300 Effect for Video using Smoke

We will try to reproduce the color treatment they used in an excellent movie 300 using Smoke's tools.

With this exercise we will be able to learn a little bit about the CC and CW modules as well as a bit of how the Logic Ops work (Multiply and Screen)

The tutorial is very basice, but it is required that you feel comfortable with the smoke interface and know where all of the modules are.

Let's start with the following video:

As you can see it's a regular video file with a bit of saturation, what we'll try to do is give it that sepia tone that they have in 300, without loosing important color information such as the red and a bit of the blue. The effect for 300 is very similar to bleach bypass.

We will select the original video file and go inside the CC module, from there go to the Histogram, and clip a bit of the black and the white to give it a little bit of contrast.

After that go to the basics tab and select mono in the button that originally reads rewire (this will change the image to monochromatic) and then move the center point from the color wheel a bit to the sepia tone. This will give you like an old black and white film look.

Render.

Select again your original video and go inside the CC again (Reset all values) and now decrease the saturation value to a 50 %

Again we want to give it a contrasty look, so we go to the histogram and do the same we did on a previous step with the white and black indicators.

Render.

Now we have 2 clips, one with a sepia tone, and another one slightly desaturated. Now we'll use the logic ops.

Imagine Logic Ops as the blend modes in Photoshop.

Basically what we want to do is multiply one image with the other. I moved the transparency slider cause otherwise we would end up with a very dark image, but these are values you can toy around with so that it gives you the desired result.

Please note that it will give you different results depending on which video you decide to select first. So play around selecting the "colored" one first multiplying it with the sepia one, and the other way around.

You can try out different logic ops, in this case i also used the Screen logic op, which gave me a result with more light than the ones used with Multiply.

Now select the result you liked the most and enter the DVE with the following order:

Front: The result of the Logic Ops

Back: The Sepia video

Matte: The result of the Logic Ops

Now that you're inside the DVE go to the Keyer. The reason for this is that we need to isolate the foreground elements from the background. On the original film they shot a good chunk of shots with a blue screen to later do the compositing of the actors with the background, in this case we are going to so something like that, mainly to separate a bit of the color from the background, from the foreground.

In the case of this shot, the Master Keyer will do the trick cause we will be able to select the blue of the sky to create a matte. In the case the shot is more difficult you will have to go to the Mask tab and create a geometry to isolate some of the elements.

This is the way my matte looks after adjusting it a little bit, and adding a shrink and a blur to it.

You might want to color correct the front now that you've isolated it from the background. Add a little bit of light, make some of the colours a little bit brighter.

Now you will have a result that's pretty close to what we're looking for, I just want to show you an extra thing just in case you want to tweak any of the steps you went through to have the finished effect.

Drag your result to the Record Area.

Hit Ctrl+Shift+f5 this will change the record view to a Large History View.

As you can see you have all the steps the original clip has gone through to get tho the final result.

You can double click any of the nodes there and it will enter the module so that you can make the necessary adjustments.

In this case I changed on the DVE the blend mode, and also the brightness of the front clip.

I dragged them back to the source.

That's why I have two different results.

Afterwards you can still keep tweaking the color, in this case i want to bring back a bit of the blue of the sky, so for that i used the CW.

I used the Selective 1

Then Activated it.

The clicked on Pick Custom, and selected the blueish tone and pumped up the saturation.

So these are all the steps we've followed to reach our final output.

This is the resulting clip. Scroll to the top to look at the original.

Arturo Camacho. 2007.

Questions? arturocdl [at - @] digitlogic.net