Adding film grain.

[Andrew Dease]

Never added film grain to digital, but seems to be done a lot these day.

Any recommendations? Sites. Programs.

[Patrick Tresch]

I make my own grain (or noise) from the sensor I use wether Dragon/A7M3... It really blends nicely.

[M Harvey]

1) Hire a good colorist. Recently had a good experience with a colorist, who went ahead and made custom film grain for us, no extra charge.
2) For software, I've seen nice stuff from FilmConvert.

[Phil Holland]

Lots of options out there and even I am releasing my profiles shortly. Like a week or two max.

[Michael Lindsay]

I love a bit of texture in the form of grain but encoding often really fucks it up...I was impressed with the film grain emulation (livegrain i think) that Paul Cameron went with for 21 bridges when I saw a 4K DCP upclose on a great screen/projector .....but watching it streaming on my TV is not the same experience at all.

So my recommend is test the grain approach all the way through the encoding consequence of the channel your content is destined for...

[Andrew Dease]

Lots of options out there and even I am releasing my profiles shortly. Like a week or two max.

Oddly enough when I intitally searched this I found your post from 2013? Detailing the difference between film grain vs dragon grain/noise.

Good stuff!

As you mention there, you had by that point even has many years scanning film.... & grain experience.

[Andrew Dease]

I love a bit of texture in the form of grain but encoding often really fucks it up...I was impressed with the film grain emulation (livegrain i think) that Paul Cameron went with for 21 bridges when I saw a 4K DCP upclose on a great screen/projector .....but watching it streaming on my TV is not the same experience at all.

So my recommend is test the grain approach all the way through the encoding consequence of the channel your content is destined for...

This is an interesting point I wouldn’t have thought of. Hmm.... good point. Who would even see the grain who is a civilian.

Filmmakers seem to notice though. Maybe because they are watching on HQ settings.

YouTube + FB probably make it a non point to do at all...? I still would but interesting.

[Patrick Tresch]

Even DCP (jpeg2000) encoding eats that grain. Hope they will soon push the compression to higher bit rates.

[Michael Lindsay]

Even DCP (jpeg2000) encoding eats that grain. Hope they will soon push the compression to higher bit rates.

I suspect you are correct..... I just felt the grain was clearly eaten or blotched up in the amazon prime presentation I watched on my 4K TV..

[Benjamin Reece]

Even DCP (jpeg2000) encoding eats that grain. Hope they will soon push the compression to higher bit rates.

Same as my experience with putting a lot of effort into grain in the past. On fast because of the additional distributed detail across the frame it pulls the algorithm to apply detail to areas where in fact there shouldn’t be in low bandwidth settings. So even if it looks right in 4K on high bandwidth screens- it might look bad on a phone in a bus on a 4g connection.

However, I do love the look of this “grain” as it looks like a bit of a protector / dust overlay Flickr & grain that works better in terms of the aforementioned problems. I’d love to ask the DP how he accomplished: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMnZhneqlPI