How do you get that specific organic film look????

[g3nov3s3]

I know that to make digital footage look like film you need to shoot it at 24p,you need a shallow depth of field,etc....
However I've seen footage shot on HDCAM or Varicam that still looked like video and I've seen color corrected footage from Canon HV20 or Panasonic SD9 that looked very filmic....
So, how exactly do you do that color correction to achieve a film look?

 

[Martin Weiss]

(And a crew that knows what they are doing doesn't hurt, either.)

 

[Radoslav Karapetkov]

Hahah.

 

[Joseph Ward]

Film will always be film and I know there is no right answer but... Try to get the best shot lighting and high resolution first then grade and conform to the look you want. Remember film looks different even against other film.

 

[NateWeaver]

Practice.

And you think I'm kidding.

 

[Michael "Dorkman" Scott]

Good lighting.

Good composition.

24fps with a 1/48th (180-degree) shutter.

Richly-contrasted color grading.

Adding grain also helps the "organic" part, IMO, but some people prefer the cleaner image.

 

[Marcus Struzina]

and outputting digital to a film print helps, especially onto camera stock.





www.belladonnathemovie.com

 

[Roberto B]

ulead photoimpact.. test it w/ stills there.. you'll find out what you can do it w/ your footage.. and not do it..

 

[g3nov3s3]

Good lighting.

Good composition.

24fps with a 1/48th (180-degree) shutter.

Richly-contrasted color grading.

Adding grain also helps the "organic" part, IMO, but some people prefer the cleaner image.

Yeah....but please take a look at this images:

This images have that certain organic look....
One screenshot is from a HVX200 and the other from a Canon XH-A1.
However I've seen lots of footage from this cameras that looked like video.
The first image I don't think it was much color corrected however it's very nice and doesn't look like video at all!

The second screenshot is from a music video shot outside with very little control over lighting. But it still looks fine....
Does anyone know how did they achieved this?

 

[Pietro Impagliazzo]

First you have to know what exactly you are looking at.

Diffusion?
Color grading?
FPS candece?
Lighting?
Camera movements?
Good actors with make-up and costumes?

It's like a garage band recorded with a computer mic and some awesome song produced in a high-end studio.

It's not just the three thousand dollar mic, it's the mic plus everything expensive in there, plus everyone experienced creating and handling the material.

 

[Ken Willinger]

One screenshot is from a HVX200 and the other from a Canon XH-A1.
However I've seen lots of footage from this cameras that looked like video.
The first image I don't think it was much color corrected however it's very nice and doesn't look like video at all!

It looks to me because of the shallow DOF in both images that these cameras were not used clean. They have very small chipsets and in order to get them to look filmic, adapters have been used to allow the use of 35mm still lenses. Those adapters use a groundglass, some spinning, some vibrating, but either way that creates a kind of grain to the look of the video along with the shallow DOF thus giving you that "film" feel. Lighting and composition are also key but I think you are really seeing the depth that the adapter system allows in these small chip cameras.

Red will inherently have that using cine PL glass (or still lenses with a Canon or Nikon mount). But having the Red won't give you the lighting or composition skills.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

There are dozens of factors that contribute to the "film look", depth of field being just one of them (and I point out that technically a deep-focus movie like "Citizen Kane" still looks like film and Super-8 is a film format with an inherently deep focus...)

Not to mention motion rendition, which you cannot see in a still frame. Frame rate and shutter speed are fairly important factors as well in matching a traditional film image.

My theory is that as digital cine cameras get better and better, 80% of the time, or more, it's hard to see a difference if the digital image is professionally shot, especially if you are using a camera with a 35mm-sized sensor.

Sure, film has more latitude but many times you either add contrast to film images or you control contrast while shooting digital. And sure, digital is grainless, but you can keep grain down while shooting 35mm using slower film stocks, etc.

When both formats are shot their best, they tend to look more and more like each other these days.

However... no one is perfect. We all make technical mistakes, or have accidents, equipment problems, etc. Or a shot is changed in post from its original intent, exposure, etc.

I believe that as we "push" any image around in post, the farthest from the "correct" way we shot it, or the more incorrectly we shot it, the more the inherent architecture of the system becomes apparent -- whether it is milky blacks and big grains in film or noise and pattern problems in digital.

It's just that we are used to the negative artifacts of badly shot film and still think it looks like a film image when they occur -- because it IS a film image no matter what. Whereas a film-like digital image that is pushed around in post or has some technical problem tends to misbehave in purely digital ways.

