GH2 Holy sweetness... has anybody else tried out FilmConvert?

David W. Jones said:
Walking dead folks said they shot on 16mm because they thought the grain helped give the viewer the impression of an old 50's Horror flick mixed with the feel of a documentary and if they had shot HD or 35mm would have added grain in post to give the old movie feel.
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My point exactly.
 
David W. Jones said:
The amusing part is that the goal of the companies producing film was to remove the grain, and now we have a whole new crop of shooters wanting to put the grain, AKA noise back into the shots. Ironic no?
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Grain and noise are different things, though. Grain is the visible density of particles, which makes up your image. Noise is a digital artifact.
 
What exactly do these grain programs do? Do they just add a layer of grain over the top of the image or do they actually recreate the image using individual elements of grain as the base? Would there be any difference?

Seems to me that the latter method would give more of an organic quality to the image. Rather than just ovelaying the image with what would basically be an organic filter.
 
Yes, the plugin seems to integrate the grain into the pixel data, not just overlay it.

If you add a grain film scan using an overlay method the results look very different.
 
David W. Jones said:
Walking dead folks said they shot on 16mm because they thought the grain helped give the viewer the impression of an old 50's Horror flick mixed with the feel of a documentary and if they had shot HD or 35mm would have added grain in post to give the old movie feel. I wonder if they have ever looked online at the comments from viewers who feel the grain is just too much?
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But, see, by the time it gets to my TV screen, it has been processed all to hell and I've never noticed that level of grain (except in darker scenes, in which compression artifacts are also present occasionally) or that look. I never got the idea that it was supposed to look like a 50s with the feel of a documentary (and I think it fails at conveying that, personally). Perhaps if I watched it on Blu-ray instead of DVR it would be different.

Chris Adler said:
Who knows. I think the grittiness adds to it, and a series/movie is a mix of tons of ingredients. The story wouldn't be any different if it was pristine clean, but that the feel would be.
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Except I didn't get the feel they were trying to convey. It's just a TV show about zombies...I don't feel like I'm watching a 50s horror come documentary show. That never got conveyed to me, and David's comment was the first I heard that they were going for that.

One of the big complaints I had about Prometheus was that it was too clean and surgical looking. I love the Epic but I think the imagery in that film wasn't served as well with a squeaky clean image as it would have with more texture.
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I saw Prometheus in Sony 4K here in Austin at an Alamo Drafthouse and I couldn't disagree more. I though it looked gorgeous, and some of the best usage of 3D imagery, even better than Avatar.
 
Who's to say what does and doesn't make a difference? I guess we could say that to you, it wouldn't make a difference. Maybe you'd enjoy Walking Dead just as much on a VHS tape as you do in HD? Everyone has opinions about what matters in a story.
 
Chris Adler said:
Who's to say what does and doesn't make a difference? I guess we could say that to you, it wouldn't make a difference. Maybe you'd enjoy Walking Dead just as much on a VHS tape as you do in HD? Everyone has opinions about what matters in a story.
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That's not even a comparison. It's like saying I would enjoy it just as much being shot on an DVX100 as I would if it was shot on an Alexa. At some point, the quality is enough to make an impact on one's enjoyment. But grain vs no-grain is such a minor difference that most people would never notice (unlike the DVX vs Alexa difference), that it's simply foolhardy to act like buying a $250 plug-in is going to net you any kind of appreciable difference in quality or one penny of extra income.

Film is dying and, in my opinion, it's foolhardy to continue to resurrect it as some kind of weird digital zombie clone. We should be forging ahead with new ways of doing things, instead of being so scared of having a "grainless" picture that we spend money and time rendering out dancing patterns of dots.
 
Look, the program and the plug in is SICK! You can also adjust the amount of "grain" added. Have any of you that are debating this negatively even tried the program with a camera that has been profiled?
 
dustylense said:
Have any of you that are debating this negatively even tried the program with a camera that has been profiled?
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Hey, if you want to use it, more power to you. It's not useful to me...plus the only camera I have that has been accurately profiled is my 60D, and I don't feel the quality of that DSLR is worth spending render time on in doing this. Perhaps with a GH2, maybe, but again, I don't think adding grain to any of my footage is going to pull in more clients or give me more satisfaction in the quality I can deliver.
 
At this point in time it would appear that grain is a controllable tool in a directors palette. Just another artistic choice to play with. Many of these things are used in conjunction by the director to create an overall mood and tone. Maybe audience don't notice it other than on an unconscious level.

I have been playing around with it more. It seems to really add to images that are taken indoors (with blank spaces), or when the background outdoors is out of focus (using shallow dof). However, when used in shots with a lot of organic patterns in the background (like grass or forest that is in sharp focus) then it does nothing to the image, or makes it worse. I need to experiment more with it, but so far it seems to have specific uses.
 
I add grain to help with the 8 bit color banding issues I run into, plus I like the texture. I don't see that translating to more money. I see it translating to a more pleasing picture and better overall user experience. That's the only reason I make films-- user experience.
 
Gary Huff said:
And I would say proper lighting and a professional color grade alone would get you 99.9999% of that.
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C'mon man. This thread is abut a tool that adds grain. No doubt there are lots of threads dealing with color grading and lighting. Meanwhile it would be nice to talk about the use of this tool in a creative and constructive way. Yes; its never going to replace good production values. But assuming you have good lighting and good grading; can this add something to the image? It works surprisingly well under certain circumstances.
 
Color grading will give me layers, separation, and help focus the eye where I want it. It can also set tone in a chromatic way. Grain gives me a texture I can't get with a grade. Another tool in the arsenal to use thoughtfully.
 
lpowell said:
That is the most shameless plugin hype I've seen yet.
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Aren't we tired of wanna be famous people like this Vincent and this guy, Phillip Bloom. self advertisement. When will I see their feature length film?The worst self ego was Phillip Bloom's GH2 camera died of watery death. Try searching for the post.
 
How's this a self advertisement? They don't own the products, nor do they profit from sales of the products. When do we get to see YOUR feature film? How is your point relevant to this conversation?
 
simonpwood said:
C'mon man. This thread is abut a tool that adds grain. But assuming you have good lighting and good grading; can this add something to the image? It works surprisingly well under certain circumstances.
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But that's the deal. It's not like I've always thought this way. I investigated a lot of tools that allow you to add a sheen of film grain to your image, and have thought a lot about it. But it seems the benefit is highly dubious in both personal satisfaction, and especially in any kind of audience appreciation. Most of the benefits are touted in nebulous language that doesn't seem to translate into any real-world plusses.

Take "texture" for instance. What is meant by that exactly? To me, it seems like "texture" is a euphamism for "looks like 35mm film stock" and that's all it means. My point is that, unless you are trying to mix Alexa/Red/Sony/Panasonic/ect. digital footage with film stock, where the grain will help keep the look consistant, I don't understand what the idea of adding grain is unless, for some reason, you feel that without making your footage look like film stock, it's somehow illegitimate. I think as long as it's lit and graded properly, no one is going to turn their nose at it for lack of fake grain, and I also think that we should embrace the look of digital and stop worrying about making it look like this old analog format.

In my opinion, it's like adding the "crackling" noise to music you release on CD so that it sounds like vinyl. It has a use for a specific purpose (I've definately heard songs that make use of that effect), but you would never do it as a general process because vinyl is a more "legitimate" format and you want to convince people that you're legit.
 
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