HDSLR Shooter’s Magic Bullet Suite’s MisFire and Adobe CS5.5 Production Premium

The latest from HDSLR Shooter! Magic Bullet Suite’s MisFire and Adobe CS5.5 Production Premium video tutorial!

How To Make Your Video Look Old…But Not Tired

The Unsung Hero of Magic Bullet Suite 11
I say unsung, because there’s not any mention of it being part of the Magic Bullet Suite. Once I loaded the Suite and opened it up for the first time in Premiere Pro CS5.5 — there it was. I went back to the RedGiant websiteand searched and found just a small amount of information on their blog.

Aharon Rabinowitz has written a good warm up about MisFire, along with some information about similar programs. Looking at the plug-in, I’ve used Premiere Pro to apply it to a short film I’ve I shot of the Access 59 Car Show using the iPhone4.

Misfire is a plug-in that lets you transcend your footage from new to old. You’ve seen this effect, it’s everywhere it seems. It’s even a standard preset for many consumer cameras.

With most of these, a preset filter is applied that usually throws in some grain and scratches and desaturates the image. The issue with this for pro applications is that you’re stuck with the effect, making sure your project will look just like every other piece that uses this effect.

You’re In Control
With Magic Bullet Misfire, you have complete control over all of the aspects that go into creating the old film look. There are 14 different plug-ins that make up the MisFire plug-in, and you can add, remove and tweak them to your liking using key frames in either Premiere Pro or After Effects CS5.5 or other NLE.

After editing and color grading that footage using Magic Bullet Quick Looks. I was pretty happy with the results, but I wanted to add something to make it more stylized, and make it look less like video.  Once loaded, you’ll find MisFire in the Video Effects Section of Premiere Pro. Scroll down the list, and you’ll see MisFire with the other Magic Bullet plug-ins. Once you click on the MisFire Bin, you’ll notice all fourteen of the various plug-ins that are automatically added with just dropping the first MisFire effect into your clip.

Scratches
Now the first one I played with were the scratches. You’ve got Micro Scratches, Basic Scratches and Deep Scratches – all of which are customizable. You can adjust the color, size, and frequency.

This helps you to keep the scratches confined to a particular area of the picture. That way they don’t interfere with your subject. Because you have such control over every aspect of MisFire, you can make sure the effect doesn’t become stale, giving it a more original and unique look.

Fading, Flicker & Funk
You can adjust fading, which gives the image an uneven look mimicking what you might see in older film due to age or cheap development. Funk allows you to add various splotches and discolorations which are supposed to represent bad processing or age of the film.

You can further tweak this by setting key frames for splotches to alter the size and amount of discolored patches on the image. You can just the flicker, to again, give the film a rough and uneven look that might be a bad projector or again show the age and wear of the film.

Add It In Premiere – Tweak It In AfterEffects
One of the things I love bout the Magic Bullet Suite 11 and Adobe CS5.5 Production Premium is I have the choice to either add these effects here in Premiere, or I can add them in AfterEffects by using the Adobe’s Dynamic Link.

If I’m sure I want this effect, but I want to work with it in AfterEffects, I can simply add it here in Premiere, and tweak it in After Effects. All I have to do is right click on the clip and select replace with After Effects Composition.

After Effects then opens the clip as a composition, and it places the clip in the time line.

Your Clip Comes with Baggage
When After Effects Creates a composition from the clip, it takes with it all of the effects previously added in Premiere. It even brings over all of the key frame information I’ve done previously, so if all I want to do is tweak this in AfterEffects, I’m free to do so without having to start from scratch.  Once I’ve completed my work in After Effects, I can go back to Premiere and see that the clip has now been replaced with the After Effects Composition.

I realize this might be a bit more tedious than what some may want to do. However, if you do want that control for not only a unique look, but you were also trying to match the look of some footage that really is old, you have a better opportunity to do this here than with other plug-ins and apps that I’ve seen.

See the full story with video over at hdslrshooter.com!