When we think of skin retouching we usually imagine digital makeup applied to commercials and music videos, but very rarely consider skin smoothing as a tool to remove distractions and improve image quality in documentary films.  Nisma Zaman, winner of a Daytime Emmy and several other awards for television and film producing, decided to try using Digital Anarchy’s Beauty Box presets in Adobe® Premiere® Pro, the industry leading video editor, to assemble a challenging project, where the interviews were filmed outdoors under heavy sunlight, with little time, equipment, and  space to get the lighting perfect. 

Zaman produced and edited a short documentary video featuring seven prominent artists during their creation of murals for ArtBridge’s #7on16th project, an exhibition of 7 female and non-binary NYC street artists. Over the course of 5 days, the filmmaker followed each artist, even riding up 14’ above street level in scissor lifts, as they built the mural to compile a  creative overview of the week-long installation. She also worked with her team to create time-lapses and a photo series that digitally recreated each mural for ArtBridge’s project brochures using Adobe Photoshop.

To create the digital photo series, Zaman took individual high-resolution frontal photos of the entire mural at even spaces along the block, and then made use of layers, feathering, and the Perspective Warp tool to produce each mural image. The digital murals were then imported into Premiere Pro, along with all other types of documentary footage, where the filmmaker used Digital Anarchy’s Beauty Box to correct distractions on the interviewee’s faces caused by skin shine and uncontrolled light.

For the ArtBridge project and all the other artist profile projects that she applied Beauty Box to, Zaman makes sure to reduce the smoothing amount percentages to between 20-30% so she can get the most natural look possible. “I learned that skin smoothing can be an ally to reduce some visual distractions and focus the viewer’s attention on what the interviewees are saying”, explains Zaman. In her opinion, it is also important to always select the dark and light colors for the mask. This allows Beauty Box to identify the range of tones on a subject and adjust the skin smoothing accordingly.

The tips come from over 5 years of experience taking advantage of a seamless integration between Premiere Pro and Beauty Box to perfect profile videos on artists, curators, and art professionals. “Just like using Premiere Pro native transitions such as  Lumetri Color and Warp Stabilizer, applying Beauty Box to the footage was a quick and easy process in every project I have edited.  It is a  huge time-saver and a great way to make people look more rested”, Zaman concludes.

With extensive background in producing reality-based films for a variety of audiences, Nisma Zaman edits all her films in Premiere Pro, and used the Beauty Box plugin for the first time while working at the Guggenheim Museum, where she produced over 160 videos filmed in NYC, Singapore, Hong Kong, London, and Mexico City. She is known for the high quality and great content of her videos, always leveraging  extensions available as part of the Adobe Video ecosystem to deliver creative and compelling storytelling. To learn more about her work, visit https://nismazaman.com/ .