film look?

[wesmahon]

ive always loved the way 16mm film in particular looks. i've tried to recreate the look in post, tell me if you like it or not.





i dont know what it is about it, i think its that dull sort of not very saturated look i dont know its frustrating!

[kurtrawr]

maybe up the contrast/sharpening. i dunno it still hits me as video, not film. i know its hard but maybe keep focus on the moving subject? the "film" look is pretty hard to reproduce

[saintlobak]

16mm has a rather grainy look to it due to the small film size, when most people claim that they like the way 16mm look, they're often refer to how 16mm looks like when it is blown-up to 35mm. The lack of resolution gives it soft, diffused and blurred images, exaggerated film grains and also due to the nature of a smaller film-size, the depth of field is not as shallow as 35mm.

You can start learning the characteristics of 16mm by watching films by Takashi Miike, as he did shot a whole lot of very good films on 16mm, later blown up to 35, namely Audition, Bird People of China, Ichi the Killer and The Happiness of the Katakuris. I'm not exactly sure if all of them were shot on 16mm, but I'm pretty sure Ichi the Killer is. Michel Gondry is another fella who shot a lot of brilliant music videos on 16mm (quite a standard for music videos and tv commercials), and some old ones were shot using his small Bolex camera (especially the stop motion ones).

I'm not sure how you can emulate it, but keep in mind that, the lack of resolution in film is different from the lack of resolution in video. There's one thing I notice though, the footages shot by TwoNeil using his own static DOF adapter, looks very much like 16mm to me, possibly due to the grains and artifacts which are usually present in cheaper 16mm cameras.

Good luck!

[jmalmsten]

nnnnnnnnnnnnah... I won't go into the "FILM-LOOK doesn't exist!"-thingy that I usually do...

But I do feel that the white-balance are just a bit too off... or did you want the colors to look like washed in pink?

[tgiffilms]

No offense but this doesn't look anything like film. It looks like video because that's what it was shot on.

[Ian-T]

nnnnnnnnnnnnah... I won't go into the "FILM-LOOK doesn't exist!"-thingy that I usually do...

Awww c'mon....and I was so looking forward to it.

[clanmccloud]

Sorry, Wes but I think I'm going to have to agree with everyone else on this thread that your shots still look like video and not very film-like. To get a better result, you may want to consider purchasing a 35mm Adapter along with a lense or two. There's a reasonably priced DIY one from TwoNeil that will get you started:

http://www.hv20.com/showpost.php?p=22160&postcount=1

Check out some of his screen captures and video examples. Good luck!

[Dr. Benway]

Also don't forget that video flattens an image. By that I mean that edge sharpness is not up to that of using high quality optics in conjunction with film. What often distinguishes certain innate and often unquantifiable characteristics are egde sharpness, contrast and colour rendition. What all this garbage means is that with top quality gear your images will pop out from the background giving the illusion of depth - almost approaching 3D - whereas budget digital will smear the edges of foreground and background images. They will smear - or more accurately be soft around the edges - just enough to give that crappy video look we have all come to love and hate.

Even 16mm still retains some of the mysterious qualities that good glass lenses and film are renowned for. What you might consider, as has already been mentioned, are the formal qualities that you seek; grain, colour, focus points, blur, jitter or shake, crazy angles all done with a modicum of taste.

View 16mm and take notes about exactly what you are seeing. And remember to slightly vignette your images.

Cheers.

[jmalmsten]

those "qualities" are stuff that most often are defects...

blur, jitter and shake... film damages... they are popular around skating-vid's and extreme-sports... but other than those instances I don't know where they would intentionally fit, except grindhouse-flicks that is

Focus points, I don't really know exactly what's meant with those. But one should have clearly defined areas for people to pay attention to. The pic's posted here doesn't have much distraction... but then again, the picture don't capture my interest for more than maybe a second. And that's from someone that watches Tarkovskij-movies...

Crazy camera-angles... now there's the only fun part of watching extreme-sports videos for me. That and accidents of course... They often get up close and personal, and when accidents do happen, they almost hit the camera. Maybe not so much Crazy, but mostly interesting camera angles should be used.

