Table of Contents:
- Introduction
- After Effects/Premiere Pro with Plugins
- After Effects/Premiere Pro “standalone”
- Other Pro Tools
- Free Tools
INTRODUCTION
I’ve been asked many times how to best achieve a film-quality look in machinima postproduction.
You’ve probably noticed that some machinima is excessively clean and crisp looking. Raw footage from a video game or virtual world such as Second Life can be cartoony, and not exactly cinematic. The real world is imperfect and sometimes gritty. We work in postproduction to simulate the look and feel of reality, emphasize certain elements and de-emphasize others, and convey mood, feeling and atmosphere.
Let’s take this “BEFORE” shot captured in Second Life for “Scent Memory” as an example. Despite the detailed textures, it still looks artificially crisp. The colors also appear flat, and nothing really pops out at you.
As you can see, we succeeded in the “AFTER” shot in achieving 3 important things:
1) A cinematic, authentic film look
2) Emphasis placed on certain elements without loss of detail. In fact, the character’s face (especially his eyes) benefit greatly and the viewer’s eyes are really drawn to them. The ominous appearance of the background elements remain, while their presence is downplayed to the lead character’s benefit
3) Mood. An atmospheric, brooding feel of mystery. Postprocessing can be used to add “feeling” to any shot, from “bright and cheery” to “dark and dreary,” from comedic to horrific.
In this series, I’ll list four of the ways I know starting with my preferred method.






