Rain & Nighttime effects

This tutorial will guide you step-by-step to making a rain effect for your films. There’s also an optional step for making it just nighttime.

TOOLS NEEDED:
-Adobe Premier (Or anything that can export videos to filmstrips)
-Adobe Photoshop (Or anything that has similar filters and can edit filmstrips)

PREPERATION:
-Make a short Lego video at about 10-15fps, and save it as an AVI if possible.

1) Open up Adobe Premier, import your video, and put it on the timeline. This shouldn’t be that hard.

2) Go to File > Export > Movie,

3) And go to Settings.

4) Under General, for FileType, select Filmstrip.

5) Under Video, for Frame Rate, select the FPS you’re shooting at. Mine was 10fps for this movie, so I’ll put that.

6) Click OK, and save it.

7) Now, open up that .FLM file in Adobe Photoshop. Yours should look similar to this:

8) Make sure your foreground and background colors are reset by clicking the reset button.

9) Create a new layer, and go to Filter > Render > Clouds.

10) When that’s done, go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise.

11) Use the following settings, and click OK.

12) Go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur.

13) Use the following settings, and click OK. Let it lag, it will for a while depending on how big your filmstrip is in terms of length and FPS. Get a soda, take a shower, beat SMB3 again, whatever.

14) Once that’s done, go to Image > Adjustments > Levels.

15) Use the following settings, and click OK.

16) Set the rain layer’s opacity to around 60. In my case, 60 is perfect for me.

17) OPTIONAL: If you want to make it look like nighttime, create a layer BELOW the rain layer, fill it with a blue-ish black like #0F1029, set it’s opacity to around 75%, and set the rain layer’s type to Screen.

18) Save the filmstrip.

19) Import the filmstrip back into Premier, and place it on the timeline where your origonal video used to be.

20) Save it as an AVI, RMVB, add some sound, put more scenes in, whatever, the rest is for you to do.

Here’s a screenshot of how mine turned out in my film Varied Darkness:

TIPS:
-For only a nighttime effect without the rain, use steps 1 through 7, and 17 through 20 only.