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(Page 1 of 2 pages for this article 1 2 >) Filed under: Cameras •Post Production •Production •Tips •Visual Effects • Tiffen DFX 2 Digital FiltersTake your footage to the next level with this simple post option Tweaking footage for your reel is a huge advantage. Here’s how to take your footage to the next level without taking on a second full-time job as a colorist. I’ve been a fan of Tiffen’s DFX digital filters ever since director/DP Joe Murray showed me that their precursor, Digital Film Tools 55mm and Digital Film Lab, were tools he used when coloring his own professional work. Joe started his career as a colorist, and he has the skill to tweak footage for his reel in the privacy of his own home. Using a combination of After Effects, Apple Color and tools like Tiffen DFX, Joe makes sure that his passion for filmmaking comes through the way he intends it to--every time. Tiffen partnered with Digital Film Tools and fleshed out the 55mm and Digital Film Lab products with digital versions of Tiffen filters, taking a great effects package and making it even better. I am not a professional colorist, and I can’t afford to hire one to tweak my reel. Besides, I like to play around and experiment, and while I’m no competition for a professional colorist I’m pretty good when it comes to manipulating my own imagery. The best part of coloring your own footage is that you learn what kinds of shots are problematic, which makes life a lot easier when it comes time for a professional to grade your work. As a camera assistant I was taught to always think about where the footage will go next--in that case it was paramount to make sure that my slates filled the frame and were legible, bright and in focus so the assistant editor could read them!--and this holds true for my work as a DP. If I have some idea what a colorist can, or can’t, do for me, then I’ll be in much better shape on the set when it comes to deciding what I will spend time on and what I won’t. Sometimes it’s a lot cheaper to let something go that you can have a colorist fix later when it’s just them, you and a director in a room instead of an entire crew waiting around for you to set a flag or put a grad in the matte box, and if you can make those calls accurately then you’ll be very popular with your producer. I love playing with Apple’s Color, but with its steep learning curve and more than a few bugs it’s hard for me to spend the time necessary to learn it really, really well. It’s the most powerful tool out there for the price, but it’s not always the most convenient. I also love Magic Bullet Looks, but while it is a very fast and malleable tool it doesn’t offer the variety of diffusion and softening effects that Tiffen DFX does. So while I prefer Magic Bullet Looks for fast and effective coloring, Tiffen DFX allows me to add diffusion and grads a bit more subtly. That’s where the magic is.
Above you’ll see a couple of video clips that I’ve treated with a variety of Tiffen DFX 2 filters. Both clips are from spec projects that were shot on an HVX-200, and while they look pretty nice just the way they are there’s no denying that a little extra tender loving care in post will go a long way. Some of the looks I demonstrate above are pretty severe just to show you what’s possible, but the best touches are frequently the light ones--and while they aren’t obvious manipulations there’s no doubt that they do improve the image beyond what an HVX-200 is capable of. And if you’re shooting with an HVX-200 you probably don’t have the budget to carry a collection of diffusion filters or grads, but for the price of one filter you can (digitally) have them all. Does digital diffusion have the same effect as on-camera diffusion? No. When you put a glass filter in front of a lens you are manipulating the image at the highest bit depth possible. The image never looks better than it does in the camera’s DSP (digital signal processing unit) where matrix and gamma adjustments are applied to the raw data coming off the sensor. After that the data is squeezed down and output, depending on the camera/recorder combination, in 10-bit color for HD-SDI output or AVC-Intra recording, or 8-bit DVCProHD data or tape. Manipulating 8- or 10-bit compressed footage won’t come close to what you can do in camera by affecting the image at its purest level. But applying diffusion digitally, while not the same as adding it optically, still makes a difference, and Tiffen’s filter profiles seem very true to the originals. The best part is that you can choose to apply the diffusion effect to the overall image or only a specific part. You can read about the first shot, of the girl on the lounge chair, in this article, and see the end result here. She was lit very simply with available skylight from a large roll-up door that I opened just enough to create the soft-but-contrasty look I was after. The raw images looked pretty good but I’m a stickler for making people look their best and I wanted to find a way to make her flesh tone perfect and silky smooth. The other shot, the singer in front of the pier, I wrote about in this article. At the time I thought this shot could probably stand on its own if it had to, but in the back of my mind I knew I wanted to to try to do something to make the sky a little more interesting. The trick to these kinds of effects is that you don’t want to blow out and clip some important detail that you might want to tweak later. It’s also good to realize that you might not be able to push things too far if you are shooting a highly-compressed format like 8-bit DVCProHD, or 10-bit low bit rate XDCAM. This pertains primarily to processes that require a change in gamma, ped or gain--anything that “stretches” out the data that’s already there. The adding of digital diffusion or color grads is less susceptible to banding but still looks better if you don’t have large areas of clipped detail. (Smaller clipped highlights can made a bit prettier by adding the subtle glow of a small amount of white diffusion.)
Let’s go on to page two and talk about Tiffen DFX’s controls…
(Page 1 of 2 pages for this article 1 2 >) 
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