Magic Bullet Overdone?

[Riley Florence]

I just recently got the demo for magic bullet and whatever footage i apply it to, all of the looks seem way overdone. The blacks seem to take over, everything goes black, loss of detail, or completely washed out. I dont have my ntsc monitor hooked up, so it might look better on that, but on my monitor it looks terrible. Everything is just overdone. Am i doing something wrong, or is my footage bad in the first place? heres a sample pic of what im starting with, maybe i have the picture overexposed, too much contrast or something to start with? please let me know, magic bullet seems to be awesome, but i cant get it to work for me.

http://homepage.mac.com/rpflo/romeo.jpg

[Mark Jefferson]

Hi Riley,

I don't have Magic Bullet, but I DO have Cinelook, which does the same thing as Magic Bullet. In Cinelook, there are several presets that change the way the final video looks. From what I've read, over-doing it is common with these software plug-ins. I got Cinelook (lots of $$$) before I discovered this technique, and I get just as good results using other software that I already have (Premiere and AfterEffects).

This site has a tut on acheiving the "Film-look" using After Effects, but you can take these principles and use them in any good editing program, like Premiere, Vegas Video, etc.

http://www.dvinfo.net/articles/filmlook/broadway1.php

Cheers,
Mark Jefferson

[Riley Florence]

Thanks Mark, i went through those steps and recieved pretty good results. I was just thinking of trying all the options. Thanks again

[Riley Florence]

alright, i've been working on it some more, and i think im starting to get the hang of it, heres some samples if anyone wants to take a look.

http://homepage.mac.com/rpflo/tests.jpg

[Danny Tan]

bottom 4 look nice. can you post full sized ones?

[Riley Florence]

sure no problem
they are in the following order

untouched
basic
basic w/ white diffusion
neo
bleachbypass

http://homepage.mac.com/rpflo/romeo.jpg
http://homepage.mac.com/rpflo/basic.jpg
http://homepage.mac.com/rpflo/whitediffusion.jpg
http://homepage.mac.com/rpflo/neo.jpg
http://homepage.mac.com/rpflo/bleachbypass.jpg

[Danny Tan]

neo and bleach look good. just tone down the effect a little (the green and the whiteness)

[Riley Florence]

agreed, those are the presets, obviously there is going to be tweaking for each set of footage. heh, my cousin has a funny face in these pictures i think. maybe its even funnier because of the line hes delivering, and how terrible we all are at acting, thats why i put my cousins in front of the camera and i stay behind. heck if you wanna see the video this is from, all untouched, take a look.

http://homepage.mac.com/rpflo/romeo.mp4

it was for my cousins little sister's english class, its a "teaser" for a romeo and juliet movie.

[Mark Jefferson]

Glad to be of help.

Cheers,
Mark