How to get that "film look"

Using PD150 DV and Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5

What settings can I apply in post, to achieve that "softer" film look?
DV has too much of a "live" or "crisp" look.

Thanks for any suggestions


Mike in Tucson

 

Well, if you got Premiere Pro 1.5 you should register it and get the Magic
Bullet Movie Looks plug-in.

I have not used it yet but, from the name, I think it helps give that movie
look.

Tom P.
BTW, if you do try it let me know what you think of it. I'm looking for a
couple of minutes free-time to try it on a couple of clips myself.

 

Hey, I was going to say...
"Use over-priced, no-talent, hacks and hire a artsy-fartsy writer how
complains that the producer is raping his work. While making sure you get a
producer that thinks the writer is a no-talent with a good idea that just
needs some punch."

Oh, and an overbearing diva for good measure.

....but I didn't.
Tom P.

 

Actually that's how to achieve the "production ulcer" effect and if
you're realy lucky the " production migraine" effect as well.

 

Post is problematical: what if you can NEVER achieve that look?

Try to get it IN THE CAMERA. Learn to light. