How to Make a Superhero Landing in Premiere Pro

A superhero landing in Premiere Pro comes down to four moves. Cut out the jumping talent with the Object Mask tool, drop them in from above with the Transform effect, speed up the fall with a speed ramp and hit the ground with the Camera Shake effect. No After Effects needed. Here's every step.

Every video needs a hook in the first seconds, or people just scroll away. A hero landing is one of the easiest hooks you can shoot on your own. All it takes is a tripod, an open spot and a bit of acting.

What to film for a superhero landing

Put your camera on a tripod and don't touch it until you're done. Jump as high as you can and land as if you're hitting the ground with a huge impact. Then dust off your hands and smile at the camera.

Now walk out of the frame and let the camera roll for about a minute, which gives you an empty shot of the same location that you'll need to replace the background later. That's why the tripod matters: the empty shot has to line up with the jump.

One more thing before you open Premiere. The Object Mask tool and the built-in Camera Shake effect are recent additions. If you can't find them, update Premiere Pro first.

The superhero landing in Premiere Pro, step by step

Here's the full workflow at a glance. Every step gets its own section below.

1. Stack the jump on top of the empty shot and trim it to the fall.
2. Cut out the talent with the Object Mask tool and track it.
3. Turn it into an opacity mask and nest the clip.
4. Animate the drop with the Transform effect and a 180° shutter angle.
5. Nest everything and speed up the fall with a speed ramp.
6. Nest again and add the Camera Shake effect in Earthquake mode.

Step 1: Line up the jump and the empty shot

You now have two clips in the timeline: the jump and the empty shot. Drag the jump clip on top of the empty shot and make sure they both end at the same time. Move the playhead to the moment you're at your highest point and cut away everything before it.

Then move the playhead to the point where you're almost touching the ground and add a cut there. That short clip in between is where the magic happens. It's the part we'll mask out and animate.

Step 2: Cut out the talent with the Object Mask tool

Select the Object Mask tool. In the Program Monitor, hover your cursor over the talent until Premiere makes an automatic selection, then left-click to confirm it. Over in Effect Controls, click the button that tracks the mask forward and backward in the Tracker row. Let it run.

Once the tracking is done, the mask follows the talent through the whole clip, and you'll see a long row of keyframes appear next to the mask in Effect Controls.

Step 3: Remove the background and nest

To get rid of the background, right-click the mask and choose Change to Opacity Mask. Only the talent stays visible, and the empty shot underneath fills in the rest. You can now animate the talent however you want.

Before you do, right-click that little clip and choose Nest. Call it Animation. Then click OK.

Step 4: Drop in from above with the Transform effect

Go to the Effects panel, find the Transform effect and drag it onto the nested sequence. In Effect Controls, move the playhead to the end of the clip and add a Position keyframe, then go back to the beginning of the clip and push the vertical position up so the talent starts above the frame.

At the bottom of the Transform effect, set the Shutter Angle to 180. That adds natural motion blur to the drop. Watch the difference around 1:49 in the video above.

That's the basic superhero landing done. Now comes the most important part: the details.

Speed up the fall with a speed ramp

Select all the clips in your timeline and nest them again. Call this one Speed ramp and click OK. I want the landing to happen faster, but I don't want to speed up the entire clip, so a speed ramp is the answer: a speed change on just one part of a clip.

Right-click the fx badge in the top right corner of the nested sequence and choose Time Remapping > Speed. That opens the speed graph on the clip. The line shows the playback speed: drag it up and the video plays faster, drag it down and it plays slower.

Timing is everything here. Move the playhead to the moment right before the talent enters the frame. Hold Ctrl (Cmd on a Mac) and left-click the speed line to add a keyframe. Then move forward to the point where the feet touch the ground and add a second keyframe.

Now drag the line between the two keyframes up. Only the part between the keyframes speeds up, and that's why the clip gets shorter. Pull the keyframe handles apart to make the ramp smoother, and play around with them until the fall feels right. Adobe's help page on changing clip speed with time remapping covers the speed keyframes in more detail, and my guide on how to speed up your footage in Premiere Pro shows more ways to use them.

Add an earthquake effect with Camera Shake

The landing needs an impact. Right-click your clip and choose Nest one more time, and call it Superhero landing. We do this because we don't want the earthquake animation to interfere with the time remapping we just made. Keep them separate.

In the Effects panel, find the Camera Shake effect, drag it onto the new nested sequence and then, in Effect Controls, move the playhead to the moment right before your feet touch the ground. Set Camera Mode to Earthquake.

Earthquake mode scales your video up automatically, which we don't want here. Uncheck Auto Scale. You'll now see black edges when the frame shakes, so go to Edge Behavior and pick Mirrored to fill them.

Keyframe the Master value so the shake starts on impact

Add a keyframe on Master and set it to something like 20 or 25. You can always change this later. Use the arrow keys on your keyboard to step one frame back and set Master to 0.

Now the earthquake starts on the exact frame your feet hit the ground. That's the impact. After the landing, the shake should die down gradually. Move a little forward in time and lower the Master value step by step, and add a few keyframes in between if the fade still looks too abrupt.

Feel free to play with Speed and the other motion controls to fine-tune the shake. Also make sure Enable Motion Blur under Motion Blur Engine is checked, and try different values on the Motion Blur slider. If you'd rather start from ready-made shakes, the Ultimate Earthquake preset pack gives you six earthquake effects to combine.

Fixing and extending your superhero landing

The three nests pay off when you want to fix something later. Each one holds a single layer of the effect: the mask and drop, the speed ramp, and the shake. Double-click a nested sequence to open it and change just that part. Nothing else breaks.

If you're on an older version of Premiere without the Camera Shake effect, you can still build the impact by hand with the Transform effect, as I show in my camera shake tutorial for Premiere Pro. And if you like this kind of effect, try these three other superhero visual effects in Premiere Pro.

Where to take it next

Shoot your jump this week and build the superhero landing in Premiere Pro while the steps are fresh. Start with the mask and the Transform drop, then add the ramp and the shake one at a time so you can see what each one does. When you want keyframing, nesting and effects like these under your fingers, my Premiere Pro course for advanced users goes much deeper.