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As Adobe After Effects is being used by almost everyone these days, plug-ins coded around the architecture have never been in more demand. Broadcast bigwigs, QuickTime multimedia authors, home Premiere users, Internet signatories to RealMovie streaming, or those just wanting to add pazzaz to banner ads and animated icons - all are on the look out for wilder, madder, more alluring video effects to coat their footage with.
One of the most desirable effects in print and video is the retro, distressed look - diseased typefaces, faxed-back textures, and the dirt and grime of old media. DigiEffects´ CineLook plug-in offers this for moving images, as well as detailed, scientifically accurate algorithms for reducing the smoothness of video to grainy film flicker. The plug-in - which is also compatible with Avid Media Composer, Media 100 and other QuickTime-based editing systems - is split into two modules. CineLook matches the tone and grain of real-life film stock, and FilmDamage replicates film artefacts.
CineLook is packed with features for controlling every aspect of the film impersonation process. Built-in presets, labelled to match exact antique film types - like Eastwood Colour or Agfa 400ASA Super 8 film - are accessible, but every single option, from graininess to colour tinting, has its own slider.
Grain levels are controllable to mimic the lightness of Super 8 and 16mm grain or the heavy-set emulsions of 35mm and 70mm stock. More than that, CineLook uses a sophisticated physics mode to create the separate blurring effect that each layer of colour emulsion creates when light is focused through celluloid. The ChromaMatch section controls and emulates the ramp-up saturation and technicolor of certain film stocks. And you can change hue and brightness settings to correct lighting errors, as you would by nudging F-stops during the development of real film.
One of CineLook´s most subtle but impressive effects is TimeMatch, its custom process for stripping away the 50 even and odd fps (fields per second) in video (which give it its smooth look) for the 24fps of film. Working in sync with After Effects´ own 3:2 Pulldown setting, TimeMatch introduces the slurring effect of a rotating shutter to give a realistic 8mm and 16mm film look.
But CineLook is not a panacea to rescue dull footage. Only well-shot, interesting clips will benefit from a layer of retro grime and shutter jolting. And no amount of beautification with grain and saturation will turn a horribly shot chunk of cheap video into a piece of cinematography.
CineLook´s performance overheads are massive, which is understandable when you consider the computational lengths it´s going through to saturate your frames with stochastic atomic structures.
Minimum requirements are a 132MHz 604e Power Mac with 32Mb RAM and After Effects 3.0. The chances are you´ll have a system this powerful if you´re planning any desktop video production, but CineLook is achingly slow on most systems. Its performance is paralysed by its lack of support for multiprocessor machines like the 9600/200MP, but even so, even on a 9500 with 128Mb RAM, previews of most effects took a good 15-30 seconds per frame. A thumbnail preview would have been welcome.
The interface is cluttered. Sliders are presented as an endless collapsible list, specific controls can be hard to find and easily lost, and online help isn´t forthcoming. Another minor drawback is that CineLook Broadcast can only handle clips at resolutions up to 768 x 486 pixels, which means that although it is suitable for television, video and multimedia work, it will not be able to handle anything on film.
CineLook is a specialist tool, and only really likely to be used as a spot effect or for a specific production task. Frame-stripping is often used on TV to give video a fly-on-the-wall look. Most companies send their stuff out to expensive bureaux. But simulating realistic grain, adding scratches, shutter juddering, or even naturalistically impersonating Super-8 or lower film frame rates is time-consuming at best, and impossible at worst.
CineLook´s end results, even at the very lowest settings, are utterly convincing. With FilmDamage, more projector effects would have been welcome, especially some kind of burning or melting. For CineLook itself, a better, more intuitive interface would have been welcome. However, if you want that effect, you need this plug-in.
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