Magic Bullet Looks

I had to learn how to use the screen capture feature in OS X. I’d used it a long time ago in OS 9, and I was cursing tonight as I tried to figure out why I couldn’t paste after pressing Cmd-shift-3. It wasn’t until later that I noticed a bunch of image files on the desktop. Sweet!

Magic Bullet Looks is pretty easy to use. I downloaded the Motion plug-in version, so I don't know how the Final Cut or other versions work compared to this one. I plopped my test clip into the Motion project, opened the library tab to find the Looks filter (not under 3rd party filters, but under Filters/Magic Bullet). I dragged the filter to the clip and it’s ready to work:

The red X is the demo’s reminder that I haven’t paid for this yet, but you get all features enabled in the demo, which is nice--I've always disliked feature-disabled demos.

I clicked on the Inspector tab and pressed the big edit button to open the interface, which opens a separate app named LooksBuilder. This is a really nice interface, easy on the eyes, and clearly designed by people who do this type of work:

By moving the cursor over the Looks tab on the left side, you get 10 categories of different looks (Basic, Black and White Tints, Diffusion, Horror, Music Videos, Popular Film, Popular TV, Special Effects, Stock Emulation, and Tints). To apply a look, you open the category arrow and click on the specific look. Here I’m picking Crime Scene so that my sunny outdoors clip looks like it’s a crime scene in Vegas.

Once applied, you can tweak to your heart’s content, with Lift-Gamma-Gain, Saturation, Crush, Exposure, Color Contrast, and Shoulder being your tools. I’ve picked Saturation here, and a colour wheel and sliders pops up.



But wait—there’s more! By clicking on the tools at the bottom, you can open the tab on the right side of the screen for more tools I’ve ever seen before. Here is the Matte tab, with 22 tools on it alone. This is where the hardcore tweaking takes place. As I’m not a colour-correctoin or video expert, I’m not going to get into the nuts and bolts here as I’d need too many words and time to stumble through their use. Suffice it to say, there’s a lot of things you can do to your video here.



Clicking on OK takes you back to Motion, with all the tweaks you’ve made added to your clip as an easily reversible or deleteable sub-layer.



I spent the longest time trying out the different looks and a little bit of time playing with the tools, but I’m way over my head with this stuff. I’ve got a book on colour correction that I’ll blog about later on, once I get my feet wet with this type of pixel-pushing.

Overall, I’m really impressed with Magic Bullet Looks. It’s easy to use yet provides you with a lot of tools to do some hardcore work. For a no-budget filmmaker like me who is more interested in the writing and acting end of things, this plug-in is certainly an easy way to look good on video.

At some point, after I’ve looked at the other software in my 2008 Roundup, I’ll post some video created with each program as these stills aren’t offering a lot of detail on how the video looks when it’s actually playing….

What’s Going on Today (or, Meanwhile back in 2007)

Now that I’ve updated what went on in 2001-2002, here’s an update on what we’re doing right now in 2007.

Mullet is slaving away on the issue 2 script. This is taking a lot of his free time, naturally. But he’s way ahead of where we were for issue 1 so there’ll be more time for story editing and polishing. I’ll see the script eventually and give him some feedback as his story editor.

Writing a comic book is a unique craft compared to screenwriting or prose—you have to come up with the usual story elements (plot, character, dialogue, action), but you also work on the layout of panels and pages. Until Mullet started writing our comic book, I had no idea what the roles of the writer, artist, etc were in that format. Like with movies and TV, well-written and well-designed comics make the writing transparent, so I never really thought about it before. I have more respect for the writers now, to be sure.

Meanwhile, back at the video ranch, I’m chasing a bunch of loose ends. This blog takes some of my time, and I’ve used it to find the discipline necessary to get back to writing almost every day (with the goal for every day). I am working on several script ideas, which I hope to have ready for Mullet by December. I have 4 shorts on the go as rough drafts, plus about a dozen interstitial/blackout type ideas that I think we’ll either use on the DVD as transitions and/or as a collection of short bits that we’ll post online.

When I get tired of writing, I’ve been playing around with the Babysitters final cut, and I finally got back to working on the edit of Can that Andrew Currie did for us. I still have to put Stalled together, and I’m working on an idea for opening credits (for the shorts) that will tie into the comic a bit (I sketched out some quick storyboards and then started some tests in Motion to see how I could accomplish what I’d drawn).

I’ve also downloaded the demo for 2 elements of Red Giant Software’s Magic Bullet Suite. More about that next time, once I’ve had the chance to play with it.

So that’s where we’re at, for the moment.