There is this horizontal blue lens flare you see in movies...
(J J Abrams uses it a lot in "Super 8")
Anybody knows of a plugin to recreate it?
I found this video, but it was made with FCP 7
I use FCP X

I have a plug in from Motion VFX called MLooks2 and it has an effect called "blue streak" among 40 others. Blue streak is the same as this effect ( it may be what he is using here) It costs about 50 bucks for the package. I have MLooks 1 and 2 and find them useful. I'm sure there is some way to create this but I am a beginner so I buy them already created. Hope that info helps you. Here is the website. www.motionvfx.com/ Sometimes the good folks in this community will be so kind as to create upon request......you never know

Motion, not a huge deal.

Also check out motionvfx mFlare for Apple Motion and Final Cut Pro X plus other compatible Application like Photoshop and Co.
If you are rolling with After Effects there is also VideoCopilot Optical Flares.
You can build them yourself if you want to take it on.

Hey guys! thanks for your motionvfx recommendation.
I noticed they have a demo version. It says "motion 5"
Do you know if it would work on FCP X ?

As mentioned yes it does if both Final Cut Pro X and mFlare are up to date.

The actual effect they are trying to emulate with these blue streaks is an anamorphic lens flare (or anamorphic streak), that would naturally occur in a lot of older blockbuster movies due to the light bending properties of the lenses they were using, but only if there were practical lights on set pointed towards the camera.

A lot of Spielberg movies had them, as did Cameron movies, and John Carpenter movies. The funny thing is that a lot of effort was made to try and avoid them normally (unless they wanted to create a sic-fi effect).

These days they can be created artificially with the above plug ins (and also consider magic Bullet Looks which has an anamorphic effect). But remember they should really only be used when the light is on screen and pointed towards the camera. A lot of videos (like that music video) put in that effect when it should not be there, so you just get fake blue smears for no practical reason.

Its a totally overused effect though; even mainstream Hollywood directors can get over enthusiastic about it (think of Star Trek by JJ Abrams...)

Here are some genuine anamorphic streaks:

From 'Aliens':


From 'The Thing':


From 'Christine':


As seen above; all genuine anamorphic streaks have a practical light source.

Another thumbs up for mFlare. Amazing program at an amazing price.
It'll do what you want.

It works in both FCP X and Motion but if you want to use tracking then Motion is the way to go.

Once I got it I had a play around with some video I shot of my daughter growing up.

Check it out. It's over used but I was just mucking around.

Very nice. Even home videos from pros are fun to watch. Is the bokeh from FCP? The horizontal flare toward the end , is that mFlare?

Yes on both counts!

This was when mFlare first came out. Some of the new flares are just amazing, and totally customisable. So you could JJA to hearts content.

Here is a video I did for a crossfit gym. I used many of the great effects by the members of this community and also MFlare as mentioned above. I know it is not very professional but I did it on a flip camera.....thats how I roll

Looks like Knoll Light Factory 3 should be out this summer. I assume FCPX compatibility? Anyone know anything about this? It's the industry standard isn't it?

JT

Hey everybody! Thank you very much for sharing your observations, recommendations and videos. JDM4GIVEN1, I love the fact that you used a flip to shoot the J1:9 video...It inspires me!

When I was a kid, I used to think "How come they don't do something to avoid those lights".
For me, it would take the feeling away from the reality of the movie.
But then, I started to notice that in some cases, it would ADD emotion to the scene.
Now, although I'm limited with tools, I would like to create certain type of "feel" with the support of these plugins.

Talking about tools...I have FCP X 10.
After downloading the demo version of mFlare I realized I need to upgrade to 10.0.3
So, I decided to trash the plugin...the whole thing!
Now, I'm having an inconvenient...every time I open FCP X I get these notifications saying that I need to upgrade to 10.0.3 - but it's not one notification. It's a bunch of them! since the demo version is a package of different plugins.

Any advice on this?

Is there a reason why you are not updating? You should be on 10.0.4.

Every time I talk about this is a bit awkward.
I'm not in the position to invest any more at this moment, yet I'm trying to learn to the best of my ability. This is why I request for free plugins and attempt to download "demo versions".
I have an old MacBook Pro running on 10.6.8 with 4GB and FCP X 10.

Pirated copy of FCP X is the only reason you don't upgrade.