Gun flashes with Photoshop, Premier...

[Phaethon]

A friend and I put together a masterpiece of a short movie called the life. We showed it to some friends and the response was great, but they all mentioned that the gunfire looked fake because there wasn't any flash. So we went back to the computer and started experimenting. We used a toy uzi he had, and dubbed in some realistic sound effects from a video game. We took each frame where a gunshot would go off and brought it into Photoshop. In here we created a new layer, and on it we drew the muzzle flash. (I would watch some gunfights frame-by-frame to see exactly what a muzzle flash looks like) Some muzzle flashes are different colors. In The Matrix most of the flashes have a blue tint to them, while in Die-Hard most are yellow-orange. So, start off with a paintbrush and use a VERY light color (blue, orange, whatever you choose)and make the basic shape of what you want the muzzle flash to be, just a smaller version (it will get bigger)then inside of that put pure white so that the color is now only on the edge of the flash. Take the smudge tool and smudge it outward for the blast effect. Smear the white into the color, cuz you dont want to much color to the flash. Now just completely darken the layer behind the flash (the frame you brought into Photoshop) to isolate the flash. Just bring it back into Premier and alpha matte the flash into the frame. This effect looks absolutely PERFECT and is very impressive with fully-automatic weapons. Experiment with this to get the best results.

[machead]

Its really good to here someone who's used their initiative and got results. You're a problem solver, that's a quality I deeply respect that.