When I watch blowups from 16mm to 35mm (and often then scanned to sd-video) the only thing I do notice as difference between HD and 16mm is as noted the slightly less defined and grainy look of 16mm... and higher dynamic range... and that's mostly it.

Vignetting is something I mostly, if ever, see in video's that want to look like "film". The lens-makers actually does want to eliminate vignetting, since it's a sign of a badly chosen lens. There is a recent trend to put in some vignetting in the DI-phase, but I wouldn't consider that as a part of filming.

One other thing I notice in the pics are some kind of blur-effect... is there a pro-mist on the lens? was it digitally altered to look like that? My spontaneous guess is that you duplicated the layer, blurred it and blended it with the original. I don't know exactly why, but the effect always make me think pornography for some reason...

And I still think that it's way to red... I did a slight curve adjustment and attached it to this post to illustrate. It's just a dampening on the red channel and a general s-curve-contrast-boost on the overall RGB... and then I added some saturation-removal on top of that...

One way of getting the blown up look could be to just take the footage, reduce it to SD and then re-up-rezz it to HD without any fancy algorithms.

[Braceface]

It's too hard to tell if it looks like film without seeing a video of it.

[madmaxmedia]

Keep in mind what you may love about 16mm film 'look' may not be the same as what others notice/love/hate/etc. I would worry less about whether your videos look like 16mm film, and just worry about whether you like or don't like the final output.

But yeah, as others have said there are a lot of variables. Watching some 16mm footage and then taking detailed notes should help you figure out what you want to go for. If you really make an effort at it, you will likely discover some aspects that are related to post-production, but other things that have more to do with composition and shooting rather than the what you are shooting on.

I've just started messing around with 35mm DOF adapters, and I think it is a great tool for certain types of shooting. Whether it makes it look more like film or not is immaterial compared to what I am shooting, what kind of atmosphere or overall mood I am going for. There are plenty of motion pictures with relatively deep DOF, and those movies don't strike me as looking very 'video-like'.

[wesmahon]

wow these last few comments have really helped me out alot. thanks guys!

[Lou van Wijhe]

If you want your footage to look like it was shot on film, shoot on film.

Lou

[Halsu]

If you want your footage to look like it was shot on film, shoot on film.

It's just that film is expensive, cumbersome and slow to work with.

It's usually not worth the hassle, IMO. Similar look is pretty easy to do with video if desired. In HV20:s case, this holds true especially when shooting cine mode. Contrary to what others may have said, there's no magic in film, just physics and chemistry.

Here's an actual example of a 2K film scan to help judging the differences (from reduser.net):





Resolution wise, HV20:s output is surprisingly close to 2K 16mm film scan - maybe even better. If you compare the above image to HV20 cinemode output at 100% size, it's certainly in the same ballpark.


Dynamic range - well, actually, HV20 in cine mode actually gets reasonably close to film negative in that respect and probably surpasses positive film. Just make sure you don't over expose - if a highlight is burned to white, it's gone forever. Slightly underexposed images can be resurrected in color correction. If the image you are shooting falls within HV20:s capabilities (nothing is full black, nothing is full white) then there's NO advantage whatsoever in shooting film, as far as dynamic range goes - it's only in the more extreme situations where the differences start to show.


The color reproduction is always an artistic choice, so that's not an issue - there's NO "film look" as far as color correction goes, all film is color corrected to taste. Just correct the video footage so that it looks the way YOU want. That's exactly how the film dudes do it too.


There IS more color information in a 10 bit log 2K film scan than in your 8 bit linear HDV footage, but this difference only matters in extreme situations - in most cases, you can correct properly shot HDV footage to whatever look is desired before problems arise - i.e. color gradients like blue sky start to show banding.


Even if this happens, there's often a remedy - IF you're going for the "16mm film look", you will need to add a lot of grain to your footage. If you do this before color correction, the grain will act as dithering, and color banding (and most other similar artifacts) will be gone, masked by the grain.


Oh yeah, film grain - i've always considered it funny that people who like film look are afraid of using gain in video cameras. Heck, scanned 16mm film has much more noise than HV20 at cinemode's max gain. If you shoot without gain, loads of noise (read: grain) has to be added to your footage to match 16mm film look, especially if matching fast film stocks.


