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old film effect premiere pro cs3 or cs4

Posted: Wed Jul 27, 2011 1:13 am
by markk
do any of you use old film effect filters? Is there a pluggin you use for premiere cs3 or cs4?
Cheers
Mark

Re: old film effect premiere pro cs3 or cs4

Posted: Wed Jul 27, 2011 9:01 am
by TimStannard
I don't claim to be any expert on this and I don't claim the example I've posted is perfect, but I spent quite a bit of time doing this last year and my experiences may save you some time.

I can't help you with specifics, but I can give you some general advice which I discovered when doing the post on this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1knq9zgkMM

(A mixture of Sony Vegas built in FX and NewBlue FX)

1. It's incredible how much you can speed it up. Most of the above was at 2x speed (admittedly it's a comedy so it was ramped up a bit more for comedic effect).
2. Most old film is black and white, not sepia (check out old Charlie Chase films etc on YouTube if you don't believe me) - photos are sepia.
3. Crush the blacks, overdo the whites - all that wonderful detail you've filmed - lose it!
4. Don't move the camera. Early cameras were heavy beasts and, once set up were left alone.
5. If you can undersample your source then do so (ie ignore every other frame - or more). This worked really well on my test shots, but unfortunately the film I worked on had already been sped up by the time I got my mitts on it - so that Graham (director/editor) could get the timing right.
6. There are a number of variables you can add. "Junk" on the film (like hairs, dust, scratches etc), graininess, jitter (or jumpiness - movement up and down in the framce) and flicker. Of these the most important are the last two in the following consideration:

It all depends on how you are going to use the film. If it is to be shown for a short segement or segments (say, less than 30 secs) within another film, then something near the default settings for jitter and flicker will probably be OK. If you need a longer section or the whole film processed they are way too much - the film becomes very tiring to watch. When you test this, it is important to watch it for a minute or so with the reduced settings, if you only watch a few seconds it will probably appear underdone.

Hope this provides some clues.