over saturated lens flare

can any one advise how i can do this for free..




the headlight effect

It's 7:39 piece. Could you give us a hint where it is?

3:37

Do you want to create the flare in camera (cheap and easy) or in post as a visual effect (build it yourself cheap or by filter $)?

filter

Since I've been working on a much larger set of lens flares I thought I'd share this one with you which does more or less what you're looking for:

REVISED VERSION COMING SOON

It's a Generator so move the unzipped attachment to your USer/Movies/Motion Templates/Generators folder.

Make sure you change the blend mode of the Generator to Add or Screen inside FCP X to get the best result.







Adjust the color controls to match the look you need for your scene.

I didn't really care for the flares in that 50cent video. They look a bit cheap. I think this one is much better. Sure it costs a bit more than 50 cents, but well worth it as it makes your production look like a million bucks.

vimeo.com/25666605

I have to say that almost no digitally produced lens flares look remotely plausible - it's all really just a matter of taste. (That motionvfx version has waaaayyyy too few secondaries for anything like a photorealistic effect, for instance!!!)

Generating the real thing takes massive amounts of processing and some real deep understanding of the science - which is very rarely in evidence in any of the commonly available lens flare packages, even the expensive ones on offer.

I'd love to see this one made commercially available however:

www.mpi-inf.mpg.de/resources/lensflareRendering/

Nice clip Simon, now we see how complicated lens flares really are!

If you like Flares (& who doesn't?), we discussed their overuse in the most recent remake of Total Recall (which believe it or not, has them in virtually every scene!), in this thread.

fcp.co/forum/2-off-topic/11759-effective-use-of-fx

Yes, that was an interesting discussion. No question lens flares are massively over-used and have been for a long while and often very crudely used as well.

The commonest are the ones you described in Total Recall (and as used in the video above) which are supposedly mimicking anamorphic streaks but don't look like anything you'd ever get in camera and actually tend to ruin the illusion that you're watching something real. Fine for a music promo (I guess) but pretty self-defeating in most movie situations.

A lot of of the packages you can buy are designed simply to "look cool" (like your motionvfx example) rather than even try to mimic real world effects. When you see perfectly regular shapes for the secondaries, or again as in your example, completely implausible shapes(!), you know the designer isn't thinking about the science of it at all. The worst thing about them is they look so "plastic" and unorganic.

It's usually nicer to "roll your own" which is very simply done - and there are loads of interesting (and sometimes very creative) suggestions you can Google to find out how to do this.

But if I never see another "light leak" ever again I'll be perfectly content

Agreed.