When talking about 16mm, one doesn't even need a DOF adapter - the DOF characteristics of 16mm film are similar to 2/3" video cameras, and they don't differ THAT much from HV20. Shooting 16mm with an aperture somewhere around f4 - f8 (which is pretty common practice) gives the same DOF as HV20 gives at full aperture.


Finally, there's the other artifacts - gate weave (registration problems in the camera and film scanner - film is never stabile), dust, hair and other junk. These are usually not desired when shooting film, but are sometimes unavoidable. Adding some of these imperfections to the mix may help getting "the look".

Talking about imperfections - HDV:s 4:2:0 color space causes telltale artifacts in sharp-edged, brightly colored areas. These can be fixed by slightly blurring (1 pixel or so) the color channels, i.e. Sony vegas has a built in "chroma blur" filter for this. The bonus side is that it also actually simulates light scattering in film emulsion pretty well. Luckily, in cine mode, HV20 doesn't sharpen the image to the extent where ringing artifacts become an issue - when using other modes, sharpening should be turned down with custom settings. Other noteworthy artifact is HV20:s noise reduction, which kills some small details in cine mode, causing a bit plasticky look. Adding grain usually masks this pretty well. Finally, HDV:s MPEG2 compression may choke on some subjects. This is something that we just have to live with...

...and that's about it.

[Maxim]

http://www.vimeo.com/1312277

You have got to learn how to use the camera probley so you can adjust exposer, shutter speed, apature and gain to get a good look pre post then using colour correction in post to get it perfect

[sfdex]

I'd agree with much of what has been said. You've done a nice job of flattening the color a bit, I think, but you could do well to add some grain (can do that easily -- if slowly -- in AfterEffects).

Also, the 16mm movies I remember were in a 4:3 aspect ratio, not the lovely widescreen 16:9 that the HV20/30 produces. You could mask your image down to 4:3 to make it feel more like those old school-house movies.

Keep playing. The fact that you have an interest in pursuing a "look" is great. It'll help you find a visual style.

[siberia88]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbVx13gIlSU

This short film was shot digitally and i think it looks a lot like 16mm.

Here's what the filmmaker said: "I shot on a Panasonic HVX200 with P2 cards, 720P 24PN, with a small filter to take the sharpness out, a bit of magnification in post to make it look more like 16mm, and a ton of color correction."

[Ivan Fuentes]

It's just that film is expensive, cumbersome and slow to work with...
...It's usually not worth the hassle, IMO. Similar look is pretty easy to do with video if desired...
...Resolution wise...
...Dynamic range...
...Heck, scanned 16mm film has much more noise than HV20 at cinemode's max gain...

April's Fools Day in mid July? Well... in my country something similar is done in December 28th.

[Halsu]

April's Fools Day in mid July?

Nope.

Just actual real life experience of working with both film and video footge for 20 years.

[Carniphage]

It's just that film is expensive, cumbersome and slow to work with.

....

...and that's about it.

Great post Halsu!

Particularly the point about adding grain before color correction.

I have been experimenting with this and the results are really really film-like.

C.

[Ivan Fuentes]

Nope.

Just actual real life experience of working with both film and video footge for 20 years.

That's some weird experience I must say, I'm a junior compared to you, but I insist, saying dynamic range is almost the same... I've only got 5 years, which compared to your 20 means, well... 25 percent of course. And in those few years, I would never dare to say that color correcting in the telecine, using film's dynamic range, is pretty much alike doing it on video.

and better not mention HV's max gain. That's A LOT.

[Halsu]

I would never dare to say that color correcting in the telecine, using film's dynamic range, is pretty much alike doing it on video.

HV20 is measured to have somewhere around 9 stops of latitude in cine mode, compared to the 10 stops or more of film (negative - positive film only has 6-7 stops). There is a difference, but not a huge one.

As i mentioned, 2K 10 bit log scan of a film negative HAS more color information than 8 bit HDV. But the difference mainly shows in extreme cases. You can get desired color correction results from properly shot HV20 cine mode footage the vast majority of times.

and better not mention HV's max gain. That's A LOT.

