Cannot seem to figure out what is contributing most to the look of these images?

If you are using a canon DSLR, try using the neutral picture style and reduce the contrast one step, which will help you to keep faces a bit more even, like in the first clip.
 
so don't use the neutral-sharpness all the way down, contrast all the way down, saturation down by two notches style everyone always talks about?
 
I only watched a small bit of it, I'd guess it's the lens, shooting at a 1.4 f-stop, and cropping to be a 1:85:1? (I think)

FWIW I wouldn't shoot anything tight at 1.4 if I wanted it to be in focus, and certainly not handheld. Youtube compression covers a little bit of this up, but unless you're going for that effect/look, it will be horribly out of focus and a pain to watch IMO.
 
I don't. I reduce sharpness all the way, but I actually jack the contrast up a bit, along with the color saturation. I do so for two reasons. One, I hate DIing and unless you have a real pro doing it, it can actually make the image look worse. And it takes time, even if you know what you're doing.

Second, the image is simply more please to my eye - and I'm not sure it's better to add color in post if you can get it live. I know it's not for my workflow.

One other possibility - look at turning off the dynamic range option in the menu. Doing so allows for 100 ISO and less grain.
 
the first one seems to be contrast down, saturation down, and a cloudy day on top of that; don't know about sharpness
the second one may be acquired with similar settings too, but if so then contrast was added in later, together with color correction

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I'm just an amateur, nearly everyone in this forum is a better filmmaker than I am, but still, as they don't seem willing to chime in...
(edit: all those responses were not up there when I started to write this!!)

in my eyes, the bit that makes the biggest difference is lighting: if you're good at it, you can create images that look like they belong in a movie; if you're not (as I'm afraid is my case), it's a hit or miss situation, you grade some clips and they look great, but some others seem useless, no matter how much you work on them in post

about picture styles, the idea is to get the best image possible for working in post
if you know your final image will have clipped shadows, or will be very saturated, it's fine to start with a very saturated image with somewhat clipped shadows (be sure you want this, yhou can't un-clip them in post)
if you don't know what you'll end up wanting out of a clip, or you know you won't want clipping or a lot of saturation, then you have to play with the settings in order to get a very neutral image that will lend itself to any look you choose later on, and in that case the usual rule of "neutral, -4, -4, -2" works under most circumstances

of those settings, the one I most often play with is contrast: before you start recording video, take a picture and look at the histogram; there's no point in getting 12 stops of dynamic range if you only need 6, you'll only be capping your color space so that the image is recorded on only 4 bits instead of 8 (if the darkest tone is 25% white and the lightest is 75% white); on the other hand, very often I need to add some curves to the picture style in order to get higher dynamic range, otherwise I'd get clipped shadows or highlights
 
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dtjohns1 said:
so don't use the neutral-sharpness all the way down, contrast all the way down, saturation down by two notches style everyone always talks about?
Click to expand...

Well, that is one way to go about it. Based on your question, with no info about what you know or are doing now, I didn't know if you had done any adjustment to picture styles or not. By using your settings there, though, you are going to need to do some color correction work afterward, vs. just lowering the contrast a small amount which may give you an image closer to what you were seeing without any correction added.

Honestly, I don't see anything super special about the first clip you showed vs. a lot of other DSLR footage that people post, except for the fact that there looks to be less contrast in the skin tones.
 
markblasco said:
Well, that is one way to go about it. Based on your question, with no info about what you know or are doing now, I didn't know if you had done any adjustment to picture styles or not. By using your settings there, though, you are going to need to do some color correction work afterward, vs. just lowering the contrast a small amount which may give you an image closer to what you were seeing without any correction added.

Honestly, I don't see anything super special about the first clip you showed vs. a lot of other DSLR footage that people post, except for the fact that there looks to be less contrast in the skin tones.
Click to expand...

I like the softer image that is provided here. Sometimes I think the images from anything digital gets way to sharp at times. With the image in the first one its clear but theres is a softer apperance to the image.
 
i guess the "filmic look" you're mumbling about would be just a bit lowered lightning in post (and correct exposure on set). Otherwise can't see why it would stand out... underexp. in post
 
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