Why FilmStyles?

As an editor, you never know what kind of footage you’ll be dealing with. (Even if you shot it )

Yet, when your viewers watch your project, whether it’s on the big screen, a TV screen, a computer screen, or a mobile device… you want to knock people’s socks off. You want your project to have an aesthetic quality so amazing that it completely blows your clients and viewers away.

Think back to when you first saw movies like Saving Private Ryan, 300, Amelie, the Matrix, or Sin City, or commercials from Obsession, Nike, Jaguar or Victoria’s Secret. Each of those works has a unique, distinctive, unmistakable visual look that’s an essential factor in the huge impression they make on their audience.

There are many great plugin sets available, with hundreds of controls, and if you’re willing to take the time to learn them, and you have plenty of time to tweak a zillion parameters, they work fine.

But I wanted something simple. And fast. I didn’t want to take half an hour tweaking 217 parameters or searching through hundreds of presets to get the look I wanted. What I wanted was a small set of elegant but powerful controls so I could nail any look in a minute or two.

So I went to one the world’s foremost programming geniuses when it comes to video filters, Graeme and Wendy Nattress, Graeme is the genius behind RED software!)

To make a long story short, we worked together to develop a simple set of 3 plugs that allow me (or you) to quickly dial in looks and make almost any footage look spectacular.

Although the FilmStyles plug-ins are great for a wide variety of purposes, the fundamental core idea is to transform the “video look” into the “film look”.

Why would I want my video footage to look like film?

Good question! Why has DVcreators.net always focused on teaching how to shoot cinematically– even when most of our customers aren’t making feature films, but producing videos for marketing, training, education or non-profit?

Because your job as a digital video creator is to tell a story. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a story of your company’s product, a story about safety on the factory floor or a story about a galaxy far far away. It’s a story… and your viewers, are people who watch movies, and so understand a certain language – the cinematic lexicon.

A well-written and produced movie will captivate a viewer’s attention for hours. If your project has a cinematic effect on your viewers, their minds open and you can put them into a enhanced state of consciousness in which they’re experiencing your story… not just “watching your edit”.

Video looks cheap. Film looks expensive. Video is reality. Film is fantasy.

Cheap projects, like, local used car commercials, are traditionally shot on video. Important projects, like Hollywood feature films or Jaguar commercials, have been shot on film for a century, and though they’re digital now, the film look has been culturally ingrained into the psyches of your viewers.

You may not be able to match Hollywood budgets or set design. But with FilmStyles, you’ll be able to powerfully transform the look and visual aesthetic of your video footage in many different ways: frame rate, color balance, gamma, film grain, and even reducing depth of field, to the point where if your viewers lean forward and sniff the screen, they should actually smell buttered popcorn and Red Vines.

FilmStyles gives you the power to create a specific psychological impact in your viewers with a mastery of visual aesthetics. FilmStyles gives you the tools to make your video look more filmlike, more modern, more vintage, more Hollywood, more sci-fi, more edgy, more romantic, funnier, scarier, more inspiring, depressing, stranger, sadder or happier than it looked when you shot it.

Who created the G DVC FilmStyles plug-in set?

Graeme and Wendy Nattress, two of the world’s most genius digital video programmers, wrote the code, and I (Josh Mellicker) specified the controls and functions.

Hey, isn’t there a new version of Final Cut Pro out now?

Is there? Now that you mention it, maybe I did hear something about that…

Well, Apple put Final Cut Pro 7 back on sale, and FCP7 owners, even those who have bought Final Cut Pro X, or even crossgraded, will still be editing in Final Cut Pro 7 for years to come. If you ever re-edit an existing project, or edit any project in FCP7, FilmStyles is well worth far more than the price– even if you only use it once.

After I click “order now”, how long before I get the plug-ins and I can start making my video look simply spectacular?

Usually less than 5 minutes.

Once you click the “order now” button, you’ll be taken to an order form to fill out. Then, the plugins will be downloaded and installed in our amazing, space-age DVcreatorsUniversity digital media distribution platform.

Why is FilmStyles a better plug-in bundle for getting a film look than all the other film plug-in sets out there?

It’s not better. There are plenty of plug-in sets that will give you beautiful filmlike results like FilmStyles.

But FilmStyles is simpler. And faster. Instead of 37 plug-ins with 298 controls, FilmStyles distills it all down to a very simple set of controls you can master quickly after watching a few demo movies. Rather than spending your time mastering screens and screens of complicated functions, FilmStyles delivers amazing results almost instantly. There is no faster way to get these filmlike, stylized looks. In other words, you can still hit your hourly billing target, while still staying within budget.

Would you use FilmStyles to edit a major Hollywood feature film or high budget TV spot?

I would definitely use it to edit previs or in rough cut stage to indicate to the color stylist what we want because it’s so fast and easy. But if I were grading a high budget project, though the quality of FilmStyles is certainly up to the task, I would want the multiple stages and multiple masks, and endless tweakability of Magic Bullet or Da Vinci.

Will my FilmStyled video play real time?

If you set your RT settings to Unlimited RT, and choose Dynamic for Frame Rate and Quality, G DVC FilmStyles plugins should “orangeline” on most recent Macs, meaning it will play, but not every frame and not at highest quality. As always, you should leave color grading for the very final step in your editing workflow– that way, you can edit quickly and monitor at highest quality. The G DVC FilmStyles 24p plug-in may redline, so definitely save this for the very last step.

Where can I find more info on the G DVC FilmStyles 24p plug-in?

This page has more info.