or blocky one.
   • Amount: Reduce to about 5-10. Real heat waves are subtle. High values look more like an underwater distortion than heat shimmer.
   • Size: Set to about 15-30. This controls the scale of the distortion waves. Smaller values create tighter, faster ripples. Larger values create broader, slower waves.

Animating the Shimmer

5. Click the stopwatch next to Evolution to start keyframing.
6. Move the playhead forward about one second. Set the Evolution to 1 revolution (360 degrees). This makes the distortion pattern shift over time, creating the shimmering animation.
7. For a longer clip, extend this at a rate of about 1 revolution per second. Premiere Pro will interpolate the evolution smoothly between keyframes.

Masking to the Heat Source

8. In the Turbulent Displace effect, click the Pen Tool mask icon to create a freeform mask.
9. Draw the mask around the area where the heat waves should originate. This is usually the surface that is generating heat: the road, a fire, a car hood, a grill. Give a little extra space above the surface since heat waves rise upward.
10. Set the Mask Feather to about 100-120 pixels. This softens the edges so the distortion blends naturally into the undistorted areas of the frame.

Tips

• Subtlety is everything. Real heat waves are barely noticeable. An Amount of 5-8 looks realistic. An Amount of 20+ looks like a visual glitch. If you can obviously see the distortion without looking for it, it is too strong.
• Match the surface. Heat waves should originate from hot surfaces: dark pavement, metal, sand, fire. They should not appear in the sky or on cool objects.
• Animate the Evolution slowly. One revolution per second gives a gentle shimmer. Faster values look more like water or a force field than heat.
• Combine with a slight depth of field blur on the background for a more cinematic hot-day look.
• Layer with overlays. A subtle sun flare or dust particle overlay paired with the heat wave effect creates a more complete hot environment.
• Watch it multiple times. Your eyes and instincts will tell you if it feels natural. If something looks off, adjust the Amount and Size until it clicks.

That is how you create heat waves in Premiere Pro. A small amount of Turbulent Displace in the right place can make a scene feel authentically hot.