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JANUARY 21, 2002 Digital Film Tools 55MM Glass Filter Simulation Plug-ins
Warm/Cool: Adjusts the overall color temperature of the scene to either warmer or cooler. Works great to give your video shots a more film-like look and helps to generate a better defined ambience. Fluorescent: Worth the price of the package alone, in my opinion. It lets you remove the greenish tone caused by shooting under fluorescent lights. A must-have for corporate/industrial producers who must shoot under these conditions all the time. The effect is completely adjustable and so is the amount of correction. [an error occurred while processing this directive] Mist: Creates atmosphere by reducing contrast and sharpness while creating a glow around highlights. It mimics the popular mist filters that take the harshness out of video cameras, giving the image a much more pleasant, softer look. Again, the effect is adjustable in intensity so that you can mimic a large range of filters. Fog: Creates fog, providing a soft, misty atmosphere over the image. Great for special effect shots and to give a more dramatic look to certain scenes. Defocus: Replicates a true camera defocus by blooming highlights as the image is blurred. Can be animated over time to simulate rack focusing and is also very useful to soften up background plates in compositing. Selective Soft Focus: Lets you isolate a portion of the image with the built-in matte generator and introduce areas of soft focus while keeping the rest of the image sharp. Similar to what you can do by applying Vaseline to parts of a lens. Skin Smoother: This is a very cool effect that softens wrinkles and blemishes while retaining edge detail. The lady talents love it! Instead of softening the whole image to smooth out their faces, you can apply the effect selectively while keeping other elements sharp. Another plug-in that, alone, would be worth the price of the package. Night Vision: More of a special effects filter, it creates the effect of a typical night vision lens with that green, glowy, grainy look. Infra-Red: Simulates the effect of infra-red photography by making the image black and white and blooming highlights. It can even give that Ansel Adams look to your footage. Faux Film: A simple filter that gives video the look of motion picture film. It reduces contrast and sharpness, creates a soft glow around highlights and adds film grain. Very easy to use and produces good looking results. One of the major advantages that 55MM has over traditional glass filters is that the effects can be animated over time. This allows you to do a lot more and lets you create more realistic effects. A good example is the use of graduated color filters. I’ve seen many movies where a simple camera movement can give the filter away because it changes the area it affects. For example, a person’s head may become affected by the filter by a minor camera tilt or even the person’s own movement within the frame. Once that happens, there’s no easy fix. With 55MM you can keyframe the effect to match the camera motion, easily restricting it to the sky and avoiding interference with other picture elements. The effects can also be masked for even more control. For the extremely affordable introductory price of $95, 55MM is one of those few must-have items in your toolbox. It works very well, producing realistic results, and will save you a lot of time. I also find that by having “glass filters” readily available in post you’ll have the option to effortlessly improve your footage, ending up with better-looking final products. The only thing I disliked about this package was the legal broadcast levels filter present in all plug-ins. I found that it tended to compress the levels a little bit too much for my taste and I prefer to use the equivalent tool in the compositing/editing program. Because the broadcast levels filter is turned off by default, it becomes a non-issue anyway. By the way, while 55MM is designed to work with moving pictures, it can be used just as successfully with stills. So not only does it benefit filmmakers and videographers but also still photographers. For more information, please visit Digital Film Tools at http://www.digitalfilmtools.com. Prev 1 2 3 Related sites: • AV Video • Creative Mac • Digital Post Production • Digital Producer • Digital Video Editing • DV Format • DVD Creation • Film and Video Magazine • The WWUG Related forums: [an error occurred while processing this directive] 
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