While watching a music video I happened to be intrigued by the crash zoom effects I saw. I love the way it suddenly punches out to make an impact. What I liked about this was that it was simple to do but still looked complex on the video, so I knew I would be able to do it. I understand that there are certain things HitFilm doesn’t have available and also limitations to my abilities still (which is why I make these videos, so I can improve!) so I am careful with the effects I choose to do. Here is the music video I found the effect from:
I took a plain part of a music video and decided this would be a great example of something I could jazz up a bit. I always like to start with something basic and plain with no editing so that I have more opportunity to add my own look to the video and edit over it.
Surprisingly, this took me very little time to do since the idea of it was to copy the same effect twice, one zooming in and one zooming out. All I had to do was zoom for a few frames to make it fast and snappy and then add a zoom blur over the top to give the effect I wanted.
The great thing about this effect that I loved was the fact that it’s simple and effective so it’s very easy and quick to do.
Getting the perfect amount of zoom was crucial as this affects the speed of it. If you zoom too far the zoom will become slower and impact will be lessened. So, I discovered that the trick is to zoom only a short distance in order to have a good speed and therefore creating the exact look I wanted.
Making this effect is simple to learn as long as you know how to efficiently use the zoom effect. I seem to get very confused whether I’m zooming in or out but I’m getting used to it!
The reason the crash zoom effect it so good is because it is fast and sharp and because of this it exaggerates the beats in the song making the song more enjoyable. A good example of a song being displayed visually.
I was extremely happy with the outcome of this as I personally thought it was an exact replica of the original effect I took inspiration from. Here’s the video I edited:
