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Making it look as expensive as possible
Hi there,
I’d be very grateful if people could share a few secrets regarding making my edit look as glossy & ‘expensive’ as possible. I have a few plugins at my disposal (Colourista, Magic Bullet for instance) but perhaps there’s some other easy-to-apply effects that I don’t know about. For instance, I’m after that slightly glowy, silk-stocking effect… any thoughts?
Thanks everyone – it’s a bit of a big ask, I know, but I thought I’d give it a go…
All the best
Dan H
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14 Replies
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Deinterlace, crush the blacks slightly, turn the chroma up a few clicks and apply the vignette without the defocus & soften the edge a bit.
Peter
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Great color correction will go a long way.
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It’s easy to make good footage look like it was shot on a big budget. It’s very hard to make crappy footage look big budget.
For some more exciting effects, take a look at FX Factory from Noise Industries, or Plasma FX from Digital Anarchy. Both have some fairly sexy stuff.
Arnie
Now in post: Peristroika, a film by Slava Tsukerman
https://www.arniepix.com/blog -
[Dan H] “I’d be very grateful if people could share a few secrets regarding making my edit look as glossy & ‘expensive’ as possible.”
Throw about 50 or 60K my way and I’ll do much more than make it look glossy & expensive, I’ll really make it expensive. If you’d like a rush job, I can make it expensive in a hurry for an additional fee. Let me know where you’d like me to send the wire transfer information.
David
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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Dan,
For a fairly fast and cheap solution, try “instant sex.” as described by Chris and Trish Meyer in their still excellent first book, “Creating Motion Graphics in After Effects.” This can easily be done in FCP with no third party toys.
Copy your video to track two, add a blur to it to taste, lower the opacity to around 60% or to taste and change the transfer mode to screen or add.
Combine THIS with some great color correction and even DRW would be green with envy, not your money!
Have a wonderful day.
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Another fast and easy trick is Joe’s Color Glow.
Have a wonderful day.
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In my opinion, the factor that impacts the “expensive look” the most is the director of photography.
DPs aren’t created equally. You really need to find one that can give you good footage to work with. Great colorists are partly great because they work with great footage the comes from great DPs. Even with low end cameras, a great DP can make a world of difference.
-Russ
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Usually ‘expensive’ means ‘shot on film’
Achieve a cheap film effect by de-interlacing the footage. Of course, you can use any of the hundreds of ‘film look’ bundles such as the ones you mention.
Since you are a FCP user, I would consider Color if you have the hardware to run it – and I use it on a 15″ Macbook using an LCD screen as a second monitor if I just want to sex up some personal projects – Not the same as the MacPro’s and HD monitors at work, but great for the preset effects in Color to make my home movies look fun!
Ben
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[Russell Lasson] “In my opinion, the factor that impacts the “expensive look” the most is the director of photography.”
Absolutely!
Arnie
Now in post: Peristroika, a film by Slava Tsukerman
https://www.arniepix.com/blog -
I like the looks you can get with the Nattress plugins, but also check out a very nice quick tutorial at Digital Juice’s DJTV web site on blending modes, which illustrates what all those modes do for you. IIRC, he’s even doing it using FCP.
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