Magic Bullet Looks

Sometimes when shooting on location, lighting isn’t all that you would like it to be. You do your best, wondering what your footage will look like in post. One thing Magic Bullet Looks does is to remedy this situation.

Magic Bullet Looks, from Red Giant Software, can be used on-set or in the edit suite to subtly adjust the tone, color, and focus of your footage. It can also be used to simulate the appearance of classic films, or to duplicate specific production conditions. The process is actually fairly easy.

Magic Bullet Looks includes Magic Bullet LooksBuilder, a stand-alone application to pre-visualize looks anywhere. LooksBuilder's interface models the way light moves through a camera with simulated filters, lenses, and film stocks that can be adjusted on the fly. You can even add film damage such as dust and scratches to artificially age a film using Magic Bullet Misfire, which is part of the package.

When you are in the field, simply shoot some test footage, quickly check it on your laptop using more than a hundred Look presets, and you will know if you have something usable for your production. It sure beats shooting and being disappointed at edit time.

In addition to Final Cut Pro, Magic Bullet Looks is available as a plug-in for Adobe After Effects, Avid, Adobe Premiere Pro, and Motion.

The 36 new tools in Magic Bullet Looks offer a powerful way to get the look that you want… both in the edit suite and on location.


Instant HD

Another product that I tested from Red Giant Software was Instant HD. Instant HD basically does what it says… up-converts SD video into a variety of HD video formats.

You can choose from a list of preset resolutions to make it easy to integrate SD video into your next High Definition production. When scaling from standard definition (SD) to high definition (HD), the missing pixels must be generated in an intelligent way. Instant HD provides a high-quality method for converting SD sources to HD (PAL or NTSC) within your favorite video application.

Something you should know is that this product is specifically designed to work with progressive (non-interlaced) images. That means that if you are starting with interlaced video (such as a standard Sony PD150 DVCAM capture), you will need to convert the image to progressive in the host application before applying Instant HD. If you use a camera that has a progressive mode like the Panasonic DVX100 or the Canon XL2 there is no need to pre-process the material in any way. My Panasonic HVX200 needed no converting when used in SD mode.

You can achieve professional level results with these easy to use controls: Output Size, Filter Type, Sharpness, Quality settings, and Antialiasing.

The Output Resolution preset lets you quickly choose the right HD output resolution. You can improve the final appearance with Integrated Sharpening, and smooth out the rough edges of DV video using the Antialiasing control. It’s all pretty easy to do, and just about “Instant”.

I’m thinking how cool it would be to drag out some of my old SD TV series, up-convert them to HD, and syndicate them as “The Best Of” in HD. It certainly would pay for the cost of the software…and possibly a new Mercedes.

Colorista

We are not through with Red Giant Software plug-ins. When you have finished your edit, and some of your shots just don’t look good enough to make you happy, it's time to load Colorista and make your images pop. Just go to the website and watch the tutorials. I’m sure you will be as amazed as I was.

Colorista uses industry-standard color wheels for precise color control so I felt right at home. I tweaked my actor’s image further with saturation and exposure controls to balance it out. Then, I isolated the areas that I wanted to brighten up with the built in mask…then he moved.

When the actor in my image moved, I simply key framed the mask to move with him, and the results were awesome compared to what I started with. Good looking images are essential to making a quality project. I found that Colorista paired with Look Suite works great for color finishing.

Colorista can take what I would call unusable footage, and actually change it into something that will work. Any Indy filmmaker walking around shooting documentaries without good lighting needs this software…It really can fix a lot of problems.