How to create a Sniper Scope in Premiere Pro

Published on July 30, 2020

Video Effects

call of duty, gaussian blur, gun, premiere basics, premiere pro, scope, sniper, transform effect, warzone

Sniper Scope Effect in Premiere Pro

I’m a huge fan of the videogame Call of Duty: Warzone and I love shooting with a sniper rifle in that game. So I decided to make a dedicated video about how to create a sniper scope effect in Adobe Premiere Pro.

When analyzing the game I realized that the transition from walking around with your gun to scoping with it was actually really simple. It’s just a little zoom effect which we can easily recreate with the transform effect in Premiere.

The scope itself is just an overlay image, I already went ahead and made one which you can download. But you can of course create your own in Adobe Photoshop or even in Premiere Pro.

For the effect we only need two shots, we shot this with a DIY POV helmet but you can also shoot this handheld. The first shot is a medium POV shot where you walk around with your gun and aim. The next one is a POV of the gun which you need to shoot with a telelens if you’re recreating a sniper scope. This way it looks like you’re looking into a far distance. Make sure that both shots are pointed the same way so they line up.

For the editing part we just need to mask the overlay and second shot (which we can nest together) into the scope of the first shot and animate it with the movement. Then we zoom into the scope on shot number one and that’s kind of it. A seamless scope transition.

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