Film Look in FCPHD from PAL miniDV

Question

Hi everyone...
So, I shot a documentary on Pal miniDV (25fps). I'm hoping to achieve a more film-ish look.
I know that you can do this through Adobe After Effects by playing with the gamma curve and creating a small amount of motion blur - http://www.dvinfo.net/articles/filmlook/broadway1.php - though this deals with NTSC rather than PAL.
I have a couple of questions relating to the use of pal here, and I'd really appreciate the help from someone who's more experienced than I (which means just about everyone!)
(1) Does anyone have any comments about creating a more filmish look for PAL minidv rather than NTSC minidv? Is there a preferred method for PAL? With the frame rate at 25fps, you're theoretically 'closer' to film there, but what else can I do and what do I need to do differently?
(2) Is there a way of creating the film look in FCP directly without going over to Adobe After Effects? And does anyone have any opinions about the dis/advantages of the various methods for creating a film look?
(3) If I had to move over to Adobe After Effects to create the filmish look, I'd prefer to stay there to color correct. Anyone have any ideas about the dis/advantages of FCP's against AfterEffects's color correction tools?
If anyone can refer me to any articles with step-by-step instructions about creating the film look, I'd really appreciate that. There seem to be so many different ideas.
Okay, so I know I'm asking a lot and I apologise ...
Thanks so much!
Richard, Los Angeles

Answer 1

Hi Richard,
Part one of the dvinfo net article you referenced is to do with reproducing the motion signature that results when you add pulldown to 24fps film to get to 30fps for NTSC output. It does not apply to PAL footage. In PAL land, material shot at 25fps is simply slowed down to 24fps when printed to film (and vice versa for film material that is bound for video or TV).
So to repeat, pulldown motion signature is not really an issue for PAL projects (I say not really because it can be done, but the speed change is more commonly applied).
In your case however you are not concerned with frame rate changes, I don't think, you just want to apply a film look to your video. There are a number of ways to do this and by all accounts the Nattress filters are top notch for the price.
I'm sure you checked out part two of the article you referred to above, which is the real meat of the piece, so to speak. Personally I prefer to do this kind of curve/saturation/unsharpening etc in After Effects, although you I believe you can do all of this with equivalent filters in FCP. It's a matter of personal choice and AE has a fairly steep learning curve if you're not familiar with it already. If you have AE 6.5, however, check out the included Color Finesse colour correction suite, which is almost a standalone application and is pretty great. In my opinion it's better than AE's colour correction window but again it's a matter of choice as you can do pretty much everything you'll need to in both (especially for DV material).
Someone spoke of applying Motion Blur in the FCP motion tab - forget about that, that applies to blurring composited objects moving across the screen and will have no effect if applied to an entire layer of video. You could experiment with blur filters to soften your video slightly but if you're going this route the Nattress filters will probably be easier.
Good luck with your project!
Edit: on reading your post again I notice you're in LA - so I suppose you DO intend transferring your PAL material to NTSC. D'oh! Mea culpa - in that case as mentioned above I suppose conforming to 24fps then adding pulldown to get to 30fps is the way to go and will automatically give you the motion signature you require. I assume you can do this in Cinema Tools (not familiar with it) but you can also do it in AE by simply interpreting your footage in AE as 24fps and then adding pulldown.