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Simulate power flickering On and Off with Final Cut Studio
Characters sitting at a computer in the villain’s (already kinda dark) office. All of a sudden the computer locks up and the whole power system to the home flickers On and Off a few quick times before returning to a steady On. Cutaways to computer screen and desk lamp available.
At first I shrugged this off as simple a series of dissolved in FCP, but it looks pretty tacky. Other FCP suggestions? Something for my corrector to do in Color? Or do I need to dump this on the VFX guy to do in After Effects? He’s pretty busy on everything else on the project, so I was hoping this could be something I did myself.
THANKS!
Brendan Nagle
Filmmaker / Journalist / Actor
http://www.TheBrendanNagle.com -
12 Replies
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“bad TV effect” plug in, Natress might have one. I know the factory collection has one. Or in Motion, build an effect that will squeeze the vertical and add some rolling and tear.
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No dice. The images on the computer screen aren’t what I want to have the effect, as the computer itself would actually power off. The entire room’s power is going down. Perhaps a more appropriate thread title would have been “Simulate LIGHTS flickering On and Off”. Thanks though… any other thoughts?
Brendan Nagle
Filmmaker / Journalist / Actor
http://www.TheBrendanNagle.com -
Totally forgot you could do points on the Opacity levels. Whoops. Thanks anyway!
CLOSED
Brendan Nagle
Filmmaker / Journalist / Actor
http://www.TheBrendanNagle.com -
So, you want the room lights to flicker, but the computers to stay steady?
Yeah, Magic Bullet looks I know has an effect plug-in like that, and there are a couple of other similar ones around, maybe in FX Factory. ALso takea look inApple Motion’s content section for something that might be modified.
In thinking how to make one from scratch, I guess I would work on two things: crushing black levels in the 3-way color corrector, while bending the white balance, and the second item might be rapidly keyframed overall dissolves or partial dissolves.
Another way to go might be to take a frame or two into photoshop to create a masked version of the room using gradients, then use keyframing to rapidly cycle the opacity of this on an independent video layer in FCP.
I guess it’s too late to ask why the director didn’t shoot a “practical” effect of this when he had the chance and it would have been easy and inexpensive?
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Dave of course you’re right, but in the typical case of this kind, there is no going back to re-shoot, there just IS NO SECOND TRY. You are expected to handle it. So you have a fait accompli’ sitting there in your lap for you to fix, any way you can.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNHdh-Wkn-s
Thoughts?
Brendan Nagle
Filmmaker / Journalist / Actor
http://www.TheBrendanNagle.com -
Some subtle electric arcing FX (not Frankenstein) and I would buy that
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Looks good.
I’d add a subtle sound effect during that flickering.
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I felt like it flickered a bit too fast, and too often….imho….
In my experience, power “flickers” are usually only like once or twice.
Might make it a bit more “real”.
And I agree with the need for some sort of sound effect. That would also lend itself to making the characters look around.
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