The Film Look

roxics

roxics

Veteran
It’s funny how long people have been chasing this dream. I think it’s been achieved within the last 10-15 years or so. To some degree or another. But the results are always mixed. Some better than others. I like what I've been seeing from the recent power grades in Resolve and for whatever reason the original BMC pocket cam does a really good job getting there. Although I've not personally used either. Just what I have seen online over the years.
I still personally haven’t seen one that truly emulates the look of Technicolor in my opinion. But I’m starting to think that part of it is the fact that I’m so used to seeing older locations and wardrobes and hairstyles that if you shot something modern with the technicolor process, on film, I might reject it and think it’s a cheap digital attempt.

Aside from Technicolor, personally I’m a big fan of the late 60 to mid 80s film look. Whatever him stocks those happen to be. I’ve also noticed that modern 16mm to me looks more film like then 35+mm does. Which tends to look more digital to me these days. I’m guessing ti has to do with the color of Vision3 and the way films are scanned frame by frame rather than telecine where you still see some of the shakiness.

Anyway, do any of you have a favorite technique to achieve the film look on digital?
How do you feel about the film look still?
Is it a dream you were ever chasing, are you still chasing it, or have you gotten there, or just don’t care anymore? Did you ever care?

I used to say that I’d be happy if you gave me a VHS camcorder that shot footage that looked like it came off of 35mm film. I’d shoot all of my movies on that. Despite the lower resolution and color fidelity. Mostly because I grew up watching most movies I saw on VHS. Even though I’m happy living in the HD/UHD world today, I might still make the choice if it were available. But preferably an HD/UHD camera that gave me that look out of the box. Even though I’ve learned over the years it’s not just the camera, it’s everything. Although the camera is a big factor.
 
To me, 90% of the "film look" was accomplished when we moved from interlaced to progressive. Another 5% was achieved when we got gammas with nice roll-off that don't go nuclear green in the highlights. The other 5% mostly comes from better grading tools.
 
I think the term "film look" has always been a subjective one. There is attempting to emulate all of the parameters of celluloid that aren't inherent with digital acquisition: grain, weave, tonal characteristics etc. I think Steve Yedlin has proven definitively that this is entirely possible with today's technology. I think for many though, the idea isn't to check every single box but to deliver enough of the broad strokes so that the result is considered "filmic" or "cinematic" in the viewer's perception.

One of the many things I learned during the run of Key & Peele was that we were able to emulate the look of many flavors and eras of film using the same camera and lenses, with the heavy lifting being done in the grade. See 1:53 in this compilation, where I moved chronologically through the years which included a 50's Technicolor musical, 60's newsreel etc. I did opt to use vintage video cameras for the later clips as I find that look much harder to recreate with a modern digital camera.
 
Back when I knew nothing, and got interested in filmmaking, I regarded the film look as emulating the quality of 35mm films I saw at the theater, and though I couldn't articulate it at the time, I think the things that stood out to me were detail, saturation, tonality, and highlight roll off. I couldn't distinguish between different film stocks, I just thought they looked good even though they were different.

I remember not liking digital grades on 35mm release prints that desaturated everything or tinted everything an unnatural color.

Marc Wielage has some posts on Liftgammagain.com about how the film look is ephemeral, because some aspects are unquantifiable.

The term "film look" is rather nebulous, as different film stocks have vastly different looks, film can be manipulated during the development process, color timing, and digital intermediate process, and the viewing display's mode and calibration can drastically effect the look.

Here's an Art Adams article on the difference in saturation between film negatives vs. film prints, and how digital cameras have progressively gotten better at emulating film saturation.

I know y'all already know all this, but here is my short list on emulating the quality and esthetics of film rather than a specific stock:

In camera:
Log profile
24 FPS
1/45th shutter speed (if shutter angle isn't available),
CPL filter, Grad ND or Blender ND filters to preserve the highlights
(Optional) diffusion filter to bloom the highlights (1/8 Black Pro-Mist filter / Tiffen Black Satin / Hollywood Black Magic)

In post:
Noise reduction
Sharpen
Film density with Color Slice or DCTL
Highlight recovery or Soft Clip
Contrasty mid-tones with an S-curve
35mm film grain applied prior to luminance and tone mapping
1.85:1 or 2.40:1 output blanking
 
Doug Jensen said:
To me, 90% of the "film look" was accomplished when we moved from interlaced to progressive. Another 5% was achieved when we got gammas with nice roll-off that don't go nuclear green in the highlights. The other 5% mostly comes from better grading tools.
Click to expand...
A progressive frame rate at 24/25fps certainly is a huge factor. Interesting take.
 
Yes, nothing with interlaced 60i or 50i cadence could ever be described as having a "film look". That is why it is, by far, the most important thing.
 
