COLOR CORRECTION (film look)

[TellLiesVisually]

I'm working on a trailer for a Independent feature and we need a certain desaturated look. It was shot 720/24pn on the HVX and the color corrector 3-way in FCP doesnt cut it.. I was wondering what the filters/plug-ins work best in AE.. any suggestions??

Thanks

[buelusa]

You could try Film Magic Pro by Andrew Kramer. http://www.videocopilot.net/products/fmp/

[lhdor]

Do you have Final Cut Studio 2? This comes with a new software called Color, and it comes with templates such as the film look.

[oneinfiniteloop]

All you need is Levels/Curves and Hue/Saturation to dial in the look you're going for. All three are in the color correction submenu of effects. You should also play around with duplicates of your footage with various blending modes to tweak further. I usually have a base layer, a shadow layer with levels adjusted for shadows, a highlight layer with levels adjusted for highlights, set them to multiply and screen respectively and tweak opacity.

[mpalmer12345]

Here's a trick to bring back detail in the too-black and washed-out white areas (done in final cut studio, but certainly is doable in AE)…

Place on top as a second layer an inverted copy of the movie, reduced to 5% opacity, -- more or less, whatever looks good. If your blacks get too grey, crush them with color corrector. This will bring out very finely controlled details in the black and white areas of the image that you never thought possible, without adding the noise that simply increasing the levels in color corrector will.

(I'm sure this trick has been tried by others, but I made the discovery on my own, so I don't know if better methods are out there.)

[reem12]

mpalmer, could you please elaborat a little more on this trick in more detail. sounds very interesting.

[mpalmer12345]

I don't know what more to elaborate, so I'll basically just repeat...

Take the footage, copy it and place the second layer directly over the first, invert the luminances of the 2nd layer (i.e., make a negative), reduce opacity of 2nd layer to 5% or whatever works best to bring out the details without making the result too grey, crush blacks on original layer as desired to bring back some punch.

I believe this trick was used in a feature film shot in digital video called Center of the World, based purely on my observation of its look. (I don't have a shred of cooberative evidence.)

[Matt Grunau]

Here's a trick to bring back detail in the too-black and washed-out white areas (done in final cut studio, but certainly is doable in AE)…

Place on top as a second layer an inverted copy of the movie, reduced to 5% opacity, -- more or less, whatever looks good. If your blacks get too grey, crush them with color corrector. This will bring out very finely controlled details in the black and white areas of the image that you never thought possible, without adding the noise that simply increasing the levels in color corrector will.

(I'm sure this trick has been tried by others, but I made the discovery on my own, so I don't know if better methods are out there.)

Nice method. You can do something a tad more involved in AE using the Extract filter and blending modes, isolating only the regions you want to affect. That is the first time I have heard about using an inverted layer.

If you work in 16 bit mode in AE, noise issues should not be nearly as much of a factor.

Nice tip. Thanks.

[givemefood]

Hey man

I am using Premiere CS3 for my current project. I tried what you suggested but i still cannot get it right.

I've created another layer with the same exact clips. I reduced opacity on the 2nd layer. How do i blend both? I tried the Blend Effect but did not seem to work.

Please suggest. Thank you

[grahamdunn]

If you right-click your top footage layer, you should see a blend submenu with lots of modes like screen, hard light, multiply, etc. Try some of those, they effect the image differently by adding the two layers' pixels together, multiplying them, etc. so everything will react a little differently depending on the values in your layers.

[grahamdunn]

My bad, that tip was for Final Cut. I'm not sure in Premiere, but in AE there is just a tab alongside the footage that allows the blend modes I mentioned earlier. Maybe search the help docs for "multiply" or "screen" or something and see if that brings up some more info about where to set those modes?

[ellsworth]

Here's a trick to bring back detail in the too-black and washed-out white areas (done in final cut studio, but certainly is doable in AE)…

Place on top as a second layer an inverted copy of the movie, reduced to 5% opacity, -- more or less, whatever looks good. If your blacks get too grey, crush them with color corrector. This will bring out very finely controlled details in the black and white areas of the image that you never thought possible, without adding the noise that simply increasing the levels in color corrector will.

(I'm sure this trick has been tried by others, but I made the discovery on my own, so I don't know if better methods are out there.)

This is probably the best way to go.
There's also Magic Bullet and FC Studios Color that someone mentioned earlier. You can do some amazing color corrections with both programs.
Magic Bullet is a plug-in.