That 80's look

roxics

roxics

Veteran
I love the look of mid 1980's era 35mm film stock. Think of films like Predator or Aliens. I'm not sure what film stock was used on those but I love it.

I've seen a lot of great footage shot with these DSLR's. I love that look as well. But it's a different kind of look. It's very crisp and colorful, even when the color is desaturated.

I'm wondering if anyone has experimented with getting that certain 80's film stock kinda look out of their 7D or T2i?

I can't quite put my finger on what it is. It's not just the color or the DOF or even the movement. It's a certain textural, perhaps softer quality. I know it's film and that's the easy thing to say. But is there a way to replicated it with these DSLR's?



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this is a look i've thought about going for before, just never had the opportunity! i'd love to see some examples of folks who did this, and how they achieved it, great thread.
 
Going to have to agree with jmmusic - it's all about technique and talent I guess. I love the 80s look though - it's very engrossing.
 
There is no doubt that "technique and talent" is involved. That's the case with any film. But the particular properties of these images is what I'm referring to. Something about the color palette, tonal qualities and soft out of focus regions. Like I said I can't quite put my finger on it.
 
The lenses were not nearly as sharp as they are now. There is a edge softness that let light kind of wrap around things. That and the grainier film stocks. Once the vision stocks came into play, the look of most movies got a whole lot cleaner.
 
roxics said:
Something about the color palette, tonal qualities and soft out of focus regions. Like I said I can't quite put my finger on it.
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well this is what I notice about the still frame:
the color palette is reduced to basically cyan and orange/pink .
If you look at what they are wearing you'll see their clothes are green and orange, with just a bit of blue from her shirt. Actually the more I look at it I feel like this comes down to wardrobe and set design that restricts the colors.
The blacks aren't very black. It seems dark in there but if you look nothing's really in total darkness.
The depth of field is decently deep, mostly because of the way this is framed.
And like what was mentioned before there's lots of grain.


does this help?
 
Ethan Lane said:
well this is what I notice about the still frame:
the color palette is reduced to basically cyan and orange/pink .
If you look at what they are wearing you'll see their clothes are green and orange, with just a bit of blue from her shirt. Actually the more I look at it I feel like this comes down to wardrobe and set design that restricts the colors.
The blacks aren't very black. It seems dark in there but if you look nothing's really in total darkness.
The depth of field is decently deep, mostly because of the way this is framed.
And like what was mentioned before there's lots of grain.


does this help?
Click to expand...

Yeah I agree I think all of those things play into it. Good observations. Like the poster before said the lenses appear to be softer and wrap the light arond the subjects. I think that is also a good observation.

So in other words, match the color palette both with set design and post grading as well as lens type, add some grain and we should be good right? :)
 
I think Magic Bullet looks..blockbuster will get you close..Then tweak abit. Use a haz filter too???
 
There's more too I think.

Camera movement style, lighting style, hair- and clothing styles, cars, TVs, Phones and other objects...

I think if you just got old camera equipment that were commonplace in the 80's, and shot a movie like Bourne on old film stock but kept the pace, editing, shakycam, etc, it wouldn't feel very 80's.
You need all the other stuff as well.
 
JavaExMachina said:
There's more too I think.

Camera movement style, lighting style, hair- and clothing styles, cars, TVs, Phones and other objects...

I think if you just got old camera equipment that were commonplace in the 80's, and shot a movie like Bourne on old film stock but kept the pace, editing, shakycam, etc, it wouldn't feel very 80's.
You need all the other stuff as well.
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I think the dude is talking about the properties of the image in technical sense, not how to make a blockbuster movie.
I would start with the film stock used and research it to find out its particular properties and try to do a base style/curve in the "piece of ****" editor or in post that matches the qualities of the stock.
I find that the look of 80's movies is quite soft. I don't think that was because of the lenses not being sharp, as even cheap $100 lenses can be tack sharp, and some of those 70's and 80's lenses are still being used. I'm also guessing the original print looked pretty sharp.

I also find alot 80s action movies have a bluish tint to them. This could be the lighting,film stock,lenses used ect. I think the stock plays into it alot.
So many variables.
 
One observation from somebody who actually saw both Aliens and Predator in their first cinema runs. Several times. None of those films had such a soft mushy look in the theatre as that frame grab (which I guess is from a DVD). On the contrary both had really rich blacks (as most action movies then*). Well, Aliens had a couple of back projection shots with lower contrast but on the other hand especially the end sequence in Predator had very punchy blacks, today it would be described as 'crushed'. I suspect a lot of the soft low-contrast you think is a '80s look' is a artefact thanks to old analogue telecine technology that couldn't handle contrast so good plus a fear that the TVs of the time couldn't either so they did pretty bright and washed out transfers in that period. I especially remember being really disappointed with the Aliens VHS release, it looked like utter crap dipped in goat milk. The DVD I have is better but nowhere near as contrasty as the film prints I saw. It's scary how few of the 80s films have gotten a new transfer - at least not for SD use.

