Hi there,
I’d really need to find the look of “Saving Private Ryan”. It could be this capsule for Combustion or a way in Shake or AFX . Anything that makes your boring footage into a dramatic scene like seen in that film. I can desaturate it, of course, but how do they make this specific kind of shutter speed, or whatever this thing is that make the soldiers look so weird?
Can you please help me?
Thanks in advance,
Khan
For the shutter speed thing (which gives action and flying debree that “strobe” look), set the shutter speed on the camera to be as fast as possible.
De-interlacing video footage does this partially, since interlaced footage already has a faster shutter speed than regular film.
For other tricks, there’s a lot of pages Out There (and here in CGTalk) about how to achieve a “film look” through grading.
The most common mistake, though, is that many people believe they can shoot subpar acting, stunts, action or lighting - on regular DV - and then grade it to “look cool”.
First step is of course to shoot some dramatic footage, and shoot it well. 
If your footage is truly boring, you can’t add drama through grading. Even George Lucas can’t save bad footage in post production. 
As for the desaturation, try blurring the footage, and then add the original footage on top, in “luminosity” mode (After Effects trick, I have no clue how to do it in the Combustion package). That’ll maintain the footage’s original brighness value (which is important, cause the eye sees brightness better than color), but blur the color values, making the colors look washed out.
Good luck!
Cheers,
You can try use the color correct for adjust the saturation of image in accordance with this luminance (ranges). I don´t remember the film well, but determineds colors it had an appearance specifies, in this case you can use keyers for to isolate and to treat these colors. Or try plugins like Cinelook and others
Thanks guys, but producers can recognize the Cinelook Plugin from a mile:) It’s neat, but i’d really love to achieve some reality there. Separating the channels could surely be a way.
And Yo Jussing, it’s so true: you can’t make gold out of crap. It’s DoP and the director thing to get the shutter speed @ max. I still know there is this Capsule for new Combustion which contains that specific look even on a **** footage.
Would really love to find it outthere…
Thanks for any help,
Khan
The best way to do it is in camera with a 45% shutter. If you cannot then do this.
Beside the color and desaturation.
Take you footage and slow it down to 50% it’s normal speed. Now take that 50% clip and speed it up to 200%.
What you get is the same thing as droping every other frame in the sequence and playing each of the existing frames twice. This will give you a pretty good simulation. I think I made a capsule that demostrates that on Alex udell’s site some time ago.
Good luck
Alan Bell
Do you mean drop the framerate to 12 fps? (or 12.5 or 15, depending on whether we’re talking pal, ntsc or film…)
That’s just gonna look jittery and frame-drop-ish, isn’t it?
Cheers,
Well yes it’s going to look jittery. That’s the whole point.
The thing that happens is your composite frame rate stays the same but your are removing every other frame and doubleing up on the remaining frames. This keeps your shot at what ever frame rate you started with.
Basically this is the poor mans version of the Saving Private Ryan look. To do it right you need to do it in camera.
To do it right you need to use a 45 degree shutter in a motion picture film camera. This gives you an image with very little motion blur and that has a lot to do with the effect.
Streaking and blooming highlights can help as well. Also you will want to desaturate the image somewhat.
There you have it.
Alan Bell
OK, I just don’t see it then. With a fast shutter, you may lack motion blur, but the motion istelf is smooth, moving on every frame. Dropping frames is going to make it look like a lagging computer game. :shrug: I couldn’t stand watching more than 10 seconds of it.
But I guess it’s just me being allergic to all these modern, strange frame artifacts - I had spasms throughout Man On Fire because of the Parkinson-cam framedropping double-frame superimposed MTV mumbo jumbo they were doing, so I guess I’m just not up with the hype.
Cheers,
Interesting point, guys. This thing with speeding it up could help a poor man like me get that kind of look. Then again, it’s gonna be very disturbing if it takes more then a minute.
Tricky thing…
They used some 45 degree shutter footage in that film also. Hey I’m just trying to help a guy out here with a technique, that doesn’t mean it’s right for everyone or any particular situation.
:banghead:
Regards
Alan Bell
Hey, I’m just giving my personal input on framerates, don’t take any offense.
Cheers buddy,
The contrasty look is called ‘bypass bleach’ and is done by bypassing a bleaching process of the black & white elements of the film negative. The process can be imitated by copying your image, making it b&w and then mixing it with you original color image. This will desaturate the colors and make the image more contrasty - like Saving Private Ryan.
For that bleach look try duplicating your footage layer twice. Apply a grey operator to the second and third. Set the second to multiply and the third to screen, adjust the opacity to about 50%. Leave the first with default settings. With merge it is possible, too.
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