DV into film look

There are a whole raft of pluggins which can be used in post production to simulate film from dv.

Magic Bullet is considered to be the benchmark for all the others. I've never used it, but it does get rave reviews by all who have.

There are, however, a raft of alternative products that do similar things. Some of them realtively cheap. So if you're using FCP, then Eureka do a Film look suite, that can produce some interesting results.

The only thing I would say is that all of these post production dv into film effects acheve what they do by degrading the image quality to some extent.

When we shoot on dv, we are shooting at the lower limits of braodcast quality already ... I have real doubts as to whether further degrading the image is a good decision.

What might be worth considering instead is creative colour correction, rather than adding additional nosie in to simulate film grain.

My guess is that it is in fact the tones and colours of Fight Club that you like rather than the texture of the format it was shot on. Of course I could be wrong.

I hope this helps.

thanks so much for the info.

Yeah, you're spot on about me being fascinated with the color tone of the film but I also thought the actual texture of the work was beautiful as well. I'll have to have another look and see which one I'm actually truely into... you just might be right.

i'm definetly looking to have some fun in post with the saturation/contrast/etc...

keep the advice coming.


edit:
just stopped off at the magic bullet site and man! that's it! thanks.

Mixing Magic Bullet (the actual Magic Bullet aspect) is not needed with a DVX100B. It already does the 24P frame rate & deinterlacing if you shoot in "Cinema" mode. There is the LOOK SUITE, now released as "Magic Bullet for Editors" that is purely the color corection component that can be used to give you the FIGHT CLUB look you seek. Magic Bullet does NOT add film grain.

For film grain there is www.bigfx.com FILM FX plug ins, and www.digieffects.com CINELOOK plug ins that do film grain and color emulations.

I don't recommend doing that with DVX100 footage unless you really really want to emulate a scratched up, dirty look. For basics it's not too effective, as it degrades you sharpness too much (IMHO).

Color grading. If you can do it yourself or find someone skilled to do it you can get a lot closer to the look.

Actually, there is a portion of Magic Bullet for editors that does film grain, it's part of the "misfire" section of the plugin.

yeah, i'm definetly only looking to do color correction and possible film grain, though the film grain is still "iffy"...

the fact that it works on AE is great considering that FCP availability is going to be limited. Anyone here use this and have an online before and after example?

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