Angel Glow
 

I was wondering, in post production with final cut pro or after effects, how would I acheive an angelic like glow around like lets say, a person. It seems this effect takes into play by amplifying the bright areas of the footage. But I would appreciate any info on acheiving this effect I've seen in movies, and recently in the credits to the world series which the angels won.

don't know about FCP but most NLE have similar FX filters ..
in Vegas Video you would use the HSL , GLOW , color curves...

HSL to blow out higlights slightly ...
GLow - for the white glow ..
color curves for the shadows ( to darken just slightly) & the midrange ( just slightly darker )

You might try a chroma key with high-tolerace filter. There's very little difference between "terribly glowing chroma key" and "neat highlighting effect".

bring your clip into after effects.

place one copy on the timeline.
duplicate it. (ctrlD)
on the second copy, goto effects/adjust/levels
make the second clip additive transfer as well.

play with the levels to choke the blacks and let the highs bleed through. Put a gaussian blur on this clip as the last effect. Play with the oppacity of the second clip over the first (i.e. ctrl-shift-O)

tweak until desired look is acheived.

This is how specular blooms are quickly acheived on 3d renders without a spec pass, and if you go heavy handed on the effect, it blooms out nicely.

Adrian