Got one tip though. A very commonplace method to get rich blacks then was to rate the film stock at least one step slower thereby overexposing it and when striking the release prints pushing it down. A side effect of this was that the brighter parts of the image lost some saturation and picked up more diffusion in the lenses. Something that can be simulated in post quite easily.

*except Tony Scott films - he had the hazer on non-stop no matter the location, time of day or mood of scene.
 
JFreshInEffect! said:
I think the dude is talking about the properties of the image in technical sense, not how to make a blockbuster movie.
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Thats what I'm talking about too. I'm just saying a lot more flavor goes into a casserole than just stock.

JFreshInEffect! said:
I also find alot 80s action movies have a bluish tint to them. This could be the lighting,film stock,lenses used ect. I think the stock plays into it alot.
So many variables.
Click to expand...
This is another way of saying pretty much the same thing, so I guess we agree? :thumbsup:
 
roxics said:
So in other words, match the color palette both with set design and post grading as well as lens type, add some grain and we should be good right? :)
Click to expand...

That would be going in the right direction. It's like trying to sound like SRV; you can play through all the same equipment and still not get the same tone necessarily.

Skilled said:
I think Magic Bullet looks..blockbuster will get you close..Then tweak abit. Use a haz filter too???
Click to expand...

I wouldn't use this preset. It will end up looking like bourne supremacy. It's not hard at all to move the shadows to cyan and the highlights in the opposite direction. You'll end up doing as much work just adjusting the preset as you would starting from scratch.
 
Martti Ekstrand said:
One observation from somebody who actually saw both Aliens and Predator in their first cinema runs. Several times. None of those films had such a soft mushy look in the theatre as that frame grab (which I guess is from a DVD). On the contrary both had really rich blacks (as most action movies then*). Well, Aliens had a couple of back projection shots with lower contrast but on the other hand especially the end sequence in Predator had very punchy blacks, today it would be described as 'crushed'. I suspect a lot of the soft low-contrast you think is a '80s look' is a artefact thanks to old analogue telecine technology that couldn't handle contrast so good plus a fear that the TVs of the time couldn't either so they did pretty bright and washed out transfers in that period. I especially remember being really disappointed with the Aliens VHS release, it looked like utter crap dipped in goat milk. The DVD I have is better but nowhere near as contrasty as the film prints I saw. It's scary how few of the 80s films have gotten a new transfer - at least not for SD use.

Got one tip though. A very commonplace method to get rich blacks then was to rate the film stock at least one step slower thereby overexposing it and when striking the release prints pushing it down. A side effect of this was that the brighter parts of the image lost some saturation and picked up more diffusion in the lenses. Something that can be simulated in post quite easily.

*except Tony Scott films - he had the hazer on non-stop no matter the location, time of day or mood of scene.
Click to expand...

I believe it. I've only ever seen the movie on VHS. I was 7 years old when Aliens came out. So what you say about a soft transfer is probably true. That said, that's how I remember and cherish the film being that is the only way I've ever seen it.

So I guess what I'm really looking for then is 80's movies poorly telecine'd to VHS image aesthetics. hahaha!
 
jmmusic said:
It's called talent.
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Ah, talent you say?! Welp. Guess that answers this question. Might as well close every single other thread asking something, because this can literally be the answer to all of them.:love4:

To the dude asking about the 80's look, I'd say it all looked a bit soft and the grain helps a lot. It seems everything was so brightly lit. Most movies I think of made in that era were shot on sound stages with sets. It was more normal for movies to look like movies, where now there's a big push to film on location and they feel more "real" if that makes any sense. They used hand made matte paintings and miniatures that also have a soft, tangible feel. The set in that Aliens screen shot looks like a set, not a fully functioning vehicle/command center. On a subconscious level, that is probably more of what we're associating with the look more then the colors, grain, etc.

Also, I agree with the guy that mentioned the fact that everything in the shot is from that era. I believe no style is timeless. All films looks like when it was made whether it's a period piece or not. I'd say all art is contemporary art if you think about it. Play around with CC and if you come up with some tips for getting close to the look, I'd love to hear an update. I too will play around with it.

Sorry about that rambling on. I too am working on a project hoping to capture some of the feel of these films.
 
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