One of the downsides of this type of compositing is that you can’t really move the camera in any interesting ways to get the shot you need. Both shots might look a little different lighting-wise, so be sure to work with your Lumetri Color curves to balance each part of the shot. Go into the feather settings in the opacity tab, and feather until the shots blend correctly. Once you have completed your mask, it will remove the other areas of the shot and blend both of your layers together. If you can’t see the light under the shot, you can bring down the opacity of your top clip to get a view underneath it. This will open up a new mask layer. So, from here, highlight the area of the shot the light is in, along with the lit up section. Go into the effect controls of the top clip, and select the pen tool under the opacity settings. If you have multiple clips, use this methodology for all clips. Now, all you need to do is layer your two clips on top of each other with the one with the most information on bottom, and the least on top. Now the best part of this trick is how incredibly simple it is.
AFTER EFFECTS MASK FREE
If there are any other layers you would like to add, feel free to record more plates if you need an accent light on a specific part of the shot. Now, just shoot a 30 second plate of that lighting setup. Use that light to blast brightness to the area behind where the light previously was (where there was darkness in the shot beforehand).
Remove the light and bring it just out of frame. The next shot is how we are going to be able to remove the light in the first shot. In this example, all we needed to light up was the car in the driveway, so we moved the soft box close up to the car, and shot the scene of our subject walking up to the car. To pull off the shot you see in the video above, it takes just a few pieces of equipment use a soft light source such as a LightDome, a camera, and a tripod.