Film LOOK WITH DVX

Shoot on film. I’m not trying to be sarcastic, but filmmakers need to learn the aesthetic of their capture format, and then apply it accordingly. If you want your movie to look like it was shot on film you have to shoot film.
 
mr blue is rite although the dvx can really dress up 30p video to look filmish with its 24p abilities although its not true film at least it puts you in the ball park.
 
hi, Joshua Provost...
can you give us rookies some tip on how to get film look....
 
Shooting in 24p and using Magic Bullet is something that is easy to do to get a variety of different looks.

Bottom line, no matter how you shoot it, if its not framed and lit correctly, it will not look professional.
 
I guess what we really want is the movie look as opposed to film look. With the DVX, we get close to film look and feel though still not quite there yet.

However, with good lighting and framing, the DVX can look exactly like a movie to the point where people watching will not really care if it originated from film or video.

Check out some of these stills from some stuff I shoot with the DVX recently.
Lights were a few redheads and a blondie.

Take note that the compression to MP4 degraded the footages significantly.

These are from a noir-ish video I did for a competition.

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These are from a horror short I shot for friend last week.

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Looks like a movie? The key is really good lighting and framing at the end of the day. Film or video, they are just a medium.

I have realized that rather than spending more money on 35mm adapter or CC-ing the hell out of my crap footages, it's better to learn up lighting and create the look immediately on the set.

The only CC done to the noir one is desaturation and some tinting.

The horror one is un CC footage and very likely will never need to.
 
Nice grabs man! Real quality looking lighting; id like to see some better quality stills just to see them in all their glory.

You can get a great film/movie look out of any stock DVX camera. Use your lights wisely, open up that aperture, and zoom in. That creates the depth of field assoiciated with film/movies; and using light, you can create a 3 dimensional like image by separating your subject/talent from the background, and also improving the percieved dynamic range by enhancing the overall richness of the image. If you want to, add some grain and artifacts in post. All this will significantly make your DVX project look more film/movie originated.

EDIT: and of course shoot in 24p or 24pa!
 
mrblue1022 said:
Shoot on film. I’m not trying to be sarcastic, but filmmakers need to learn the aesthetic of their capture format, and then apply it accordingly. If you want your movie to look like it was shot on film you have to shoot film.
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agreed..... If you have ever been to a film set you also notice (as said above) that to acheive the look you want it is just as much lighting and framing of shots, The dvx can produce an amazing picture but it will never be just like film
 
wrxguy said:
agreed..... If you have ever been to a film set you also notice (as said above) that to acheive the look you want it is just as much lighting and framing of shots, The dvx can produce an amazing picture but it will never be just like film
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Film at the end of the day is really just a medium. See those stills above? If I said they were from some Asian film production, everyone here would have believe it.

It is really the lighting and framing. Film is just a small part of a much bigger picture.
 
Craig Ryan said:
Nice grabs man! Real quality looking lighting; id like to see some better quality stills just to see them in all their glory.

You can get a great film/movie look out of any stock DVX camera. Use your lights wisely, open up that aperture, and zoom in. That creates the depth of field assoiciated with film/movies; and using light, you can create a 3 dimensional like image by separating your subject/talent from the background, and also improving the percieved dynamic range by enhancing the overall richness of the image. If you want to, add some grain and artifacts in post. All this will significantly make your DVX project look more film/movie originated.

EDIT: and of course shoot in 24p or 24pa!
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Thanks for your kind words. I will post better quality stills as soon as possible. I will also post the horror short here as soon as it is done editing (which should be one more week).
 
Vincent Wong Yoon Wei said:
Film at the end of the day is really just a medium. See those stills above? If I said they were from some Asian film production, everyone here would have believe it.

It is really the lighting and framing. Film is just a small part of a much bigger picture.
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I totally agreed with Vincent, film is just a small part of a much bigger picture. You might have the best Panavision 35mm. cam, the most sophisticated lens and other stuffs, but if you lack of talent behind and front of camera, you're a real looser.!
 
yia said:
hi, Joshua Provost...
can you give us rookies some tip on how to get film look....
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Vincent's grabs show what you can do with interesting lighting, good composition, and creating a look.

Here is some info I have posted elsewhere, but I'll post it here if it's helpful. I'll add some more recent comments as well.

Joshua Provost said:
1. Shoot with the iris as open as possible. There is a catch to this. The iris may be able to open to F1.6 or so (don't know what camera you're using) when at full wide, but only F2.8 when full zoomed. To maintain flexibility, I usually establish the lighting to F2.8 or above, and use ND to bring it right to F2.8. That way I can go full wide to full zoom without changing exposure. You'll need a variety of ND. My DVX has 3 stop and 6 stop built in. I keep a 1 stop and 2 stop around to get in between increments.

2. Zoom in. Example: If you want to shoot a close-up, you can go full wide and put the camera right in front of the person, or you can go full zoom and back the camera up. Either will get you a close-up, but the zoomed one will have a shallower apparant depth of field, becaue the field of view is so small. The background gets blown up so you see it is out of focus. Now, extend this beyond just close-ups. Even medium shots you can probably still back the camera up as far as possible and then zoom in. This is huge. It's probably a more dramatic depth trick than even the iris.
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These first two tips are the basics that everyone throws around, but these can make a huge difference, and they work together. You have to plan them in unison, since the zoom effects what the widest available iris is. If you target F2.8 for most shots, and F2 for wider angles, it can be pretty simple. You can use F2 iris all the way up to Z50.

