Film Grain in FCP
- Thread starter armadillo
- Start date
Shane Ross
Veteran
Google "CGM FILM LE."
It's free.
It's free.
zoostory
Well-known member
If you have AE - you can make a solid layer that is neutral gray, add the AE grain plugin to it, experiment to get the amount of grain you want, then render it out. Obviously, make the sequence as long as you want (I say around 30 seconds) and the resolution and codec you want (DVCproHD 720p 24p for example).
What you get is a nice piece of neutral gray media with grain that you can multiply, screen, overlay, etc in FCP (also drop the opacity to lessen the amount of grain). This is far faster than rendering grain from any plugin within FCP.
Optionally, if you are using a cinema adaptor, I recommend shooting a grey card at different exposures for about 30 seconds each with all of your lenses, that will give you the ground glass texture (which I find to be somewhat unique to cinema adaptors) on a neutral gray that you can do the same thing with. It will be a nice library of grain clips for you to have for the future! I find this especially useful because there are always those 2 or 3 shots on every Cinema Adaptor film where the DP was in too much of a hurry to put the adaptor on, so you have to match the footage the best you can.
What you get is a nice piece of neutral gray media with grain that you can multiply, screen, overlay, etc in FCP (also drop the opacity to lessen the amount of grain). This is far faster than rendering grain from any plugin within FCP.
Optionally, if you are using a cinema adaptor, I recommend shooting a grey card at different exposures for about 30 seconds each with all of your lenses, that will give you the ground glass texture (which I find to be somewhat unique to cinema adaptors) on a neutral gray that you can do the same thing with. It will be a nice library of grain clips for you to have for the future! I find this especially useful because there are always those 2 or 3 shots on every Cinema Adaptor film where the DP was in too much of a hurry to put the adaptor on, so you have to match the footage the best you can.