Only 9dB in cine mode, to which i referred to.

[Ian-T]

It's too hard to tell if it looks like film without seeing a video of it.

Ha...I don't know if you meant it to be....but this was actually funny.....sort of an oxymoron.

[Ian-T]

Halsu…once again great post. It’s funny….but usually most folks (that I’ve seen) who have been in the industry for as long as you have are usually diehard film enthusiasts who find ways to say that “video is no good” or “it can’t be done” etc. We have all been living under the idea that “film is better than video” when the truth of the matter is it’s not necessarily better but different. I agree that films advantage in dynamic range only matters during the shooting stage…..but if you are real careful to shoot within your camcorder’s ability….then there is no advantage once you get the product in post production……that makes sense. I sort of use this same principle in the audio world

[Halsu]

diehard film enthusiasts who find ways to say that “video is no good”

Snobbery and ignorance - what a perfect combination!!

We have all been living under the idea that “film is better than video” when the truth of the matter is it’s not necessarily better but different.

That pretty much sums it - both have their strengths and weaknesses.

Anyway, i thought i'd share a bit of testing with a 16mm 2K 10 bit log film scan versus HV20 cine mode HDV to illustrate my points. I had my HV20 with me one day on a film shoot, and i shot some home vid there just for fun. From that pile of handheld mishmash, i found one shot that's kinda similar to the "real stuff" that was filmed on 16mm. The framing isn't exactly the same, the light is a little diffrent, so is the camera angle... but this should be close enough to make some comparisons. The face of the actor is censored - otherwise i would probably need to get publishing permissions and stuff...

Here we go -

First of all, here's how the footage looked when first brought into After Effects - on the left, 16mm 2K 10 bit cineon log scan (think of it as being similar to RAW in still camera world), on the right, HV20 screen grab from Vegas, scaled to square pixels HD, the upscaled to 2K width. The whole comp was cropped vertically to 16:9 aspect ratio.



Full size psd:
http://eki.pp.fi/temp/Eki/FilmLook/Film_HDV_ORIG.psd

As the mission this time was to match HDV to the film, i applied cineon converter from linear to logarithmic color space to the HDV clip, along with some color channel blurring, color correction and grain.

If the HDV footage was saved to a 10 bit cineon file after this processing, it could be brought to "real" telecine bay for color correction, where it would pretty much behave just like the film scans. The match isn't perfect, but close enough for these tests.



http://eki.pp.fi/temp/Eki/FilmLook/Film_HDV_LOG.psd

I then applied an adjustment layer with cineon conversion from log to lin color space. This is a rough, neutral "best light" color correction for the images.



http://eki.pp.fi/temp/Eki/FilmLook/Film_HDV_LIN.psd

Here's a 100% size detail for those of you who don't wanna download full rez .psd:s - as you can see, the resolution is pretty much equal in both:





Here's the same thing, extremely color corrected, to show how much detail can be extracted from the shadows:



http://eki.pp.fi/temp/Eki/FilmLook/Film_HDV_lows.psd

The same, but to show just the highlights at extreme contrast. The scene itself is of pretty low contrast, so the difference in dynamic ranges doesn't really show here. If there were extremely bright spots in the scene, film probably would do better job at them than HDV.



http://eki.pp.fi/temp/Eki/FilmLook/Film_HDV_highs.psd

Next, i did some quick "looks", just to show how the footage behaves with different color correction styles.

Modern angst:



http://eki.pp.fi/temp/Eki/FilmLook/Film_HDV_Look1.psd

80's erotic movie:



http://eki.pp.fi/temp/Eki/FilmLook/Film_HDV_Look2.psd

Day for Night:



http://eki.pp.fi/temp/Eki/FilmLook/Film_HDV_Look3.psd


Finally, here's the After Effects project and the source files:

http://eki.pp.fi/temp/Eki/FilmLook/HDV_16mm_AEP.zip


I don't know about you folks, but i'm hard pressed to find much difference in how the film scan and HDV footage respond to color correction in this case...