CharlesPapert said:
I think for many though, the idea isn't to check every single box but to deliver enough of the broad strokes so that the result is considered "filmic" or "cinematic" in the viewer's perception.
Click to expand...

Agreed. To me a lot of that is just trying to suspend a person's disbelief, and to achieve a look that makes them feel like they are watching something with some production value so they don't tune out immediately. Which I've done on a few occasions with movies. Something I don't think I've ever honestly achieved myself. Anything more I think is just stylistic because you want that specific look.

I remember thirty years ago watching one of the documentaries about the making of I believe it was Empire Strikes Back. George Lucas was talking about how they really weren't sure of this little Yoda puppet, if it was going come off as unbelievable. But once they saw it on film, it just worked.

I think you certainly nailed some of the looks. Love the B&W looks you got there and all the 70s/80s footage. Although I'm still not convinced by the Technicolor. Sorry. I haven't seen anyone pull off in a way that convinces me. But again, I'm starting to believe part of my perception of it has a lot of do with era specific set/costume/etc. and maybe seeing Key and Peele is throwing my brain off and not allowing me to accept the look. :)
 
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Imamacuser said:
I know y'all already know all this, but here is my short list on emulating the quality and esthetics of film rather than a specific stock:

In camera:
Log profile
24 FPS
1/45th shutter speed (if shutter angle isn't available),
CPL filter, Grad ND or Blender ND filters to preserve the highlights
(Optional) diffusion filter to bloom the highlights (1/8 Black Pro-Mist filter / Tiffen Black Satin / Hollywood Black Magic)

In post:
Noise reduction
Sharpen
Film density with Color Slice or DCTL
Highlight recovery or Soft Clip
Contrasty mid-tones with an S-curve
35mm film grain applied prior to luminance and tone mapping
1.85:1 or 2.40:1 output blanking
Click to expand...

I'm always happy to hear a person's formula.
In truth I really don't do a lot of experimenting with trying to achieve the film look in post production. I've done some basic curves, color grading, and film grain overlays on occasion, but I don't have a lot of projects where it's something I can experiment with it in post. So I'm still very much a beginner in that regard. Although when shooting I've used black pro mist filters (been a while), 24fps, 180 degree shutter, etc. I don't do a lot of cinematic stuff. But I'm always fascinated to learn more for when I intend to.
 
Doug Jensen said:
To me, 90% of the "film look" was accomplished when we moved from interlaced to progressive.
Click to expand...
Not to be too pedantic, but wasn't it more about frame rate than interlace vs progressive? You can still get the 24p look with interlace video, and 60p played back at 60 still looks like video (vs cinematic). The two paradigms did sort of arrive at the same time, although we had a few generations of cameras including the DVX that presented 24p within a 60i stream.

Back in the late 80's I was on staff at a small production company and we had a frame store unit (ahh the good old days: a 3U rack unit box that surely costs thousands all to get a clean freeze frame). It allowed you to switch outputs to upper and lower fields, with the effect if you played live video through it of reducing the apparent frame rate from 60 to 30. This became our 'secret sauce" to making filmic looking commercials back then. A few years later I started sending the bigger projects out to Filmlook to be processed through their custom workflow.
 
CharlesPapert said:
Not to be too pedantic, but wasn't it more about frame rate than interlace vs progressive?
Click to expand...
Frame rate is part of it but interlaced itself has a lot of artifacts. 60p looks better than 60i. It's still not cinematic, but it's definitely superior to interlaced.
As discussed in a different thread last week, progressive video broadcast as interlaced still retains the progressive look, but that's not what I was talking about here.
 
I remember shooting on MiniDV and cutting in Vegas. There was an option where if you right-clicked a clip, you could select "Reduce Interlace Flicker" and it would instantly look more "filmic". To this day, I'm not sure exactly what that option really did, but I used it all the time. I think it was creating a progressive frame from my interlaced source, but I can't be sure.
 
El Director said:
I remember shooting on MiniDV and cutting in Vegas. There was an option where if you right-clicked a clip, you could select "Reduce Interlace Flicker" and it would instantly look more "filmic". To this day, I'm not sure exactly what that option really did, but I used it all the time. I think it was creating a progressive frame from my interlaced source, but I can't be sure.
Click to expand...
That's what modern systems will generally do with interlace now by default, collapse 60i into 30p (and/or 50i to 25p). It's mathematically correct but it's not the original cadence or frame rate. Although it does take the curse of 60 images per second, i.e. the soap operat look. If I'm digitizing footage that was always intended to be viewed at 60i, like home videos, I far prefer to process it to 60p and retain the appropriate frame rate. But of course, this is counter to the "achieving the film look" concept, which is now easily attainable on virtually any camera by switching it to 24p mode.
 
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