Film look ? Grade or grain

[sunburst]

Grade or Grain.

I love the Dublin's people short. Can't wait for my camera.

But if you were releasing your movie on 2k DIGITAL theatre projection, or Blu
ray / DVD release. { ie: no film transfer }

would you add grain ? Do people care about the grain look any longer?

I note Reverie had no added grain, right?

would you grade? would you soften?

Ie: whats the best post production "formula" for a big budget Hollywood A list feature look?

opinions?

thanks

[isle]

Grain will make it look less video-like. Grain is goood. Don't forget color correction.

[ChosenPredator]

I keep hearing grain and color correction can people give me a few examples of how those are done via video? thanks bunches :)

[mattsand]

i always add some noise to avoid banding when i color correct, 8-bit compressed material needs it. i rarely add film grain unless i want a certain look that needs it. it doesn't usually make video look more like film in my opinion, unless you add a lot and pretend that it's 16mm vnf or something.

[sunburst]

i always add some noise to avoid banding when i color correct, 8-bit compressed material needs it. i rarely add film grain unless i want a certain look that needs it. it doesn't usually make video look more like film in my opinion, unless you add a lot and pretend that it's 16mm vnf or something.

interesting. I gather you add monochromatic grain right?

Sure, the add GRAIN, add scratches, etc, look seems to be a common effect
for "the film look". Ie : giving it that fake 16mm, look. but likely no one
wants to watch an entire "movie" like that.

but todays NEW 35mm film stocks are so Grain reduced. I'm trying to
get at that look.

And of course just editing generations, etc. adds MORE noise. so it's a balance here, too.

[mattsand]

add "one pixel noise" instead of grain, it removes/hides a lot of blocking, aliasing, banding and other ugly video artifacts, plus it adds some filmlike life to the image and since it doesn't "bleed" across pixels it doesn't really degrade your image much but can actually make it look sharper. the rule is to add the most you can before you can see it clearly, then back off a little bit. oh, and do it in 10-bits or higher, that way you're actually creating gradients that weren't there. if you have the choice between distributions in your software, use gaussian.

[sunburst]

add "one pixel noise" instead of grain,


oh yeah, i have heard that. thanks for reminder.

Obviously one has to play around with this depending on production workflow,
and post workflow, and desired goal.

My real thought is WHAT WILL DISTRIBUTORS think?

Ie: Sure if your the - grand prize winner - at Sundance, no problem what
you did. Shoot DV for all they care.

But if you're just trying to get a project through the door they LOVE to find
reasons to reject it. Whats a good example, look wise, of a successful
HD genre feature, shot on digital?

[mattsand]

why on earth would they be looking for reasons to say no? they know most things people show them is crap, they're always looking for reasons to say yes, but alas grading is rarely one of them. nobody is going to distribute your film because it looks like a blockbuster, even if it actually does which i honestly doubt it will, no offense.

[cjwolff]

nobody is going to distribute your film because it looks like a blockbuster, even if it actually does which i honestly doubt it will, no offense.

http://www.dvxuser6.com/uploaded/47696/1252303316.jpg

[Rakesh Jacob]

What exactly does that picture mean cj?

[skital]

Grading, for sure. Grain will help it look a little less video like, but it really comes down to lighting, composition, camera movement/style and grading. Film would still look like film even if it had NO grain. Grain is one of the flaws of film. Aside from that it's wonderful. Film looks the most amazing and stunning when it's about as clean as digital when you can't notice any grain, imo. That doesn't make it look any less film like. It just looks like cleaner more pristine film.

Film looks like film because of the high latitude, the frame rate, the lighting and the grading. It's a combination of several things that give the movie look and grain is a very minor part. Without it film would still look like film.

The best thing you can do is to light your shots and grade in post.

[John Caballero]

Go look for grain on 99% of Hollywood movies shot on film these days and see how much you find. Grain needed for the "film look", another fallacy, unless of course you are shooting 16mm film.

[mattsand]

there's still grain in film for sure, 35mm too. you rarely see it on dvd's or even bluray because of the relatively low res and the compression, but on the big screen or in a 4k file, even 2k, it's fairly obvious and if you want to match video footage to it you better add some. again, i think you should always add grain to video before gradins, but much much less than you think, actually less than you can see without doing a before and after comparison.

[Cranky]

Grain is a defect. Why would anyone add it to a clean video is beyond me.

[xbourque]

Grain is a defect. Why would anyone add it to a clean video is beyond me.

Because it hides defects that are uglier than grain, such as banding and some (light) compression artefacts.

It will also create the illusion that footage is sharper than it really is, because subconsiously, grain registers as "high detail".

Also, some people actually like the look. Total lack of grain makes the image look "plasticky".

--X

[Cranky]

Whoa, this is the first time someone explained practical reasons for grain besides shouting that this is how movies must look. I appreciate it, X.

[Nektonic]

Shouldn't we be looking at things like this on a picture to picture basis. As in, say Filmmaker A is doing a clinical science fiction film along the lines of THX1138, while Filmmaker B is doing a 70's style grindhouse flick.