Let's take an example. I shot a short in November, a comedy in a hair salon. It was going to be mostly MS and CU. My target exposure was F2.8. There were some practical lights that needed to be worked around, so I couldn't just light to F2.8, I had to set up a stronger key and go from there. After setting up the lighting, the exposure was around F5.6, two stops more than what I wanted. So, I screwed on my trusty ND.6 and set the iris to F2.8. Perfect. This simple step resulted in visibly shallowed depth of field, and took about a minute to achieve. I shot the whole thing, including the one or two wide shots at F2.8.

As far as zooming, I positioned the camera as far as possible from the talent, which wasn't very far, as far as the wall would allow. My MS were at about Z40 and my CU were in the high 80's. As far as shallow depth of field, the MS looked good, and the CU looked great. If I could have backed up one more foot, putting the MS in the 50's and the CU in the 90's, it would have been awesome.

So, controlling the iris is not that difficult at all if you have an ND.3 and ND .6 around. You're in control of where you place the camera. Zoom has more of an effect than iris. If I had my choice to take the same shot at Z50/F1.7 or Z99/F2.8, I'd choose the F2.8 one, it would appear to have shallow depth of field, and the lens performs better at F2.8 than at F1.7.

3. Adjust camera sharpening. This is huge. Nearly all cameras do a great deal of sharpening. The camera is fighting against your shallow depth of field. It is taking out of focus objects and sharpening them to make them seem like they are in focus. On my DVX, I have turned the Detail setting all the way down. The image is still sharp exactly where the focus is, but nice and smooth everywhere else. Beyond that, sharpening is just ugly. Check it out, I think you'll be pleased.
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Again, let me say, this is huge. Everyone needs to find their comfort zone in terms of sharpness, but it does effect depth of field, especially in wider and medium shots. Sharpening fights shallow depth of field, so turn it down. Your shots will still be in focus.

4. Light for depth. In B&W, you have to use light to show the depth of the scene and to isolate obejcts. Not so in color, but you can still light for depth with pools of light at different distances, and rim lights to set objects off from the background. This doesn't really effect depth of field, but creates pleasing perceived depth in the scene.

5. Block for depth. Given any shooting environment, position the camera and talent to create distance between them and the background. You can't stick people against walls and expect to get shallow depth of field.

6. Compose for depth. Many people tend to clear out the space between the camera and the talent, but it can help to have foreground objects that will be out of focus. Position the camera to shoot through and around these obejcts. Also, make the background interesting, but not too interesting, so it creates a nice image but doesn't distract.

7. Camera movement. Any type of camera movement (pan, tilt, dolly, jib, crane) will give great feeling of depth because you can see the dimensions of the space change as the camera moves. This is particularly true of dolly in/out and across scenes, and jib up/down. With these movements, the shallow depth of field isn't as important, because you can sense the depth. Shallow depth of field is only a big factor on static shots.
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These four are non-technical aspects, if you will, but they are very important. Maybe, more important than the first three (but use them all!). If you can create a lighting difference between your talent and the background, then there will be good depth, regardless of depth of field. You have to create contrasts. If you can keep the set rather dim, but use lights to make your talent pop, that's the way to go. Rim/hair lighting can make a huge difference in this. On the flip side, on exteriors, for instance, if you can shade/diffuse your talent, so they are softer than the bright/harsh backgrounds, that works as well. Anything for a contrast.

Consider this: depth of field doesn't matter for 50% of your shots or more. It doesn't. On any shot that is lit, blocked, and composed for depth, DOF is not as important. For any shot that has camera movement, DOF is not as important. It really only makes a big difference on tight MS and CU tripod shots, and anything where you want to rack focus.
 
Joshua,

those are some really great tips... thanks for giving them in great detail yet simple to understand.

I find that when shooting in 24p I have a hard time getting a sharp image, even when I'm focused on a specific person or spot, but I think those tips can help me get the scene looking sharp while still hopefully maintaining some semblance of DOF.

thanks again.
 
I highly recommend the M2 adapter for depth of field. But even with out it you can get very close to the "film Look". We just shot a picture with 2 dvx's one with the M2 and one without. I was very happy with how easy it was to match the footage from the two in post. But i think the best thing you can purchase for a cinematic look is lighting. With light and good filmatic framing, you audience won't care if its film or video.
 
All this debate is interesting, but I find it rather funny when a good percentage of the general pubic can't tell the difference between film and video....they just know when a picture looks good and when it looks bad.
 
cecil995 said:
All this debate is interesting, but I find it rather funny when a good percentage of the general pubic can't tell the difference between film and video....they just know when a picture looks good and when it looks bad.
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Yeah, but when you, yourself, can obviosly tell a difference between film and video and can't get the look you're trying to achieve, then you're not going to be satisfied. It really doesn't matter whether Joe Blow can tell the difference or not.
 
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