How to make a Kaleidoscope in Adobe Premiere Pro

Earlier on in my project I considered looking at kaleidoscopes after watching the film ‘Media Magica’ as this film demonstrated how successfully mirrors could be used to make optical illusions. After my experiment with maggots and food and the feedback I got from it (which was mainly or disgust) I thought that it may be interesting to see how a kaleidoscope would work with maggots as kaleidoscopes are often seen as beautiful calming sequences. To do this I watched a Youtube tutorial on how to create a kaleidoscope in Adobe premiere pro, which was rather complicated and difficult to follow at times. For anyone looking at how to do this here are the instructions that I used:

1. Apply mirror effect to your footage (which you should have dragged into your timeline) with an angle of -45 degrees and a centre point of 1525, 1080
2. Right click on your footage in the timeline and click the ‘Nest’ option (the clip should show up in green in your timeline)
3. Copy the footage and paste it but make sure that the timeline marker is not in the middle of your footage because it will paste the footage where the timeline marker is (both should still show up in your timeline in green).
4. Next drag the pasted footage on top of the original and make sure they are the same length and start and finish at the same time.
5. Then apply the following to the pasted nested sequence (the one you have dragged on top of the original nested sequence):

• Horizontal flip
• Crop at 50% on the left
• Mirror at 90 degrees angle and a 1544, 540 centre

6. Then apply mirror at 90 degrees with a centre of 1544, 540 to the bottom clip (you may also want to apply a 50% crop to the right but it is not necessary unless you are planning on changing the opacity of the kaleidoscope sequences)

All of the effects I have mentioned such as mirroring, horizontal flips and cropping can be found in the effects tab in the bottom left hand corner, and these effects can be edited in the ‘effects controls’ tab which should be in the top left corner.

I hope these instructions are helpful for anyone that is looking to experiment with this process in Adobe premiere pro, here are some of my own results from using this technique: