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Topic: Two Strip Technicolor Plugin...
Original Message
( Posted Feb 12, 05 8:54 pm )
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Patrick Sheffield
Joined: Jul, 2004
Posts: 2632
Santa Monica, CA
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There has been a bit of chatter in the VFX community about the visual effects and film look that Martin Scorsese used in The Aviator, a lot centered around the Two Strip and Three Strip Technicolor processes emulated in the film. I did not use the same techniques described (barely) in the Aviator site, but further research on the Wide Screen Museum's Technicolor pages led me to a far simpler implementation. Thanks to the FX Script Reference site, I turned it into a simple plug-in. My first and it is available here:
http://www.pistolerapost.com/tech/TwoStrip.zip (ctrl-click and select Download Linked File As...)
UnZip this and place it in /Library/Application Support/Final Cut Pro System Support/Plugins
In case you want a historical look and are tired of using Sepia...
The filter can be found under the Effects/Video Filters/Stylize menu.
Let me know what you think. Thanks,
Patrick
Dual 2 GHz G5; Mac OS X (10.3.7); 2.5 GB RAM, ATI 9800SE
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Topic: Three Strip Technicolor plugin and more...
Original Message
( Posted Feb 20, 05 3:31 am )
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Patrick Sheffield
Level 3
Joined: Jul, 2004
Posts: 2742
Santa Monica, CA
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Okay, I think I learned my lesson and rather than posting about a million versions and making everyone download and download again, I think I've got the final version of the 3 strip Technicolor plugin.
First of all a massive thanks to Graeme Nattress (buy his plugins). When I showed him my original script and asked for some thoughts on optimization, he looked at it, corrected a mathematical error I'd made and basically completely rewrote it, making it about 10 times smaller and faster. I took his script and added a slider for the strength of the effect, tested and re-tested and put it up for download here:
http://www.pistolerapost.com/tech/ThreeStrip.zip
UnZip this and place it in /Library/Application Support/Final Cut Pro System Support/Plugins
The filter can be found under the Effects/Video Filters/Stylize menu.
The algorithm attempts to simulate the Technicolor 3 strip process with the assumption that modern film processes have a certain inevitable degree of "cross talk" across the channels because of the nature of shooting everything on the same strip of film and using selectively sensitized silver compounds as opposed to the Technicolor process which shot thru primary color filters to separate strips.
What it does to correct for this is to construct mattes of the pure colors of the channels. i.e. red, but not green or blue, etc. This avoids affecting the whites since they are red and green and blue. It then takes the mattes, combines them and multiplies them by their complementary channels. That is we take the red matte, combine it with the blue matte, then multiply the green channel by that.
So, the equation for the blue channel would be:
FinalB = B * Inverse(2G - (B + R)) * (2R - (B + G))
Working with the limitations of 8 bit, I changed it to:
BMATTE = B - R
BMATTE = BMATTE + B
BMATTE = BMATTE - G
I did this for all channels. Then the channels are multiplied by the inverse of their complimentary mattes thus correcting for the "cross talk". What Graeme's genius did was to do the operations for all channels together rather than breaking them apart, modifying them then re-combining them as I had been doing.
I hope you like the result.
Patrick
Dual 2 GHz G5; Mac OS X (10.3.7); 2.5 GB RAM, ATI 9800SE
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I did promise "and more"...
( msg #
1.: Posted Feb 20, 05 3:37 am )
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Patrick Sheffield
Level 3
Joined: Jul, 2004
Posts: 2742
Santa Monica, CA
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In my early attempts to simulate the Two Strip Technicolor process I ended up with a process that gave a sort of golden "richness" to the image, so I called it "Richer". Graeme also helped me with the FXScript implementation of that. It can be found here:
http://www.pistolerapost.com/tech/Richer.zip
UnZip this and place it in the /Library/Application Support/Final Cut Pro System Support/Plugins directory. The filter can be found under the Effects/Video Filters/Stylize menu.
I'll be modifying the webpage at http://www.pistolerapost.com/tech/2strip.html to reflect these changes.
Please let me know how you like this plugin - it doesn't seek to simulate any particular film look, I just liked the effect.
Patrick
Dual 2 GHz G5; Mac OS X (10.3.7); 2.5 GB RAM, ATI 9800SE
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