Performance
On my Athlon 64 3200+ machine with 2GB of RAM, the plugin was very speedy. Changes made showed up almost instantaneously, allowing for realtime adjustment of all parameters. Obviously when adjusting jitter, flicker, and scratches in the Film Camera and Film Damage modules you have to render out a segment of footage to get any idea of what it’s going to look like, since these are animated effects unlike the Film Look module. Render times with scratches, flicker, jitter, spots, and a 16mm Film Look emulation took only 60 seconds for 430 frames! (To give you a speed comparison between NewBlueFX’s Film Effects plugins and Red Giant’s Magic Bullet Looks and Frames plugins, MFM editor Jeremy Hanke created a 36 minute wedding video on his Core2Duo machine with 3 Gigs of RAM. He used a similar look scheme as the one I created with NewBlueFX’s Film Effects usting Magic Bullet Looks and Frames. We both used Premiere Pro CS3. The rendering time for his project was 12 hours. Despite the fact that my machine is less powerful, the render time for the same length project using NewBlueFX’s Film Effects would be just over 3 hours!)
The supplied Day For Night preset is great, and seems to work well with a wide range of footage.
Value
At only $160, I think this is an excellent value. Similar film look packages will run you close to $400. Although the more expensive packages have more options and can theoretically produce a higher quality picture, I’d say that 75% of the time you can get the look you’re after with Film Effects. Plus, for only $90 more you can get a combo pack that includes NewBlueFX’s other two effects plugins, Art Effects and Motion Effects, which I’ll be reviewing in upcoming issues.
Final Comments Although video cameras these days have amazing built-in film looks, as of yet none of them can replicated the jitter, scratches, flickering, and other such “defects” that people subconsciously relate to the look of real film. You’d also be hard pressed to replicate in-camera the various color timing effects such as bleach bypassing that give movies these days their signature looks. For both these reasons film look packages such as NewBlueFX’s Film Effects are still a necessary and useful tool in any post production environment. The simplicity, ease of use, wide platform interoperability, and great results of Film Effects definitely elevates it to one of the main contenders in this class of plugins.
Ease
of Use
10.0
Depth
of Options
7.0
Performance
10.0
Value
8.0
Overall
Score
8.8
Ryan Graham is the director of Livelihood, a critically acclaimed ultra-low budget zombie comedy. He also runs 37.5 Productions, a post production company specializing in giving a Hollywood sheen to independent films. In his spare time he is the lead guitarist for The Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad.
