I am playing around with Magic Bullet for Editors and it appears to me that perhaps the best way of getting different "cinematic looks" is to shoot it clean at 24p, perhaps turning down the sharpness a bit, and doing it all in post. I know this has been said by others before, but it seems the safest way to go.

The Magic Bullet for Editors package is pretty damn cool, but that's not to say that there aren't others that can do the same thing. I like this because it works native in FCP as opposed to exporting it into after effects and doing the work there.

I did my test shoots today. Looks like everything is fine. had a reletively bright day with an auto of f 12 and a decent manual picture at the same f stop. Whatever I saw before was either an aberation, or more likely an aberation of memory!

On the cinematic look: I've been advised before that shooting a good clean 24pa picture with cinegamma and cinecolor matrix is the way to go, but to stretch the blacks and shoot the widest range picture possible. This follows to my CG and compositing training. You can always crush the blacks and highlights in post, but you can't get the details back if they aren't there already.

-Jason

Hi Jason. Glad it's working for you (not sure about that "f 12" though :) ). Were you using the ND filter at all?

Richard

Hehe, yeah, typo. 11 with a 1/120th shutter. I can't read, and I can't type. No ND filter on that. ND with a 1/60th shutter at 60i, and 1/48th at 24pa, f 11.

-jason