-
A Grainy Dilemma
Okay, so I’m looking for some creative genius here. Any legit suggestions are welcome!
I have just wrapped the majority of post-procution on a feature-length, romatic-comedy indie film, but there’s still one scene in particular that is driving me nuts!
We used about three different cameras on this project and though they were all the same brand (Canon) and model (I think), one camera just didn’t turn out the best footage.
The scene I’m speaking of is really the resolution of the film, so it’s very important to the storyline and happens to be the second-to-last scene of the movie. The footage itself is outdoors and very vibrant and colorful, but the picture is quite grainy. I know that “correcting” grain isn’t very effective usually, but I’m open to the idea of “stylizing” the scene to help disguise some of the grain and/or if nothing else, make it look more intentional than accidental.
This scene is not a dream, but occurs after the main characters go through a series of dreams.
One “stylizing” option I was considering was to make this scene look “dreamy” and then gradually decrease the effect to the end of the scene to symbolize the lead character’s dreams becoming reality. The problem was that the effect styles I tried only made the footage look out of focus and frankly worse than the original.
Does anyone have suggestions for how I could stylize this scene the way I’m describing? Any and all help is much appreciated!
Thanks for reading through this lengthy explanation.
-
7 Replies
-
Copy your scene and place it on a track above the original scene (Keep it lined up). Apply a blur effect and turn the opacity down to 50%. This is the classic dream look.
Experiment with the blur amount; applying the blur instead to the original clip; messing with the color of either or both of the clips, etc.
This will probably cut down on the noise, as any blurring tends to filter out noise.
-
Thanks, Eric. That’s pretty much what I did the first time, but with I think I made the blurred opacity only about 25% or less, so instead of looking like I’d applied some effect, it just looked like really shotty cinematography.
I will continue to play with that dreamy effect, but if you or anyone else has any other directions to come at this one, I’d really appreciate it….something a little more edgy and out-of-the-box.
-
The original suggestion is where I’d start, but then I’d add the add or screen compositing function to the footage that is blurred. To find the compositing effect in cs3 you need to use the compound arithmetic effect. This will give it a dreamy glow instead of just looking like a smudgy quality only blur does.
– Jon 😉
PS: You could animate the opacity up and down to show the dreamy effect trying to wear off but not quite getting there smoothly.How many editors does it take to change a light bulb?
-
Thanks, Jon. That was a good idea too. “Smudgy” was the perfect word to describe the look I’ve achieved so far adn that’s really not what I want. I’ll play around with it and see what I can possibly do.
Let me tell ya, it takes a lot of editors to change a lightbulb if the lighting is already poor, there’s an odd electrical hum in the background and if the light bulb was blue in one shot and then red in the next. Darn continuity errors!
-
Have you considered Magic Bullet. I’ve been able to achieve some very nice dream effects with this plugin.
Joe
-
Yes, I have. Something is currently wrong with my installation though because I’m getting errors all over the place. I’ll have to reinstall and then mess with it to see what’s available in that plugin to help this situation.
If I could get this to look nice, I would be able to sleep at night again. Ha, ha! Our premiere is FAST approaching.
-
Bullet’s Premiere plugin suite would sort you problem out in
as long it takes to drag it from Effects and onto your
timeline.A little Photoshop methodology in After Effects – duplicate
clip, layer blend with Screen, add a smidge of gaussian
blur to top layer, tweak Levels, etc. – would also solve
your problem.If you want a ‘dreamy’ look but can’t (or won’t) use either
tools then you’ve got your work cut out. Doing a search for
‘free Premiere Pro plugins’ might help. You may stumble
across something ‘dreamy’ by accident.Alternatively, if there’s time, physically or digitally
send the clip to someone who would do the post for you.
I’m sure there’s plenty of folks here (myself included)
who would help you out, gratis. I’m in England, btw.Darren.
x-gf.com
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up