The first exercise (fundamentals of working with multiple layers) of Visual Effects for Guerrilla Filmmakers was to create a composition from three strips provided by the course instructors. Freeze frames:

I put Blender to the task. This video tutorial was a good start! But in the dialog window „Edit Strip“ I used „Add“ for the blend and „Multiply (0.3)“ for the colors to smoothen the edge of the flare and sparks strip.

Furthermore, I had to apply a rotation of -90° to the sparks strip (best do this before the translation). The soundtrack „Dead Reckoning (Sting)“ by Ethan Meixsell is taken from YouTube’s audio library. The result: