available at artbeats.com Unifying Clips

Tips N Tricks
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Unifying Clips
Some simple techniques to unify clips from different sources
It’s nice when you can personally shoot all
the footage you need for a project: That
way, you can ensure their look and feel
will match when you edit them together.
However, many projects don’t benefit
from this luxury - you may be combining
original footage with stock clips, 3D
renders, still
image
artwork, and
any other bits
the client may
throw at you.
Edit them
together, and
the jumps in
visual tonality can disrupt your storytelling. Fortunately, there are a few simple
techniques you may employ to make them
appear to be cut from the
same cloth.
Colorizing your footage will give the
impression that it was all shot with the
same filter attached to the lens, or with the
same lighting. Plug-ins that will accomplish this include the Sepia filter in FCP or
Tritone effect in AE. Change the color to
get the treatment you want - for example,
a nice orange will create a warming effect.
Note that less is often more with these
effects; reduce the Amount or increase the
Blend With Original percentage for a more
subtle look.
Beyond colorization is applying a more
complex treatment or “look.” These looks
simulate different film stocks or film
processing techniques (such as bleach
bypass), or cinematography techniques
such as inducing a softening glow by
Colorization and “Looks”
A common approach to
clip matching is to apply
a similar colorization or
stylization to all the
clips, giving them the
same veneer or patina.
These two clips - from the
Artbeats Forest Rays (a)
and new Ultra Water
Drops (b) collections are both beautiful in their
own rights, but have
different color tints.
Applying a Tritone filter
in After Effects with
orange midtones and pink
highlights changes both
to a morning scene, and
also makes them look as
if they were shot in the
same forest on the same
day (c, d).
a
c
b
d
applying ProMist to the lens when the
footage was shot. A popular plug-in for
this is Magic Bullet Looks (distributed by
Red Giant Software); we are also fond of
the old 55mm and Digital Film Lab
plug-ins from Digital Film Tools, which
are now sold as Tiffen Dfx by the same
Tiffen that makes the physical lens filters.
Color Matching
You might be looking for something more
subtle than applying a color tint or
film-like treatment to all of your clips,
such as just getting their inherent color
tone to match. In this case, you will have
to dive into the world of color correction.
If you want to step up to the industrialstrength tools, Final Cut ships with Apple
Color; After Effects ships with Synthetic
Aperture’s Color
Finesse. On a less
intimidating scale,
most packages come
bundled with a
three-way color
corrector that lets you
independently adjust
the shadows,
midtones, and
highlights; there is
also the popular
third-party Colorista
plug-in from Red
Giant Software.
The first clip (a - from the new Artbeats collection Ultra
Nature) has warm tones and was shot in partial shade;
the second (b - from the Kids of Summer collection) has
cooler tones and was shot in bright sunlight. We used Key
Correct Pro’s Color Matcher plug-in to warm up the
second clip to better match the first (c).
a
b
There are also ways to
make clips better
match a reference clip
that might already
have a tonality you
like. One is the Color
Matcher plug-in from
the Key Correct Pro
filter set sold by Red
Giant Software.
Originally designed to
give a keyed or synthetic foreground
element the same tonality as the
background it is being composited against,
it can also be used to match one full-frame
clip to another.
If you don’t mind a little work, you can
perform a similar adjustment manually:
Pick one clip that you want to use as a
central reference to adjust the other clips
to - hopefully one that has good shadows,
midtones, and highlights. Use the color
eyedropper in your program, hover it over
the midtones (color values near 50%, such
as 127 on a 0-255 scale), and note the
independent R, G, and B values. Now do
the same with a clip that does not match,
and note the differences - such as, say, the
red channel being 30 points higher than
c
your reference clip. You now know that
you need to reduce the red midtones in the
offending clip by roughly this amount to
get it to match. You can optionally do the
same with the shadows and highlights to
get an even closer match. Color Balance
or 3-way color correctors are best for
these adjustments, but even simple
plug-ins such as Levels or Curves will
allow you to make corrections such as
these. You may not have the patience to do
this for every clip, but it is a great way to
get a basic grasp of what beginning color
correction is all about.
Tips From The Archives
One subject we haven’t discussed is
whether or not the quality of all of your
clips match. Even if you get the colors in
Unifying Clips: Quick Tip
Rather than treat each clip individually, a more efficient workflow is to edit together
your program, and then apply one treatment to the result. For example, in Apple Final
Cut Pro you can select the components of your edit, then use the menu item Sequence >
Nest Item(s). This will create a single composite clip in your sequence that you can then
treat, while retaining the ability to right-click on this composite to open the nested
sub-sequence. In Adobe After Effects, a typical approach is to add a Layer > New >
Adjustment Layer to the top of your composition, and apply effects to this layer.
the same ballpark, you will still be able to
tell the difference between flatly-lit B-roll
footage and a sexy scene shot on film. For
example, the clips in the Artbeats stock
footage library have been carefully
cleaned up and color corrected; you may
need to do some work enhancing your
other clips before you can successfully
match them all together. For tips on
enhancing existing shots, check out some
of the other past articles in the
artbeats.com online Resources > Tips &
Tricks archives, including A Gentle
Introduction to Creative Colorization,
Artificial Lighting, Relighting Footage,
and Adding a Filmic Glow.
Chris and Trish Meyer are the founders
and owners of Crish Design, an awardwinning motion graphics studio that has
created a wide variety of work for film,
broadcast, corporate events, and special
venues. They are one of the original
development sites for After Effects, and
have two books currently in print: Creating Motion Graphics and After Effects
Apprentice.