getting the magic bullet 'dream look' effect

A

africanmarty

Well-known member
to those who have magic bullet is their a way of getting the 'dream look' effect with out using the MB plug in ? as i cant afford it :( and dont want the water mark that MB demo produces... the look it simply awesome if you guys have seen it, i would be using it for AE and premier pro 2.0

- marty.
 
A way to do this without plug-ins is to duplicate your footage and add a fast blur to the topmost layer. Change the blending mode to overlay or soft light or others as you see fit. Play around with the amount of blur and opacity of the blurred layer to get the look you want. Using curves and/or levels along iwth hue/saturation to tweak.

That would be the basic starting point...you can take it further by manipulating channels individually for different results, and if you have AE7 or eLin you can mess around in linear (32bpc) and get more realistic effects in your highlights, etc.
 
oneinfiniteloop said:
A way to do this without plug-ins is to duplicate your footage and add a fast blur to the topmost layer. Change the blending mode to overlay or soft light or others as you see fit. Play around with the amount of blur and opacity of the blurred layer to get the look you want. Using curves and/or levels along iwth hue/saturation to tweak.

That would be the basic starting point...you can take it further by manipulating channels individually for different results, and if you have AE7 or eLin you can mess around in linear (32bpc) and get more realistic effects in your highlights, etc.
Click to expand...


What he said, except oneinf forgot to mention the midget. You GOTTA use a midget. :beer:

Oh, and a vignette may help, as may deciding what kind of mood you want and then swinging everything into the color pallet that would best represent that.

But try the fast blur and belnding modes thing mentioned above first. You can get some killer results that way. And you may want to include a layer of fractal noise heavily blurred and animated, and again with the right blending mode to get some randomized hotspots and shadows.


Lastly, from a technical aspect, try shooting with a lower shutter speed for more motion blur. That may help the base footage and following oneinf's suggestions, you are on your way.

Most of the stuff Magic Bullet does (not counting the obscene render times and lack of multiprocessor support) can be achieved without the plugin. But you have to really understand blending modes, color theory, and how to extract ranges of Luminance from duplicate layers to apply.
 
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Here's what I've done before to get that soft, diffused look in after effects. Take your original footage and duplicate it so you have two instances. On the top layer use the "levels" or "brightness contrast" filters to give it some really bright highlights (but not too much!). Next apply a "gaussian blur" set it around 25 - 100 (the higher you set it, the more diffusion you'll have). Now set the transfer mode of that top layer to "screen". Adjust the opacity of the layer to your desired effect. Now, if you want to warm it up a little like the MB dream preset, create an adjustment layer and apply the "levels" filter to it. Adjust your blue channel to bring in a little more yellow and adjust the red channel to bring in a little more red. Hope that helps!

-Jon
 
Matt Grunau said:
What he said, except oneinf forgot to mention the midget. You GOTTA use a midget. :beer:

Oh, and a vignette may help, as may deciding what kind of mood you want and then swinging everything into the color pallet that would best represent that.
Click to expand...

I almost mentioned the vignette...didn't even remember the midget though, good looking out.

ThatOneJonGuy said:
On the top layer use the "levels" or "brightness contrast" filters to give it some really bright highlights (but not too much!).
Click to expand...

You want to avoid the brightness contrast filters in AE (in any program by that matter) since they clip the highlights (there's a more technical way of saying but I can't remember), basically the math being used isn't ideal for comping. Levels and Curves and some ingeniuty is all you need. :)
 
OMG wow ! you guys rock i cant wait to try all these methods, thanks soO0 much.

- marty.

PS: - so all MB setting can be duplicated in someway in AE without it ? that good to know. thanks again.
 
"Fractal noise heavily blurred and animated" I understand putting a layer of fractal noise, and burr it but how do i animate it ?

&

"Right blending mode to get some randomized hotspots and shadows" i would love toget some hot spots, how do i do that ?

From what i have tried, the footage really looks good, almost identicle to MB... thankyou so much you guys. - Marty
 
To animate fractal noise keyframe the evolution property. For the hotspots you'll just have to play around to find the one that works. Using levels and curves will help bring them out.
 
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