Lightning Effect - Adobe After Effects

One particular shot was in need of something a little more dramatic. This shot originally showed the main character watching the sunset, the colours were not very strong and the set-up rather boring. In order to liven things up a little bit I added this lightning strike. The overall shot had some colour adejustments in Premier and so will appear much darker in the final teaser Trailer.

Creating the lightning Strike was easier than I thought it would be. This video was not the greatest tutorial but it did the job of informing me how to incorporate this effect into the video.


Here are some of the screenshots of the development of this particular effect:

I wanted to make this shot more interesting by adding a lightning strike into it. It would be added to imply a more apocalyptic tone to the film - The tutorial showed me how to control it's different forms and its colour - with a white centre and a bluish glow.

This screenshot shows what the shot looked like once I had desided on a kind of strike, controlling it's intensity and the forking, scattering effect. It still looked too artificial though so I felt it would be better without its blue glow - the blue looks too artificial in this duller environment, and seems too bold, despite the sun being in shot.

This screenshot shows the selection of colours available for the lightning - I had a wide range of options. Also, it's position in the frame had to be controlled via key-frames. I couldn't have the strike start somewhere within the frame unless I could crate a whole cloud illumination effect - this, I wanted top avoid, to simplify the shot.