The film look??

T

the mighty IZ

New member
Hello everyone. I just got my XL2 and I was wondering if anyone has any suggestion and complete details about getting that film look? Thanks in advance!!
 
Best thing to do is to run a search both here and at DVinfo.net. Several people have posted settings for the XL2 that will give you great results. Good luck.:2vrolijk_08:
 
Gotta love that filmlook!


pyramids.jpg
 
Im Also Trying To Achieve The 'film Look' Not An Easy Task But To Start Get Into Shooting In The 24p Mode Or Your Wasting Your Time. A Great Little Add On Is The Blue Barn Custom Presets Manager Available Free. This Allows You To Store Any Great Presets You Find For Color On Your Laptop/desktop And Load Them Into Your Camera For Future Use. It Also Allows You To Develop Good Ones With The Cam And Name And Save Them To Your Cmptr. Great Pgm And Its Free And Easy To Use.
 
sundance44ANCE44 said:
A Great Little Add On Is The Blue Barn Custom Presets Manager Available Free. This Allows You To Store Any Great Presets You Find For Color On Your Laptop/desktop And Load Them Into Your Camera For Future Use. It Also Allows You To Develop Good Ones With The Cam And Name And Save Them To Your Cmptr. Great Pgm And Its Free And Easy To Use.
Click to expand...

Wish there was something like that for the HVX.
Someone was working on it at one point...
hmmmm...
...I'm going to go find that
 
I was able to get some pretty good shots that resemble film with my xl2. I'm fixing to shoot a short film so I will keep everyone posted. Thanks for all the info. If you have any more info or suggestions please do tell!!
 
You And I And Everyone Else On This Forum Wants The Film Look, Its Out There But Maybe A Little Tough To Attain. First Suggestion Is Shoot In 24p Second Suggestion Is Install The Bluebarn Presets Manager So If You Find A Custom Preset You Like You Can Save It To Your Computer For Later Recall. Its A Great Pgm And Its Free And Comes With Several Presets You Can Try.
 
Most of the "film" look comes from post production. Check into the Magic Bullet program... I actually found the XL2 to be hard to mimic the "film" look... I don't know why... A lot of it came out looking like high quality home videos...
 
Morox said:
Most of the "film" look comes from post production.
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Noooo!! Most of the film look comes from good lighting on set. There's no post production plugin I know that can make an image look film like when it was lit flat, with no DOF. Short of completely digitally reconstructing the scene, it's impossible to fix poor lighting choices. That's why professional DP spent years learning how to light. Color gradings are indeed done often in Hollywood productions, but that's usually to enhance the look that's already there rather than creating the film look from stratch.

I'm surprised this answer hasn't come up already; it's asked often and someone usually chimed in by now. For the long version to this answer, there is a sticky in the 35mm Adapters section titled Film Look.
 
Yes, most of the film look (apart light control, great locations and great actors/screenplay) is due to:

- 24p (in Europe 25p is perfect too)
- 35mm dof (you need a 35mm adapter)
- Latitude (film has not those horrible burned skies and faces, you need a lighting/exposure work to avoid burned whites)
- Colorimetry: still much lighting work and cc on camera or/and during post
 
jade8472 said:
Noooo!! Most of the film look comes from good lighting on set.
Click to expand...
Semantically I'd disagree here. I'd say the "movie" look comes from good lighting on set. But the "film" look comes from emulating theimaging characteristics of film, and that'd be 24p, a 35mm DOF adapter, and a cinelike gamma.

You can have brilliant, filmlike lighting and still have a very "video" looking image, by shooting a high-budget production on interlaced video like DigiBeta. Won't look anything at all like film regardless of your lighting and art direction.

Or, you could have something that looks exactly like film, with no lighting or production design whatsoever. Just shoot on Super 8 -- it's film, it looks like film.

So there's the "film look" and then there's a totally different thing, the "movie look" -- the "film look" comes from emulating how film works, the "movie look" involves taking the "film look" and applying good production value to it.
 
This is a little off topic, but I'm curious. Is Bluebarn Presets Manager compatible with the Canon XL1s or is it just for the XL2?
 
XL2 Film Look settings

XL2 Film Look settings

Hi, I know this is quite late, but I have a very nice film look setup on my XL2.

I'll put it at the bottom of this post.

Background: I did my last film without proper settings, and fixed in Post, but will not do that again. I also advise any Indy Filmmaker NOT to do that.

Here are the reasons for doing as little in Post as possible:

1. Images in DV and HDV lose substantial color detail and fixing/tweaking in Post means that you have little to work with - give it a try - you'll do lots of crying in your sleep. Color correct at the lens/WB, before you hit the DV codec.

2. Post is great if you have a big budget, but everything you can fix in production will save many hours and cost in Post. And you will actually see what it is going to look like - important for lighting setup and visualization.

After my last film, I have spent many hours tweaking and testing. You can get the most stunning images from an XL2 if you do the following:

1. Color balance your shots properly.
2. Setup a custom preset as below.
3. Light it well.

CUSTOM PRESET VALUES:

Gamma: Cine
Knee: Low
Black: Press (I know you lose detail - do it anyway - you will see the results)
Color Matrix: Cine
Color Gain: None
Color Phase: None
R Gain: None
G Gain: None
B Gain: None
V Detail: Normal
Sharpness: Normal (30%)
Coring: 75% (Less noise)
Setup Level: 0%
Master PED: 0%
NR:Off

Also do the following:

Gain = -3 (0 if low light)
Shutter = 1/50 (1/48 NTSC)
Iris = (As low as possible - less DOF)
WB = Manual (While Balance correctly - very important - can use compensation)

LENS:

OIS: Off (except if handheld)
Focus: Manual (Use ZR1000 for exact racking focus - works very nice - clicks)
ND: Use ND filters to control Shutter/Gain/Iris for outside.

Outside vistas and long shots = Iris Small (High F-stop) = long DOF
Use Wide Angle converter for establishing shots.

Light well to compensate for DOF (1/3inch CCD) and you don't need a Mini35, etc

These rules work excellent.

Remember: You want Film look, not TV. :)
 
Hi everyone,

Here are some images that show my film-look setup on the XL2. They have no correction or editing. I've dumped these from some recent footage. Let me know what you think.

(Please note these are smaller JPG pictures - for full size, contact me)

30.Frame1.jpg


32.Frame6.jpg


35.Frame3.jpg


36.Frame2.jpg


I have now started to use my own Warming Card and am happy with the results (Image 2).
 
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