Quick & Dirty Film Look for Final Cut

So you shot some footage that's clearly not looking anything like film but you want to make it look like film on the cheap and easy. Ok.

In the timeline:

01) Select the footage you want to have a pseudo-film look. If you want to apply this look to the entire sequence it's easier to Nest the timeline by selecting all and then tapping Option + C.

Then double up that footage above itself by making copy of it. The easiest way to do this is to click on the Nest or highlighted footage and hold down Shift + Option (shift makes it move straight up while option makes it copy) and drag it straight up. Let go of it and you'll have a copy above the original footage.

02) Bring down the Opacity of the upper track to 50%. You can either do this by highlighting the footage and loading it into the Viewer (if it's a nest, don't double click it to load it into the Viewer, just hightlight it and tap the Enter (not Return) key then in the Motion tab bring the Opacity slider to 50% or with the timeline window the frontmost one, tap Option + W to bring up the rubber bands on your clips/nest. Then drag the nests rubber band (in the video track) down until it's 50%.

03) Now, you have two video tracks of the same footage one atop the other with the upper one's opacity set to 50%. So head over to your effects window (Command + 5) and dig out the De-interlace filter. Drag it onto both nests/highlighted footage.

04) Load the upper video track into the Viewer and head to it's Filters tab. Set the De-Interlace filter to "Upper".

05) Load the lower video track into the Viewer and head to it's Filter's tab. Set it's De-interlace filter to "Lower".

06) This is optional depending on your footage but if you want you can toss a Gaussian Blur filter on the upper track and blur it ever so slightly. Try it and see if it makes it better or worse for your particular project.

07) Adjust any levels or contrast if you feel the need.

08) Render it out which may take a while depending on your system and quality of footage.