Canon HV40 Film Look with Premiere Pro CS5

When it comes to color correcting and trying to get the most from your footage to achieve the fabled "film look", there really is no magic formula, and everyone you ask will give you a different opinion. Knowing how to operate your camera and several different color grading methods is the best place to start.

Please note that this particular look is not necessarily going to be good for every type of video...basically everything you do can be color corrected differently to create a different feel.

In this clip, I am going for one of the more common Magic Bullet "film" looks that is very contrasted and saturated, with a subtle glow. It's not exactly a "realistic" look, but it would fall under more of a surreal or dreamy feel. I was pretty satisfied with the result.

I'm not going to give you all the exact setting I had because that would be overly complex. But here's the basics of what I did:

Step 1: Add the Three-way color corrector effect to the footage and spend some time tweaking it. When you are done with this effect, you should start to already see a difference. The three-way color corrector is a powerful tool and I suggest you check out some tutorials on how to use it. It just takes time, practice, trial and error to figure out how to use the tool correctly. I made the midtones slightly blue, the highlights greenish blue, and just a hint of yellowish-red to the shadows. Then I went to the master tonal range control and gave it just a hint more blue. After that I messed with the input levels to crush the blacks and bring out the highlights a little bit. I messed with a few more settings. The Three-Way Color Corrector is a powerful tool, and it just takes a little practice to learn how to use it correctly.

Step 2: Add the ProcAmp effect. The settings I used for ProcAmp was -10 brightness, 140 contrast, and 170 saturation.

Intermission: I was trying to imitate Magic Bullet Looks with built in Premiere settings. I noticed that Magic Bullet has a bit of a glow and blur with most of their settings. The next few steps will help you get there.

Step 3: Duplicate the video and put the second copy on layer 2 right above the original copy. We will be working exclusively with this duplicated video on layer 2 for the next four steps.

Step 4: Go to the opacity settings on the layer 2 video, set it to screen mode at 40% opacity.

Step 5: Add the camera blur effect. I set mine to 8. You should now start to see a similar "glow" effect like you see on Magic Bullet looks.

Step 6: Change the ProcAmp settings. To make the colors pop and the glow stand out a bit more, I changed the ProcAmp settings to -40 brightness, 200 contrast, and 200 saturation. Remember: I am referring to the settings on the duplicated video in layer 2.

Step 7. Mess with the three-way color corrector on the duplicated video on layer 2. Your changes to this will be subtle, but remember it's all the subtle differences that will end up giving you a great look.

Now we are done with video layer 2, let's just add a few more things.

Step 8: This step can actually be done earlier at any point. Add widescreen bars and a vignette. If you don't know what I'm referring to, just google it. There are several different ways to create a vignette. I actually advocate making it in photoshop first and importing it, if you have photoshop.

You might need just a few more tweaks with the three-way color correctors, but by this point if you followed the steps you should be very close to achieving the same exact look as demonstrated in this video.

Hope this helps! If you have any questions just ask in the comments below. If I don't answer, try contacting me on my main channel- http://www.youtube.com/billgrip

Category:

Film & Animation

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[billgrip]

@qwertywerty42 I wasn't really going for a "realistic look" I was basically trying to copy a look I've seen a lot from Magic Bullet that is very saturated, very contrasted, and has a bit of glow to it. I think it looks great, but everyone is entitled to their own opinion and definition of what looks good and what doesn't.

[qwertywerty42]

Sorry if I'm too critical, but I think that the original footage was better. Especially in shots like this one, crushing the blacks and increasing the contrast a lot only makes the shot look out of place.

[gruponemesis]

you did an amazing job. I shall follow your advice, im not feeling Magic bullets or Looks anymore. I would like to learn the color wheels. I have canon t2i w an assortment of lenses...along w sony vegas, after effects and premiere. wish me luck!

[billgrip]

@itsrealmusic I rendered it with the adobe media encoder with the h.264 (mp4) codec.

[itsrealmusic]

ok what did you render this video out in to put it up on youtube like this

[TheNitromeFan]

Sweet. :D

[Darksteve55]

Cool :)