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RETROGRADE

The Retrograde toolset helps create the realistic look and damage of old 8mm and 16mm film.

Presets

Apply common 8mm and 16mm looks to your compositions with Retrograde's handy presets. Find these via the blue Open Dashboard... button or the Choose a Preset... button below it.

Once you select a preset, its name will automatically populate the Film Stock drop-down menu field. Alternatively, you can simply pick a preset from this pull-down and sidestep the Presets pop-up window.

As with all other Universe tools, you can modify or create a Retrograde look and then save it under its own name by pressing the Save Preset... button.

Film Stock

Real analog source material was used to create Retrograde's unique film textures. The 8mm and 16mm film stock options were created from DPX laser scans of old, commonly used Kodak and Fuji film. You might do a double take as your footage transforms into something from another era! 8mm is a smaller film with larger artifacts and more apparent grain. Larger 16mm film stock gives your footage smaller artifacts and features a subtler grain.

Note: The host app will always respect the film stock size (8mm or 16mm) and color settings of the Retrograde Preset Menu over the Film Stock menu. Changing the Film Stock menu selection to a different film stock than the one chosen in the Retrograde Preset menu will result in even subtler changes in film grain, saturation, and color tint to your clip, but the Retrograde preset will always remain the dominant setting. After choosing your overall and film stock presets, you're ready to dial in your look with the advanced controls listed below.

To illustrate the 16mm Camcorder preset, we offer this found footage of Ted, a Maxon sales intern who unfortunately fell asleep in a corn field at the company's 1978 Summer Bash event. He was found wandering in a nearby cemetery the following week. Forty-five years later, the still-youthful Ted remains a valued employee in the Maxon documentation team.

18 FPS

After applying Retrograde, you’ll notice that the 18 FPS box is checked “On” by default. 18 FPS emulates the subtle, jerky, stuttered effect commonly seen in home movie film cameras. Uncheck this box to return to your clip's original frames-per-second settings.

Frame & Vignette

• Frame Size sets the aspect ratio of your frame.
  • By default, the 4:3 option crops the sides of your image into the look of older television and “academy” footage. Be aware of compositional changes when making this choice.
  • In contrast, the 16:9 setting will generally match your original HD video aspect ratio and display the full image within the frame.
  • The Square option crops your footage into a square frame with rounded edges for a style that closely matches the look of vintage and home films.
• Image Offset can be useful in selecting which section of the image you want within your frame. Animate image offset using keyframes to create a gate weave shifting effect.
• Edge Style recreates the subtle idiosyncrasies of frame edges from various cameras, film processing, and projection methods. As shown below, choose from Clean (left), Cutout, Faded, or Projector (right) Edges.
  
  
• Vignette adds subtle darkness to the film edges. Turning the control up increases the vignette effect by adding darkness toward the frame's center. Turning the control down decreases the vignette by pulling darkness away from the center.

Color Treatment

The Color Treatment control group isn’t just for your footage's color channels. In the black and white preset, you can see the changes after tweaking these settings.

• Film Fading controls the image's amount of contrast. A value of 100 will flatten the image, giving it a “washed out” or faded feel. Set the slider closer to 0 to keep higher contrast between light and dark areas. Adding film fading may bring out more grain within your footage, especially footage shot in low lighting. The image pair below shows this. Footage has the 16mm Clean preset applied, with the default of no fading (left) and then a value of 90 (right).
  
  
• Color Process and Saturation controls directly relate to the film stock selection in the Film Stock drop-down menu. The color tint is generated from the unique color of the overlaid film stock. Use these controls to decrease or increase the color tint. Even in black and white, these controls provide some noticeable tinted effects.
• Exposure controls lighten or darken the overall scene. A value of -100 yields a dark, underexposed look while +100 gives an overexposed effect that bleaches out shadow details.
• Blur softens the focused areas of the footage. When animated with keyframes, Blur can be especially useful for recreating the effect of an amateur photographer trying to find correct focus.
• Flicker recreates the animated strobe effect of projected film. Higher values may darken your footage slightly.

Grime

Though Retrograde film stock options provide realistic textures and grain to your project, some scenarios may benefit from even more character and age. The Grime controls group can help you add more imperfections common to old film stocks and projections. In the following comparison, we document Ted's daily office "life" through the 16mm Documentary preset, shown with default values (left) and with some elevated Grime parameters (right) to showcase the results.

• Dust Count inserts animated flecks and dirt. Increase the value to add more dust bits.
• Dust Scale adjusts the dust size.
• Hair Count increases or decreases the number of random hair bits commonly found in old projects.
• Hair Scale increases or decreases the size of the hair.
• Splotch Count increases or decreases the number of splotches in your video.
• Splotch Scale increases or decreases individual splotch size.
• Splotch Opacity defines how clear or apparent the splotch damage is in your clip.
• Splotch Lightness controls how light or dark splotches appear.