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Steve Mullen

I think you've got the color down	0votes
November 28, 2008 04:30 AM	Views: 170 Favorited: 0 Comments: 3

	Filed Under: Super 16mm
Tags: Super 16mm

I think you've got the color down, but I would say the fine detail is more Super8 than Super16. And, I'm not sure you can get a way with so little grain. Grain is the most wonderful part of film S16. Without it, images can look like soft video. Forget the scratches and film gate hairs.

Also, the editing style is so modern, it takes one away from the notion of film. The sideways tracking shots in the church are great.

Comments

Evro Moudanidis

November 28, 2008 04:50 AM

Thanks for the feedback...

Hi Steve, I agree the grain structure has completely disappeared from the clip once I uploaded it to XR, though watched in it's native MPG2 stream it's definitely there, also another thing I'm noticing with the XR transcode is that the 18 frame cadence has been mangled and the clip now looks more like video. I wish you could see the original it really looks more filmic than it does here. Also please keep in mind that the Church & photo-shoot footage was left untouched because I wanted it to have the new HD video look like a new Guy Ritchie film :) - only the pre-ceremony & reception footage was treated.

Thanks again for your comments :)
PS: I really admire your work and actually bought your JVC ProHD book 6 months ago - a very in depth & informative read.

Alastair Brown

November 28, 2008 03:50 PM

Hi Evro,

Film look seems to be in. Funnily enough Richard at FX Films is just working on a similiar thing. What packages did you use to achieve the look. Ever checked out the New Blue stuff?

Regards

Alastair

Evro Moudanidis

November 28, 2008 04:52 PM

The film look

Alastair, for me emulating the film look has come about out of sheer frustration after trying to sell real film in Australia. We've been offering Super 8 for about a year and the uptake here has been very slow, couples really love the look but just can't afford the premium price to shoot on real film - not like in the USA where there seems to be more of a market for it. We're not willing to shoot film at video prices because the costs are much higher and we're running a business here not a charity, besides the wedding video industry is already undervalued by stupid people & part-time hobbyists posing as professionals giving everything away at stupidly low prices.

Trying to match the REAL film look starts from the way the video camera is operated and moved including exposure control & frame rate/shutter speed, right down to the screen ratio, colour grading, frame rate/cadence & lastly getting the right grain for the stock emulated. It really comes down to actually knowing the difference between the shooting style of 8, 16 & 35mm cameras to the way the various film stocks respond to light and colour in order for the final work to be authentic and without it looking like the rubbish emulations we see on TV shows. The biggest sign that something was shot on video is that of motion smear whereas a film camera judders it doesn't smear, then there's also the problem of video's limited exposure latitude compared to film...

The above video was actually shot in 1080i interlaced because I had not intention of giving it the film look - that was decided afterwards, now if I had shot it in 720p the result would certainly have been much more convincing.

Alastair, for my different film looks I heavily customise the built in Vegas filters (not the internal film look filter because that on it's own looks incredibly lame.) Depending on the type of camera & film stock I'm trying to emulate I use a combination of Sony Film Grain, Sony Gausian Blur, Sony Glow and several layers of Sony Colour Corrector, for film damage I use incredibly small amounts of either Magic Bullet or New Blue damage filters, I also overlay real film damage from my own super 8 films and primarily use them as gate and framing masks.
The sheer complexity of my custom Film Emulation filter packages in Vegas certainly make my Quad Core PC work it's guts out especially editing this new Panasonic AVCHD footage.

Overall, getting the film look needs very subtle film damage, a huge mistake people make is that they spend way too much time playing with film damage and not enough with the other more important aspects of the look.