Strobe Light?

[Aviv]

I'm doing a music video for a band who'd like the illusion of performing with a strobe light...Short of actually using one, how would I use the strobe effect in Premiere to create this nicely?

[overnighttolondon]

Drop a Levels effect on the clip, and then make the "White Input Level" property keyframeable. Set keys alternating between 255 and say 150 (play with this). This will ahve the effect of blowing out your highlights while still giving you black shadows (you can also animate the Input gamma a little lower on the frames where the White level is turned down, if you want your shadows preserved more). Also note that you can copy and paste keyframes, so just do the first two and then copy to 4, 8, 16...

After Effects can be used to automate this process if you have it.

The way I've described it here will start with your video at its current brightness and then add additional brightness to it for the strobe. If you'd rather have it's current brightness be the "light-is-on" brightness, use the White Output property instead of the White Input property.

Play around a bit and let me know how you make out.

All of these involve still being able to see something other than black in the frames when the strobe light is off. If you want it to be blackness when there's no strobe, just keyframe the opacity between 0 and 100 every other frame (doing the copy-paste thing so you're not diving yourself crazy).

[Aviv]

Thanks a lot! Is there anyway to make the frames where the strobe is off look like they were shot with lights off? so a dark blueish hue?

[WesCoughlin]

I would just color correct the main footage that has the strobe light effect. By lowering the contrast/brightness/saturation/pedestal/gamma levels and then for the bluish look either change the "hue off set values", or adjust the RGB gain (increase Blue gain, lower red and greens).

[overnighttolondon]

I think what you should do is duplicate your footage, putting one copy on Video1 and one on Video2. Adjust the bottom one to look like lights off (use levels or brightness-contrast, and then also color balance or color corrector), and adjusdt the top one to look like lights on (with the levels technique above, and/or other effects).

Then turn the strobe light on and off by keyframing the opacity on the clip on Video2 alternating between 100 and 0.

This way is better because you don't have to manage a whole bunch of keys for different settings, you just have the one set of keyframes.