Customer Reviews

Hollywood Special Effects with Adobe Premiere Elements 3

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

All of the effects in this book are interesting, and each is laid out in an easy to read fashion. First shown for each effect is a list of files you will need from the CD laid out in a box entitled "MEDIA". Next is a table with complexity, skill level, and materials labeling the rows. Within the row, what applies to this effect is labeled in bold print. Next is a box labeled "What You'll Do". This is a broad overview of the steps you will take to create the effect. This is followed by a few paragraphs of introduction that talk about the effect. The rest of the pages on each particular effect go into details on each step in the "What You'll Do" box. All the instructions are heavily illustrated with screenshots of the application so you can easily follow along. The final entry for each effect involves an image that shows what your film should look like if you performed the steps correctly. The effects mentioned are quite interesting and are as follows, with a chapter dedicated to each one:

Chapter 1. The See-Through Title Effect - The film is given a title, and you can see a scaled version of the underlying film coloring the title.
Chapter 2. The Retro Title Effect - Gives the opening and closing titles a 60's look.
Chapter 3. The Star Wars Opening Sequence Effect - Gives opening credits that scroll like they did in Star Wars.
Chapter 4. The Passing of Time Effect - Emulate the passing in time by deleting frames and using "dissolves".
Chapter 5. The Fast Times Effect - Shows the world rushing by your subject as he or she moves in normal time, thereby communicating a world of information about the character and story.
Chapter 6. The Reverse Action Effect - Film motion goes in reverse.
Chapter 7. The Pencil Sketch Effect - Your film looks like it was sketched with a pencil, like Photoshop.
Chapter 8. The Watercolor Painting Effect - Make the film appear as painted by watercolor, like Photoshop.
Chapter 9. The Faded Film Effect - Use dust, scratches, and faded color to make your film look old.
Chapter 10. The Nightly News Effect - Adds titles, graphics, and logos to make your film look like a newscast.
Chapter 11. The "24" Effect - The picture-in-picture effect popular on the show "24".
Chapter 12. The Beam Me Up Effect - Simulates the transporter effect popular on Star Trek.
Chapter 13. The Night Vision Effect - Makes your film look like it's being viewed through night-vision goggles.
Chapter 14. The Hidden Identity Effect - "Pixelizes" certain areas on the screen to hide the identities of people as is done on crime shows.
Chapter 15. The Bleeping Effect - A pure sound effect that puts a bleeping sound where speech should be.
Chapter 16. The Enchanted Elf Effect - Shows you how to shrink and add color to someone and place them in a video so they appear to be an elf of some kind.
Chapter 17. The Friendly Ghost Effect - Change opacity and other features to give a character the appearance of a ghost.
Chapter 18. The Multiple You Effect - Placing multiples of the same individual in the same frame so that they can interact with one another in a natural fashion.
Chapter 19. The Super Hero Effect - Gives a character in your film the appearance of flying around like Superman.
Chapter 20. The Around the World Effect - How to use Premiere Elements to brighten your traveller and help match the actor to the background clip. Useful if the sun is shining from the west in your background travel clip but the narrator has the sun coming from the opposite direction.

This is a very easy to follow book that deals not only with just artistic effects, but common problems a filmmaker might run across. In fact, by learning how to execute these effects, you'll learn skills that will translate well into your other editing projects that have no apparent special effects purpose to them. This is because while these effects projects take advantage of color and sound techniques for "slight of hand" effects, they utilize the same techniques that you would use to correct the colors in an oversaturated video clip, or to get the colors to match in two clips that were shot under different lighting conditions. By following the instructions in this book, you'll learn to think about timing, splitting clips, matching audio to video, syncing clips, and other concepts that until now you might not have given much thought to. These projects will teach you about Premiere Elements in a way that no other book can while having a good bit of fun along the way. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in using Adobe Premiere Elements for film editing.

Adobe should hire this guy to write their User Guides. After reading their Guide that came with Premiere Elements as well as buying Adobe's "Classroom in a Book", I still couldn't do much. I especially wanted to mimic the Star Wars rolling and receding script at the beginning of my videos. Well this Hollywood Special Effects book was just what I needed. And it appears to have many more good ideas that I haven't even gotten to yet.

What's really good is how thorough and easy to follow the instructions are.

The earlier reviewers here on Amazon really had it right when they all gave 5 stars to this book.

Check it out; you won't be disappointed.
Update 3-23-07: The website for the author, Carl Plumer, listed in the front of the book is currently out of commission. Too bad. I had some questions for him.

Beyond helping with the features of the software, the examples in this book provide interesting and meaningful applications of video editing...rolling titles, time-elapse sequences, etc. The book is very well written and illustrated. It doesn't take the place of a true user manual that explains every feature of a software product - it doesn't try to do that. Instead, it answers the question, "Okay, what kinds of things can I do with video editing?". I'm very glad I found this book.

I recently purchased Premiere Elements 4. I wanted to wait for a newer version of this book, but didn't know if one would be out anytime soon, so I bought this one. Even though it is for Premiere Elements 3, almost all the instructions can be easily followed in version 4. I've only found a few issues using this book with the newer version. It has taught me quite a bit about the functions available in Premiere Elements that I didn't know existed. If you want to enhance your video making experience I highly recommend this book.

This book is extremely useful to someone who knows the basics of Adobe Premier elements and wants to make a headstart into the advanced topics. All the topics are clear and easy to understand.

Not repeating the other positive reviews, I just want to emphasize that it teaches "normal" use of Premier as well--- in the course of doing special effects. What is especially interesting is that the book reveals some features and abilities I did not know about or understand. It was written for 3, but I don't think they took away anything with 4 (which IMHO, has very little value added.) Good luck!

The book is excellent guide to using Premiere software. The CD has all the material and style of writing is excellent. All user guides should be written this way. As others have said before, the book will inspire you to create better videos. So happy splicing and dicing.

If you purchase Adobe Premiere Elements 3, you must buy a book to learn how to use it, and this one is great. The author teachers you how to use the program in a relatively simple manner. I have used other editing programs (Magix 11 and Intervideo WinDVD Creator 3 but they are child's play in comparison to this program. If you're like me and love to hear "Wow!" when the family sees your latest masterpiece, they will be dumbfounded when they see what you can do with this program.

This book is one of the best instructional pieces I have ever seen. I am very pleased I selected it. Carl Plummer has done a wonderful job of extracting and presenting Adobe's material in a way everyone can understand it. The detailed instructional layout and photos are far superior to Adobe's boring, and exhausting operation manual, which appears to be written by engineers and techs with no clue to the learning curve of the consumer. I would like to see a manual written by Carl on Photoshop Elements 5 as well.

I like this book because teaches how to edit video in a fun and educative way. the projects in the book are well illustrate and easy to follow. And lots of informative tips for Premiere Elements 3. What a winner!!!!