How to Eat a Flying Object in Premiere Pro

INTRODUCTION

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You are probably watching this video (which is right under this text, by the way), wondering how I got here...

Well, I’ll walk you through it if you want.

In this lesson I will be showing you how you can edit yourself to appear to eat an object moving across the screen using Premiere Pro! This lesson can be helpful for anyone just wanting to learn a cool trick, as well as anyone that hopes to expand their knowledge in Premiere Pro, since the method we will use for editing can be applied to a ton of other stuff involving manipulating things on screen.

Let’s begin...

You are going to need computer or a laptop with Premiere Pro, a tennis ball(which is what I’m using) or anything you want to edit to fly into your mouth, a device to record with (which I will use my laptop as), and, finally, yourself.

Now that you've gathered everything, we can get to the creation.

Get your camera ready, and follow what I'm demonstrating in the video:

As you can see, all you have to do is just go in front of your camera with your mouth hanging open.

Next, come back to your camera while trying not to move or shake it in any way, because we will soon be adding what is called another "layer" to on top of this, which will be the clip of the tennis ball (or whatever you are using) coming into your mouth, and we want the two to merge together as smoothly as possible. It’s no big deal if the camera isn’t on the same spot, though. You’ll just need to edit the object more precisely so unwanted pieces of its background don’t seep into your final clip (you’ll understand later if you don’t now)

P.S. : don’t worry if there is footage of you starting and stopping the video, because we can cut those parts out when we get to the editing

Ok, so we have the first part out of the way. Now all the filming we have left to do is the part with the flying object. So start the video again (or keep it running if you never stopped it) and step out of frame. Them, toss the tennis ball into the spot where you were sitting a few seconds ago.

You can’t throw the ball too low, or it will not be visible to us when we are trying to edit the ball’s position.

If it does not make sense now, you’ll understand this all in the editing process, but we are basically filming two shots separately so that we can bring them together later on, in order to make it look like the tennis ball is heading into my mouth.

Side note-make sure nothing is blocking the camera from being able to see the tennis ball, since that can make it hard for us to track the tennis ball later. So just have clear path, and don’t have a ridiculously low frame right, either, I guess, or else the object won’t show up at all on screen since it wouldn’t catch it moving

This is where we will start dealing with Premiere Pro

Go to Premiere, and just make a new project

Afterwards, name the project whatever you want (I usually give my projects nonsense names but I didn’t want to be confusing) and press “ok”

Now that you’re on the main editing screen(it looks like the second image), scroll to the next step so we can get to the harder part (don’t worry, it’s not that hard)

Like I showed in the video, clip on the ‘File’ button at the top left of the screen, and then find the import button on the pop-up.
““Control” + “Import””also works on my device, although I’m not sure how many other people’s devices it will work on.

Import your footage from wherever it’s located(my footage was all stored in my camera roll, so I got the two clips straight from there)

Drag the footage you imported to the project from the gallery(the place it goes to after you import it in) into the timeline, which is the area I dropped the footage in in the video.

Put both videos in the video section, or else none of it will actually go into the timeline like you want it to (the video section includes the lines labeled with a ‘V’; the audio section includes the lines labeled with an ‘A’.

Done? Ok, great

Now you can start cutting out the extra parts you don’t want, like the parts when you’re starting/stopping a video.

More importantly, though, you have to place the clip with the moving tennis ball above the clip with you standing/sitting there.

To do this, simply drag that clip right above it. You’ve basically just placed the clip in front of the other, meaning that it will be covering it from view.

We do want both shots shown, however, or at least parts of both shots,

How do we achieve this?

With a tool shown in two steps after this one........masking

This is wheee we will start combining the videos together.

Go to the frame in the video( you can navigate between frames by pressing the arrow keys to go forward and backward accordingly) where your ball first gets within the range you were in when standing/sitting there with your mouth open. As you can see, I selected mine as it began to drop down to the ground, because that was when it got close to where I had been sitting.

Then, take the razor tool I recorded myself using in the video and just cut your video at that frame. This will divide that clip into two parts, one pre-getting-in-your-range, and one post-getting-on-your-range, the second one being the one we will start masking on.

As I did in the video, you have to, after clicking on the flying object video, scroll to where it says “opacity”. Then, click the little pen.
Nice, you just made an opacity mask.

Do as I did and make points surrounding the object, with the goal to ultimately enclose it in them.

Tip: zoom in/ out by pressing the percentages like I did in the video, while also scrolling up or down with the bars on the side and bottom of where it shows the video to fit where you want to focus your attention.

You’re also able to drag points you make around after making them.

In the end, you should have an enclosed object, and Premiere should have placed it the same frame with you standing/sitting there.

What you have just done is tell the program to hide all but what you have enclosed with the mask - your object.

Now, click the clock icon beside where it says “Mask Path”. What you just did is allow for you to be able to move the mask along multiple frames while adjusting it along the way.

Click the forward arrow to go the next frame, so you can begin tracking the object. This is super important, because if you don’t do this, then you won’t be adjusting the mask for each frame, but resetting it each time, which will cause it to not follow the ball along as you want it to.

You may have to search for the ball for a bit, as with each frame, it moves a bit (because you threw it). You can do that by stretching parts of the mask, which is stretching further into the layer behind it, the layer with the actual full video in which the tennis ball was thrown. Once you find it, go ahead and just enclose it again.

If the object turns out to be not exactly in your desired spot or even not close at all, don’t worry. Just continue masking around the object until it gets to about where you were. I’ll show you how to edit the ball into a different location in the next step.

Repeat this until it gets close to where your mouth/face is.

By the way, if you ever close out of the masking tool, you can always return to the mask by clicking where it says “mask” below the pen icon you clicked.

If you ever mess up, go to “edit” at the tip left corner of your device and then “undo” (a redo up button is also beside it) or do what I do and press “Control” + “Z” ( it could also be “command” + “z” instead depending on your device)

Once you have finished enclosing the object with your mask, in order to sell the whole effect, mask the final frame with the ball to be enclosing only have the ball (so that it will look like the not shown part is inside of your mouth already) now just put it in whatever location you want to on the screen by suing the “Position “ and “scale” features shown on the panel to the left once you click on the video you want to change the position and scale of, which is going to be the one on the top, the one with your object. In order to use edit the position and scale of your object over time, you must again click the clock, which just signifies that you want it to change position/scale multiple times throughout the clip.

You can resize the tennis ball to your liking as it moves along so it looks like it will fit into your mouth, as well as guide it closer to your mouth if you want to really make it look like you are about to consume it. R

Remember: you can navigate through different frames by touching the forward and backward arrow keys accordingly.

If you want it to disappear when it gets to you, you can shrink it all the way by the time it gets there, which would make it invisible because it would be so small, or cut the video at the point when you want the mask to stop. Once you have cut the video, click it says “mask” and delete the mask. This won’t have any effect on your mask for the object, but it will cause it to vanish once it hits a desired location.

Ok, great. We are just about done! Wasn’t too hard, was it?

Good job. I hope it wasn’t too hard. Feel free to adapt the color of the object inside the mask so that it matches with the background better, if you want to!

I have found that the method used for this is a very important one to know in general, as it his concept, masking and understanding how to layer certain parts of a video, is very common in manipulating things in an environment when editing. For example, this is the same way you would possibly go about making something levitate (masking around it and then animating it with the positioning and scaling features).
I also embedded another video I made using the same concept that I put on TikTok but with a ping pong ball if you want to look at that and just be proud of yourself about knowing how to do that, I guess.
Hope you learned from this. Bye!