Of course, as I said, there are other factors, subtle ones, that typify some film and digital images. I often find that warm-lit faces render differently on film than digital compared to cold-lit faces, partly because when a face is in blue-ish light, it is already far from "normal" so we accept that it looks off, but a warm-lit face is still close enough to normal skintone rendition that our eyes become more critical if it seems "wrong" in some way, or just different. But this problem with warm faces even exists in film-shot material that goes through a D.I. -- sometimes it seems to come out a bit odd-looking.

One unique aspect to the film image that digital finds very hard to replicate is that fact that detail exists in different spots on successive frames due to the random nature of grain versus the fixed pattern of photosites on a sensor. This is one reason why aliasing isn't a problem with high frequency detail with film.

 

[Ken Willinger]

There are dozens of factors that contribute to the "film look", depth of field being just one of them (and I point out that technically a deep-focus movie like "Citizen Kane" still looks like film and Super-8 is a film format with an inherently deep focus...)

No doubt. I was just referring to the stills the OP posted, which have a shallow focus (which as you know on these 1/3" chip cameras can be achieved by using 35mm adapters) and a slight graininess that could be caused by the GG or possibly some type of filtration.

Absolutely what you describe all are factors in regard to the "film" look. And you are quite right that the two (film and digital) can be indistinguishable when pushed correctly.

 

[Radoslav Karapetkov]

One unique aspect to the film image that digital finds very hard to replicate is that fact that detail exists in different spots on successive frames due to the random nature of grain versus the fixed pattern of photosites on a sensor. This is one reason why aliasing isn't a problem with high frequency detail with film.

I wonder if it's possible to make a camera with a sensor which makes micro-movements, in order to simulate this. But this probably sounds absurd.

Or a post-production software that uses some kind of algorithms to "randomize" the pixels of a digital image...

 

[Stephen Williams]

I wonder if it's possible to make a camera with a sensor which makes micro-movements, in order to simulate this. But this probably sounds absurd.

Or a post-production software that uses some kind of algorithms to "randomize" the pixels of a digital image...

Hi,

For people who are really after the genuine organic film look, shooting on film will be the easiest souloution.

The recent demo of RED at IBC was most impressive however not everything looked like film.

Stephen

 

[jpp]

I wonder if it's possible to make a camera with a sensor which makes micro-movements, in order to simulate this. But this probably sounds absurd.

Or a post-production software that uses some kind of algorithms to "randomize" the pixels of a digital image...

There are plug-ins which do just that, from adding randomly occurring grain to simulating projector weave. Virtually all film-look plug-in suites offer these features. You can even get hairs, scratches and faded emulsions, all realistically recreated.

 

[Andrae Palmer]

Contrast... contrast... contrast. Shooting for contrast... grading for contrast.

 

[Radoslav Karapetkov]

Hi,

For people who are really after the genuine organic film look, shooting on film will be the easiest souloution.

The recent demo of RED at IBC was most impressive however not everything looked like film.

Stephen

Thank you.

There are plug-ins which do just that, from adding randomly occurring grain to simulating projector weave. Virtually all film-look plug-in suites offer these features. You can even get hairs, scratches and faded emulsions, all realistically recreated.

Yes, I know, I've played around with an older version of Magic Bullet, but couldn't reach the desired look. [probably my lack of skill]

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Contrast... contrast... contrast. Shooting for contrast... grading for contrast.

Except there have been low-contrast movies shot on film that still look like film... look at all that fog-filtered, smoked stuff from the 1970's... like "Murder on the Orient Express" or any number of other movies shot by Geoffrey Unsworth.

Plus if film negative has more dynamic range than digital, then why does adding contrast and thus decreasing dynamic range actually make a digital image look more like film?

I don't have answers for that, just that it is an interesting issue...

Half the techniques for adding a "film look" actually just involve disguising the digital look.

Truth is that with a history of cinema that includes color images ranging from "Singin' in the Rain" to "Seven", from Super-8 home movies to IMAX films, there is scarcely a single film "look".

Adding grain in post to a clean digital image isn't exactly the same thing as capturing an image frame by frame on different grains. You don't gain any benefits in terms of anti-aliasing, etc.

 

[Ergin Ozturk]

both pictures taken from redrockmicro web sites. so it is not a clean hvx or any other hd camera. It means you can not get these pictures from any prosumer hd camera without 35mm adapters. they uses m2 redrockmicro 35 mm adapter (which i have one but i order RED also)).