Digital Video - April 2008 - (Page 35) Symphony. A few weeks ago I was on a Final Cut Pro system. I’m flexible. Generally, though, I’d say my Avid and FCP gigs are split 50-50 these days. And, no, I don’t prefer one over the other.” Apelbaum attests that he doesn’t frequently use any plug-ins, but will turn to them from time-to-time as the occasion permits. “If it’s a short-format project that requires dumbing-down and slicking-up, I tend to use [GenArts] Sapphire on Avid. I also like Joe’s Filters [created by Joe Maller] on FCP and Magic Bullet on After Effects. “Sapphire contains many effects that I think are really cheesy,” he continues, “but every now and then you get something that adds a bit of panache — mostly blurs and glows. I prefer to not overuse them. The key is to use the right filter at an optimal moment, and not rely on it all the time. There are many filters that I find neat on their own but all too often cheesy in the context of a piece.” The Nattress Film Effects plug-ins package includes an effective option that quickly adds film artifacting to an HD video image (top). COOL & FREE Stephanie Argy owns Mental Slapstick, a Hollywood-based boutique production and post outfit and her clients include Mazda and Sony Electronics. Her company has also branched out into narrative work with award-winning shorts (Scene, Ghandi at the Bat) and the period caper feature The Red Machine, which is in post. Mental Slapstick works with Final Cut Pro 6.0, running on a dual 2.0GHz Power PC G5. “We have 2GB of RAM, and we’re currently on Mac OS X 10.4.11. Yes, we’re in dire need of an upgrade, but we’ve been superstitious about making a change in the middle of a feature,” she attests. When it comes to plug-ins, Argy puts iZotope Vinyl at the top of her list. “Vinyl is a very cool — and free — plug-in for ‘futzing’ audio. One of our short films, Gandhi at the Bat, is a mock 1933 newsreel, and we used Vinyl to get a convincingly lo-fi soundtrack. iZotope’s plug-ins support a lot of different systems and formats, so we were able to run it directly in Final Cut Pro, though it also works with other applications, including Pro Tools. We got the most use out of the Mechanical Noise, Wear, Electrical Noise and Dust parameters.” In addition to Vinyl, Argy turns to Synthetic Aperture’s Color Finesse for Adobe After Effects. “Because we do so www.dv.com much effects work in After Effects, it’s nice tomake color correction part of that workflow, so we’ve recently become very enamored of Color Finesse, which comes bundled with After Effects, but opens in its own standalone interface,” she explains. “It can accommodate as much knowledge and experience as the user can bring to the process. Color Finesse includes a good range of software scopes, but if someone only wants scopes in AE — along with some other nice analysis tools — Synthetic Aperture makes another plug-in called Test Gear; at the moment, it’s not available for AE CS3, but they have a CS3 version in Beta and it should be public soon.” Argy’s final selection is Automatic Duck. “For us, the trick is being able to move a Final Cut Pro project into After Effects and access the original footage, and Automatic Duck is the king of portability,” she says. “You have to buy the particular Duck product for your workflow — we use Pro Import AE, which creates a new Export option in Final Cut Pro and a new Import option in AE, then turns the FCP project into an XML file that AE can read, then the process is smooth and fast. “As indie filmmakers, cost is a big issue, so it helps when a plug-in is bundled, or free, or at least low-cost,” Argy offers. “There are exceptions, of course. Automatic Duck, for example, isn’t cheap, but it saves so much time and energy that it’s worth it. Basically, we look for a plug-in that delivers something dramatically better or different from what we get from the basic applications — enough difference to make it worth the extra money.” DV http://www.dulcesystems.com http://www.dulcesystems.com http://www.dv.com
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