How To Make A Zoom Through Sunglasses Eye Transition Effect In Premiere Pro

On this video tutorial, Justin Odisho demonstrates how you can create a simple transition of zoom in into sunglasses (you can also do the same with an eye and possibly some other objects if you are creative enough) and onto the next clip.

The idea behind this transition is pretty simple. What you need is to make the clips overlap (the one with the sunglasses and the second clip), just make two layers and bring the second clip under the sunglasses one.

Now you need to apply a mask in the shape of the sunglasses to the top clip (you can use a circular tool or a pen tool – whatever is right for the job) and of course, inverse the mask.

Next, you need to make sure that the mask stays in place over the sunglasses so if your person moves in the clip you need to make sure that you move the mask with the glasses (move forward a frame or a couple of frames and move the mask to the correct position so it will cover the sunglasses – the more frames you do that to – the more accurate this will look – sadly Premiere still doesn’t have a decent way of tracking subject as AE has – if you know AE you can use it to do this tracking). Using some feather might also be recommended to sell the effect as well as a fade in and maybe out. If you want easier work you can use a freeze-frame but this might look less realistic.

Now we need to add the actual transition and we need to animate the zoom-in look by adding scale key points. Before that, you will need to change the anchor point to the middle of the sunglasses and you will need to add ease out at the first frame to make it smoother (adding some mask exponential at this point might also help).

Bonus video: Justin Odisho Fake Rotating Camera Effect in Premiere Pro

You can find more articles and videos looking at different aspects of video editing on our special section here on LensVid.

Iddo Genuth

Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.