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Steel of Man. Restructured, Regraded, Rekindled!

I believe I've matched the scene to the style of the rest of the movie. I've stabilised to reduce the amount of camera shake. I've desharpened and lowered detail level slightly, I've added motion blur, and of course I've colour matched. here is the end of that scene.
 
Watching on a phone but the background looks blown out and blurry, like a heaven scene. If that’s the goal, that’s one thing, but it seems over-manipulated on first glance to me.
 
Yes, because his dad is dead, so I wanted to present it 100% like a hallucination. it's graded and has a bloom effect on it.
I'm not sure how to prevent it looking over manipulated. perhaps I need to add grain to it?
 
Not sure, I’ve never tried to attempt that effect conversion.

But right now, it seems like Clark is in heaven WITH Pa Kent, rather than a hallucination of Pa Kent on a real mountaintop.

It’s like Clark now has a new power - to visit the other side and speak with the dead ;)
 
hahaha that's a fair point! Perhaps I should drop the effect for Clark's shots.
 
Maybe by reducing the effects when it's Clark's shot, or by reducing the 'realness' of his father. His father looks too real, maybe because of too much sharpness and saturation? or mayeb by adding abit of brightness to his dad to make it a bit heavenly. Often dead persons appears very 'clean' on screen (for example Dumbledore's scene at the end of the HP 8 movie).
But I'm just a viewer not an editor at all, so... :)
 
Thanks, that's useful I will bear that in mind!!! It was actually my main concern about inserting this scene. I mean, it didn't make any sense in BvS. How is Clark talking to his dad? it's meant to be imaginary.... well I could start by putting an echo on Jonathan's lines, right? adding a visual distortion of some sort could possibly work?


So I started the mammoth task of cutting down the krypton scenes. after much experimentation, I made the decision to split it. It starts in the same place but the first section finishes when Zod is disappointed Jor-El won't join him, with some sections of dialogue trimmed too. This lasts 2 minutes.
HkdJmHq.png


I then have Jor-El explain the genesis chamber. under a minute.
then switch to Jor-El retrieving the codex and sending off his son Kal. This lasts just over 3 minutes.
SuJVFPS.png

This transitions to "why didn't you come with me".

The whole thing is greatly reduced and I do think it works rather well!

here's the end bit.
 
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so here's what I done did. I reduced the motion blur and added film grain. The quality is still an issue though. I'll try a re-encode, I think I got some settings wrong on my rip. added echo, made jonathan shiny and added the old film effect to add credence to this being a memory.
 
I like that!

It feels like Clark is going to an old site from a family trip, and watching an old video from the place with his dad with that framing. Its still a lot of FX but now I think it works, with Clark shots less affected!
 
tremault said:
so here's what I done did. I reduced the motion blur and added film grain. The quality is still an issue though. I'll try a re-encode, I think I got some settings wrong on my rip. added echo, made jonathan shiny and added the old film effect to add credence to this being a memory.
Click to expand...
I really love what you did here.
Not sure about the way the echo effect renders. But I like the idea.
For his father maybe reducing a tiny but the saturation or adding some brightness to it, because it looks a bit too dark.
But that's just my opinion, it's already better this way.
 
Thanks guys, I'm glad it's working. So that's the echo in the sound, and the colour saturation, as two separate issues? sorry, I got confused with the phrasing.
I worked on the echo a little and I tried something interesting to alter the viewers perspective. by reversing the shots, it looks like Jonathan is not talking to current Clark but to another person (past Clark). At least that is the hope.

With regards the colour saturation, I wanted the colour to be there because Clark loves his dad. If I make it brighter, it will blow out, but I could try increase the brightness just in the lower midtones.

This is the last bit of adjustment I will be doing for this draft, I am mostly happy with what I've done for a draft 2.

 
I love it!
It works really well this way. The overall effects on hsi dad and dad scene looks great, the voice also is now fitting the scene.
Not sure about the reversed shot of his dad, but it's not really an issue for me.

The lower quality of this video (especially Clark) is only because it's a preview, right?

I can't wait to see your whole fanedit now :D
 
Actually, the original batman v superman is pretty bad looking in a lot of places. I'm not entirely sure what that's about, but it was filmed digitally while Man of Steel was filmed on physical film so that could be why. I'm hoping my final render will feel better because I don't really have any options. I mean obfuscating was an option, but... well that didn't work thematically. It makes me want to take this sequence back out, but I want to give it a chance in draft 2 because I put so much work into it. if the consensus from draft 2 views is to remove it then I will certainly do that.
 
OK last thing I'm doing just before I render....
I'm applying a surface smoothing effect to try and reduce the visual garbage in this footage.
If this doesn't fix it, the footage is going in the bin.


work in progress of course.
I find that if i separate out the channels, and smooth the colour more and the luma less, it retains a level of clarity.
MDHDLV5.png


edit:
well.... after countless experiments, and replays, ridiculous render times through stupid levels of processing, there is just no fixing this footage. It honestly just looks like trash. everything I do to it, it still looks like it's been heavily digitally processed because the original film has been done all digitally. Although some of these effects have managed to improve some shots and the old style film effect on Jonathan works well, Clark just looks awful. The horrible lighting really doesn't help either.
I'm calling time on this sequence. I really tried, but it's not working. I cannot create visual information that just isn't there and this footage is not up to any standard that I would feel comfortable using. It's a real shame because the scene concept itself works quite nicely here and fits perfectly within context.

I'm rendering. Anyone wanna preview draft 2?
 
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Sorry if you already did, but did your try some AI video upscale before applying your video effects?
 
I have tried topaz a few times and it's never really produced anything even remotely impressive :/
to be honest I'm just frustrated with it. no more patience for that sequence XD
 
What about using actual 4K footage from a disc? If it’s that important, seems worth it.

I often use larger footage for complex fx (though none like this) and then downsize for better results.

It’s worth the new external drive, imo! There are great guides to ripping 4K in here!

Topaz can work too, I use it a lot too when I can’t find 4K, but it definitely takes repeated tests to find what works best.
 
yeah I often use large source files. I start from 4k because I like to reframe shots now and then. I usually have a prores source file which can be huge, had to buy a 2tb drive just for editing. My man of steel folder is currently 110GB. I appreciate the help, but I've been back and forth on that scene for over a week now, analysing and trying experiments. truth is, the makeup, lighting, cameras and theatrical print are all garbage. Honestly, if you are able to make that footage look as good as man of steel footage, I tip my hat to you, but I don't want to spend any more time on it.

This is the scene in 4k hdr, I took a photo because screenshot don't work in hdr for some reason. You can see the detail just isn't there.
drive.google.com

20220908_031829.jpg

drive.google.com drive.google.com
 
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Am I being to rash? Do you think I should include this in draft 2 so that whoever previews this can make a judgement?
Do you think Topaz can make this look better?
Okay, I'm willing to give this one more go around if you guys think it'll yield results.
 
Good luck on that. I'd be willing to preview the second draft, by the way. :)
 
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