I mean, content and subject matter should be a large determining factor. Then when you add in the fact that one person's light grain might look like a swarm of flies to others, it all starts to break down into subjective territory. Same with color correction/grading. I think that looking at it from the perspective of, what serves the content, and not some desire to fool people into thinking you shot your film on 35mm. I mean, nowadays the audience is pretty used to 24p HD due to a good deal of films and a ton of TV dramas and comedies using HD now in place of 35mm or Super 16mm.

Also, maybe I'm nuts, but I'm not totally against the pristine clean look that comes with digital cinematography. As someone else mentioned, today's film stocks are pretty free of grain, or at least they appear to be very clean looking, that I don't know if we need to really worry as much as we would ten years ago if this digital tech were available then.

[Ian-T]

The thing is (for those who say they don't see the grain in "today's" films) the grain is still there..even if you don't see it. I love how clean film looks today also (compared to 10 or 15 years ago) but I'm not going to say that there is no grain....of course there is. Mattias and xbourque are correct on what they were saying. Often times the trailers I watch on the PC appears to be a lot cleaner than what I actually see in theaters. Trust me...the grain is there. When in theaters (because you guys turned me into a pixel peeper) the grain sticks out loud and clear to me...to the point where it bothers me sometimes (it would neverhave bothered me in the past).

[Michael Olsen]

The thing is (for those who say they don't see the grain in "today's" films) the grain is still there..even if you don't see it. I love how clean film looks today also (compared to 10 or 15 years ago) but I'm not going to say that there is no grain....of course there is. Mattias and xbourque are correct on what they were saying. Often times the trailers I watch on the PC appears to be a lot cleaner than what I actually see in theaters. Trust me...the grain is there. When in theaters (because you guys turned me into a pixel peeper) the grain sticks out loud and clear to me...to the point where it bothers me sometimes (it would neverhave bothered me in the past).

I noticed this too. Trailers look like they might as well be shot on digital...very very clean. Then I got to the theatre and it definitely look like...well, I don't know if it is grain, or if the filmstock is just poor/dirty, or if there is some part of the projector that isn't kept up. But it definitely doesn't look as clean.

I wonder if you took some printine prints of recent major releases and put them through a high quality projector run by an experienced projectionist...would it look differently than the average movie theatre on a first run of stock? Especially in regard to apparent "grain" or other artifacts? How much of the film look is in the projection and not in the film?

[BandanaDan]

I noticed this too. Trailers look like they might as well be shot on digital...very very clean. Then I got to the theatre and it definitely look like...well, I don't know if it is grain, or if the filmstock is just poor/dirty, or if there is some part of the projector that isn't kept up. But it definitely doesn't look as clean.

I wonder if you took some printine prints of recent major releases and put them through a high quality projector run by an experienced projectionist...would it look differently than the average movie theatre on a first run of stock? Especially in regard to apparent "grain" or other artifacts? How much of the film look is in the projection and not in the film?

Do you watch the trailers in 1080p or just the 480p? They do have that grain too.

I pretty much live in "The first all digital cinema in europe" and it's gorgeous. There's no going back to analog projectors! 4k digital projection all the way!

Although most films are shot or delivered 2k/1080p... the digital projectors really show off films really well. You can see every loving detail, or lack of, just as intended. I'd even go so far as to say the comparison between film projector and digital projectors is like VHS to DVD.

You can see digitally shot films very well- for example, when I saw Public Enemies and Knowing they looked very sharp, and very smooth. Too smooth, abit like plastic in my opinion. And with film like Inglourious Basterds it looked grainy and had all sorts of funky lens artefacts and whatnot. Slumdog Millionnaire was a digitally shot film but had lovely grain too.

You could say that the "film look" is helped by a 35mm reel projection (extra film stock grain and subject to degradation, lower contrast in light source, older anamorphic projection lens etc) but all those factors are an extra hurdle and don't really matter imo.



PS: Yezz I also add grain to everything digital I do, even stuff on 16mm. It just looks more pleasing and holds up better on HD.

[cjwolff]

What exactly does that picture mean cj?

That, my good chap, was an iconic representation of my real-time reaction to the quoted text, similar to my typical reaction to a Scarlet thread. (below)

http://image20.webshots.com/21/5/29/38/232252938eRXHoX_fs.jpg

:beer:

[Rakesh Jacob]

Thnk you sir

[mattsand]

Grain is a defect. Why would anyone add it to a clean video is beyond me.
it's called dithering, one of the most common and useful signal processing schemes there are. it's used to mask quantization noise and aliasing, to improve perceptual dynamic range, among other things. with all due respect the most common reason for something to be beyond someone is that they lack knowledge, not that the thing itself is far fetched. :-)

[mattsand]

Whoa, this is the first time someone explained practical reasons for grain besides shouting that this is how movies must look
i'm glad you're happy, but i actually wrote exactly the same thing on the first page of this thread, before you made your original comment. sometimes when you think you hear something for the first time it's because you weren't paying attention earlier. :-)

[Ian-T]

By the way, what Matt said about dithering is the same technique that's also used for digital audio. FYI