You ever look everywhere for your glasses when they’re just sitting on your head (or maybe they’re actually in place, on your face, where they should be)? Well that’s th kind of day I was having yesterday. I’ve been trying to create an old film look with no stock footage, but was finding it a bit of a challenge. But then I remembered something Stu Maschwitz said at our company meeting – “Misfire” – a term I was confused about, but which I promptly filed away under “I’ll worry about that later.”

I wish I hadn’t. It turns out I had the tools for old film looks all along. It’s not mentioned anywhere on the Red Giant site, but Magic Bullet Looks comes with a great set of tools called Magic Bullet MisFire. These tools allow you to add old film effects like dust and scratches, flicker, film noise… etc., to create an old film look.

And to save me a lot of time and trouble, I added Nick Campbell’s  Vintage film for Looks for a nice vintage coloration.You don’t need it, or course. Magic Bullet Looks gives you complete control of your looks, but this is something Nick is really good at, and there’s no reason not to at least start with his vintage look settings.

Of course, no old-school footage is complete without light leaks. I used Trapcode Particular to create those, and when all was said and done it looked pretty good.

If you want to do this, I made a tutorial that walks you through this process, and you can find that here.

Tags: Light Leaks, Looks, Magic, Magic Bullet, MisFire, Old Film Look, Stu, Stu Maschwitz