adding grain in post

[Alfonso Cammarano]

Test film converter
you can download the trial:


http://www.filmconvert.com/default.aspx

Cost $299.00 and works well in Premiere and AF in PC and Mac.

 

[Mike S. M.]

Test film converter
you can download the trial:


http://www.filmconvert.com/default.aspx

Cost $299.00 and works well in Premiere and AF in PC and Mac.

I tried this and saw nothing special. Just your run of the mill plug-in faking a film look. The simulated grain looks more like noise. Film scans with real grain do a much better job in my opinion.

 

[eric schneider]

Man. I should really package up and sell my grain profiles. I've got a few dozen from over the years all scanned at 4K and 6K no less. Derp.

I'd be totally interested in checking these out as well

 

[David Kellermann]

I tried this and saw nothing special. Just your run of the mill plug-in faking a film look. The simulated grain looks more like noise. Film scans with real grain do a much better job in my opinion.

It's way more precise in recreating film stocks than other plug ins. I can totally recommend it.

 

[Mike S. M.]

It's way more precise in recreating film stocks than other plug ins. I can totally recommend it.

I believe it is more precise in creating film stocks than other plug-ins. Just not more precise than using real film scans. But it's definitely cheaper.

 

[Marc Wielage]

Most of my working life I have spent trying to get rig of grain and people have spent huge sums on contraptions to get rid of it. Now we are trying to add it back in again.......

This is too true. I think when people like you and me are in this crowd, we're immediately old fogeys.

 

[Lance Lones]

I believe it is more precise in creating film stocks than other plug-ins. Just not more precise than using real film scans. But it's definitely cheaper.

Hey Mike, Just wanted to pipe in here with a little self-serving chest thumping - for FilmConvert we actually are using scanned film as our underlying basis - we had each of the stocks scanned at Weta Digi. at 6K on an ArriScan, and are applying them procedurally (yup indeed, there are these huge files in the download that are in fact... film grain scans).

The trick I think, is that folks have gotten used to looking at simple film grain overlays, without realizing that in fact, the film grain levels are variable depending on the underlying exposure of the image, and colour to some degree, which is something that we worked quite hard to reproduce accurately.

It's a bit tricky though, as actual film grain represents the actual photosites of course, and there are two apparent effects, both straight density effects across each channel, and colour linked effects which look like noise, and which are quite hard to reproduce with overlays as well - it's all quite a bit of a black art indeed.

But of course, at the end of the day, one should go for the look and feel that suits your artistic needs - at that level, it's not the accuracy that counts at all, is it?

BTW, yes indeed, I find it a bit amusing myself that we have spent all this time building a grain engine - in VFXland (where I came from), we usually worked quite hard to get rid of the grain.

 

[Marc Wielage]

Hey Mike, Just wanted to pipe in here with a little self-serving chest thumping - for FilmConvert we actually are using scanned film as our underlying basis - we had each of the stocks scanned at Weta Digi. at 6K on an ArriScan, and are applying them procedurally (yup indeed, there are these huge files in the download that are in fact... film grain scans).

My perspective coming from Technicolor here in LA is that I would rather see a mode for FilmConvert that doesn't change relative gamma, brightness, or color at all and simply allows a mode to introduce grain and nothing else. To me, I would rather leave the color decisions to the final colorist, and not to a plug-in.

I have no problem with the straight added-grain plug-ins out there, and I recognize that there are filmmakers that want a uniform "texture" to their projects. All VFX houses have added grain for over a decade just to match VFX shots with live action shots (or to the digitally-composited material), so I get that grain-management has been, and continues to be, a part of our business. One can make a good argument that an image that's too "clean" might actually be detrimental to some audiences and some creative people.

 

[Dave Blackham]

This is too true. I think when people like you and me are in this crowd, we're immediately old fogeys.

Ha ! I can only hope we have some sort of comfort and advantage of the saying, To understand the future first you must understand the past....

 

[Lance Lones]

My perspective coming from Technicolor here in LA is that I would rather see a mode for FilmConvert that doesn't change relative gamma, brightness, or color at all and simply allows a mode to introduce grain and nothing else. To me, I would rather leave the color decisions to the final colorist, and not to a plug-in.

I have no problem with the straight added-grain plug-ins out there, and I recognize that there are filmmakers that want a uniform "texture" to their projects. All VFX houses have added grain for over a decade just to match VFX shots with live action shots (or to the digitally-composited material), so I get that grain-management has been, and continues to be, a part of our business. One can make a good argument that an image that's too "clean" might actually be detrimental to some audiences and some creative people.

Hey Marc,
Thanks for the question - indeed, this is quite important, and in fact, FilmConvert can already do this - you simply select "0" for your film color, and then whatever grain selection you want, and you should get the grain only, which works great for VFX shots that have elements scanned from film (a bit of heresy: I still love a good bit of film. It is a marvellous thing).

