Give your footage that classic Super 8 film vibe with three FREE overlay templates from Pete Hutchinson
As technology advances, cameras are getting better at capturing more and more detail. But you might not always want to tell your story using perfectly crisp 4K DCI footage. Sometimes, you might opt for the stylised look and feel of a vintage film camera. In this tutorial, Pete Hutchinson teaches you how to easily emulate the nostalgic look of Super 8mm in Adobe Premiere Pro (it can be replicated in other editing programs too). At the bottom of this article, you’ll find free download links for the film grain and border overlays, so you can capitalise on that in vogue vintage aesthetic too!
Get the Super 8 look
1. When filming, turn off both optical and in-body stabilisation. To give the footage the jitter that’s so often associated with Super 8, exaggerate the movement of the camera when shooting handheld.
2. In Adobe Premiere Pro, drop the grain overlay on top of your video layer and change the blend mode to Overlay. You can then tweak the opacity and scale of the layer, based on how prominent you want the film grain to be in your final shot.
3. Grade your footage to give it a look that would be typical of film stock. For example, in Pete’s tutorial he shifts the shadows towards green and the highlights towards red, finishing by adjusting the Faded Film slider.
4. Once graded, slightly blur your footage. The Gaussian blur effect (used lightly) should be enough to reduce the sharpness, although you might have to apply more blur if you’re working with 4K footage.
5. To make it look more authentic, add one of the two supplied border assets to the layer on top of the film grain layer. You can add a slight tint of green to the shadows of the border, and again, increase the Faded Film slider to polish off the effect.
Downloads
Download the film grain overlay
Download the wide border overlay
Download the narrow border overlay
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About the Author
Kristian Hampton is a Wex Photo Video’s former Technical Editor for Pro Video. He is a video specialist who has worked in corporate studios for companies such as Vodafone Group and PwC, as well as working as a freelance grip on various TV productions and features. He also runs Krade Media, providing enterprises with production services. Follow Kristian on Twitter @KrissHampton
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