Here you can download the «Handheld Camera» presets I made for the movie Deadpool. These are real camera shake presets, made from actual shots with a real camera – not some digitally created wiggle. That makes them truly organic and real looking. And of course, they’re all GPU accelerated and will work in real-time in Premiere Pro.

Some history

Vashi Nedomansky was hired as a consultant on the Deadpool movie to help lead editor Julian Clarke and the rest of the editing team with their Premiere Pro workflow. They used After Effects to simulate handheld camera shake, but it slowed them down because they had to go to After Effects, and there was some rendering involved. So Vashi contacted me, and asked if I could make some Premiere Pro presets for handheld camera. He knew I had a short one already in Jarle’s Presets v 3.

So I made some new ones that were longer, and had various amounts of shake because they were shot with different lenses etc. You can read more about the way the Deadpool team used Premiere Pro at The Pro Video Coalition and on Jonny Elwyn’s blog.

Want Motion Blur?

To keep these presets working in real-time, there’s no Motion Blur. You may want Motion Blur on the shakiest presets. If you want Motion Blur on your clips, just right-click and choose Replace with After Effects Composition. In After Effects, turn on the Motion Blur switches for the Layer and for the Composition. Go back to Premiere, and you have Motion Blur on your camera shake.

Download the presets for free

Now, you can use the very same presets used by the editors of Deadpool to simulate handheld camera in your locked-off shots. Just download the presets, unzip the ZIP file and import the presets to Premiere. (In the Effects panel, right-click the Presets folder and choose Import Presets, then point to the .prfpst file). Throw them on your boring locked-off shots to create a more energetic look. Please note that I made these in Premiere Pro CC2015.2, so they may not work in older versions of Premiere. EDIT: I just got a word from someone using CS6, and he says it works a charm in CS6! 🙂

If you like these presets, you may want to learn more about advanced editing techniques in Premiere Pro. Take a look at The Cool Stuff in Premiere Pro, where you’ll learn how to make advanced effects presets and edit faster in Premiere Pro.

Now also for Vegas Pro!

Edit Dec 13 2016: Aleksey Tarasov, the author of the Vegasaur Toolkit extension for VEGAS Pro NLE contacted me and asked if he could include my presets as part of his Vegasaur extension. I gave him my permission, so now even Vegas Pro editors can enjoy the handheld look from Deadpool. Here’s a screen shot from the extension.

Read more here: http://vegasaur.com/handheld-camera

Now also for After Effects!

Edit Jan 16 2017: Greg Golya, design director for Fox Sports in Cleveland Ohio USA, has converted the Premiere Pro presets to an After Effects project! The project has solids that you can replace with your own footage. That project made it very easy for me to save Effects Presets, which may be a better way to use these. So now you can download my presets and his project (CC2015.3).

Unzip the files and copy the “! Deadpool Handheld Camera” folder with the two sub-folders containing .ffx files to Documents\Adobe\After Effects CC 2017\User Presets. If you don’t have a User Presets folder, just create one. Next time you open After Effects (or refresh the effects list) you’ll have all the Deadpool presets in your Effects & Presets panel. Note that these AE presets are made for 1920×1080 footage. If you use other sizes, you’ll need to move the Anchor Point or add a Transform effect to center the footage after adding the preset to a layer.

These AE presets should work with After Effects CC2015.3 and newer.

Now also for Nuke!

Gavin Greenwalt Converted the presets over to Nuke Transform Gizmos, and made them available at http://pastebin.com/XdmMfKAY.

Contents, Jarle’s Deadpool Handheld Camera Presets

For any footage Handheld Camera – Long Lens Handheld Camera – Small Camcorder Handheld Camera – Somewhat Steady

For over-sized footage Handheld Camera – More Movement Handheld Camera – More Movement Smooth Handheld Camera – More Movement, Smoothest Handheld Camera – Lots of Movement



Vashi took the time to create a sample video where he applied some of the presets, so you can see the effect. Watch it below.

If you haven’t seen the movie, here’s the trailer.



Update 2016-08-06: The presets have been used in two Scandinavian movies lately – Hermit Monster Killer and Cave. Here’s the trailer for Cave.