We've used this to good effect in a few instances in some of our own projects here, particularly when we're using some of the more consumer oriented cameras that quantize to 8 bits, and which have significant mach banding issues.

 

[Marc Wielage]

Hey Marc,
Thanks for the question - indeed, this is quite important, and in fact, FilmConvert can already do this - you simply select "0" for your film color, and then whatever grain selection you want, and you should get the grain only, which works great for VFX shots that have elements scanned from film (a bit of heresy: I still love a good bit of film. It is a marvellous thing).

Excellent. You might want to make that clear on your website info. To me, color is more of a LUT/creative issue, not a grain issue.

I'll definitely add your grain effect to my list for clients who ask for it. I agree: it's hard to beat actual negative-sourced grain when you want a version of the real thing.

 

[Medavoym]

Hi!

The point has been made several times in this thread that applying a uniform coating of grain is a bad idea. Grain reacts differently based on the density of the exposed negative.

When you apply let's say Cinegrain plates in Resolve (or other grading softwares), how do you actually achieve this, concretely? Do you apply curves to the grain plate itself?

Any ideas to make it look as natural and filmic as possible?

 

[Saumene Mehrdady]

I tried this and saw nothing special. Just your run of the mill plug-in faking a film look. The simulated grain looks more like noise. Film scans with real grain do a much better job in my opinion.

You are probably using it wrong, then. (with all due respect). I have the full version and it's awesome, you can choose from a ton of different stocks and gauges and the adjustments are fairly precise. It even has a basic 3-way color corrector and you can export to any resolution you want

 

[Lance Lones]

Hi!

The point has been made several times in this thread that applying a uniform coating of grain is a bad idea. Grain reacts differently based on the density of the exposed negative.

When you apply let's say Cinegrain plates in Resolve (or other grading softwares), how do you actually achieve this, concretely? Do you apply curves to the grain plate itself?

Any ideas to make it look as natural and filmic as possible?

Indeed, the underlying grain reacts differently depending on the exposure value - in a film print, of course, it's actually two (or more) grain patterns superimposed - at the very least, a negative & print.

With our gizmo, we've looked at this grain distribution quite closely, and with each film stock that we simulate, we procedurally match the grain with the measured value from samples of the actual film stock. It's a bit hard to see directly, but each stock does actually exhibit a different noise/grain characteristic.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Well, the grain in dupe and print stocks is pretty fine, mostly you'd be seeing the camera original negative grain... but even so, grain can look differently if the dupe and release prints were all contact-printed or if one generation was made using an optical printer.

 

[Ryan De Franco]

Hey Lance,

It seems you're in sync with what Medavoym and others are saying about grain looking different based on the scene's exposure.

But then you start talking about how different film stocks have different characteristics.

Do you mean to say that variation in exposure causes different changes in grain texture across different stocks? That makes total sense. But it still doesn't answer the question of making a grain engine "life like" by varying the grain based on the shot's exposure value.

If only we had some empircal way to measure exposure in post--oh wait--histogram! If FilmConvert could adjust the grain texture and intensity according to the exposure, you'd have a far more realistic product than all the other scanned grain options.

Otherwise we are just laying grain over like a gauze and calling it good looking. There is no communication between the grain and the image, unlike in film, where the grain is the impression left by explosions of light in silver... quite a difference huh.

Sure you could adjust grain intensity manually--but without testing a specific stock under conditions similar to the way you shot, you're just bullshitting yourself. "Oh this shot should get a little more grain because it's from the off-key side, or this shot a little less grain because it's an exterior." That would jus result in a hodge podge where the same grain has been overlaid a little differently, instead of grain that reacts organically to the shot's exposure.

Without an emulation that adjusts grain based on the actual shot, you need.... drumroll please.... a really good colorist and DP sitting in a DI suite, adjusting the grain quality based on their years of experience... but what producer is gonna pay for that huh

 

[Saumene Mehrdady]

in film, where the grain is the impression left by explosions of light in silver...

that just blew my mind

 

[Lance Lones]

Well, the grain in dupe and print stocks is pretty fine, mostly you'd be seeing the camera original negative grain... but even so, grain can look differently if the dupe and release prints were all contact-printed or if one generation was made using an optical printer.

Indeed! Most of the dupe/print grain is going to be to some degree nearly invisible, however, coming from the pristine world of digital effects, I do have to say that the first time I noticed the difference between one of our as-close-to-digital record outs printed from a digital intermediate stock, and a final delivered print, I was a bit susprised at the real increase in percieved grain. (Nowadays of course, we cheat, and simply print as many "original-negatives" as you need, or rather, we did... not much of that going on anymore)

When I was then able just recently to go back and see some fine vintage effects done with an optical pass or two, on a real print I will admit to being hugely impressed with what folks were able to accomplish in the not-too-distant past in terms of keeping control of the grain and not letting it take over.