Getting the magic bullet look

S

Shacke

Active member
I hope the following does not sound confusing.

I shoot on a DVX100A and use Premiere Pro and have just acquired After Effects 6.5 but not used it yet. So I hear about Magic Bullet suite for After Effects and go and see examples on their website.

My question is this, does anyone know if it is possible to achieve a lot of those looks by adjusting settings on my Premiere Pro or After Effects? If so, does anyone know what these settings are please? E.g. adjusting the color correction?

The reason i'm asking is that because I shoot on the DVX, I already have the film look, but will also like to be able to get those filtered looks as well. Or is this stuff that can only be done on Magic Bullet?

Thanks
 
You can do practically everything by altering the colour correction tools in AE or Premiere. I don't know of anyone who's drawn up a set of recipes though - you've just got to experiment.

Graeme
 
Try messing around with 2 or 3 different layers, gamma, contrast, saturation, black stretch...you can get pretty close to MB. But I wouldn't mind hearing some options/settings my self.
 
Thanks for the replies, it's what I thought, I just wondered whether someone had come up with some settings primer somewhere
 
ye, use several layers try them with different blending modes, add colour correction, and sooner or later you will get the look that you want. (and you will learn how to achive that look too)
 
surf said:
ye, use several layers try them with different blending modes, add colour correction, and sooner or later you will get the look that you want. (and you will learn how to achive that look too)
Click to expand...
Hi, are you referring to doing this in After Effects?
 
You can get almost all of the results you see in MB by using selective desaturation, altering your gamma, and blending modes. You will find Overlay and Softlight to be your good friends.

Open your clip, add levels and clamp the lights and darks (not all the way) and then do the standard "film" gamma tweak with Curves to finish. Then desaturate slightly, add a new blue layer on top and set that layer to Overlay or Soft Light. You should be halfway there. If you want, copy the layer, and isolate the lights or darks with the Keying>Extract filter, with the softness up all the way for either the white or black (depending on which one you are isolating) and then use the lightening or darkening blending modes. You can add a blur to the copied layer, set it screen, and begin to have softly glowing highlights and an almost etherial(sp) look. And so on and so on . . .

Play with inverting the lights and darks of a copied layer and blending them back in. Can get neat stuff.

:thumbsup:

Like surf says, doing it by hand will only make you learn more, and you will probably have faster renders too.

MB has some effects that are hard to get without it, but the majority of the looks can be achieved. Have fun!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top