Adding Film Grain To Wedding Videos

W

wildstriker

Active member
I shot my first wedding video (albeit voluntarily) on a Canon 60D and I'm considering adding a 4K 16MM film grain to "hide" the camera's limitations, especially the low light shots (even though the aperture was wide open), as well as to get a certain style look.

I don't recall seeing other wedding videos with this sort of look before (maybe I have, but I just don't remember). So this is kind of uncharted territory for me.

I'm interested in opinions on this. Are film grains in wedding videos make or break?

EDIT:

I fail to mention that I also shot at 720p, because I wanted the 50fps look for slow motion.
 
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None of the wedding studios I shoot for add grain, but I've seen a wide diversity of styles of wedding videos online. There's no reason you can't do it. The bride may like it or she may say WTF is this grain everywhere? Typically, she's the client you have to please, right? I push my ISOs pretty high sometimes on a super-dark dance floor (like 12800 on my 5Dmk3 and sometimes also the C300) and don't worry too much about the noise, but I have no idea how bad your noise is. Have you tried a denoiser on that footage?
 
It sounds like issue is chroma noise, and film grain won't fix that. Does your editing software support noise reduction? The Fusion page in the free version of Davinci Resolve has a couple noise reduction options, but it's not the most effective form of noise reduction, as it appears to just blur the color channels to make the noise less apparent, but it's better than nothing.

In my opinion, film grain makes more sense as a form of dithering to counteract banding.
 
Thank you for the comments.

I'll see if there's denoiser in my version of Davinci Resolve and try it.
 
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Trouble is wedding clients have no interest in 'art' - so if it's grainy and horrible they'll ask for it to be 'normal' - so you are stuck. I'd also suggest the noise reduction. Only needed it once, but it worked pretty well and saved my bacon.
 
I’ve done weddings for 13 years. It is very common to add grain to wedding videos. Just search on Vimeo and you’ll find that many of the best wedding videos have added grain. I don’t know what anyone else here is talking about. I’ve worked with the top wedding video companies in the world.
 
I'm too old to see wedding videos as anything other that documentary, rather than epic, so I guess thankfully I've become obsolete. Watching some wedding stuff proves I'm wildly behind the times in terms of content and style. I thought at first it was a USvsUK style thing but we too seem to have arty clever stuff as the top of the pyramid that people strive to climb. Apologies from a fossil. I'm looking at the 'film grain' option in Premiere and wondering if I might one day use it ......... but probably not.
 
wildstriker said:
I shot my first wedding video (albeit voluntarily) on a Canon 60D and I'm considering adding a 4K 16MM film grain to "hide" the camera's limitations, especially the low light shots (even though the aperture was wide open), as well as to get a certain style look.

I don't recall seeing other wedding videos with this sort of look before (maybe I have, but I just don't remember). So this is kind of uncharted territory for me.

I'm interested in opinions on this. Are film grains in wedding videos make or break?

EDIT:

I fail to mention that I also shot at 720p, because I wanted the 50fps look for slow motion.
Click to expand...

Go for it!

All depends on the type of people you end up working for. They will probably only want a good video. Adding a little grain (almost not visible) can break up the digital compression patterns that create less natural detail. I say go for it, but “film” is less of the standard now, and adding too much grain is just distracting unless you are trying to be vintage looking for effect.
 
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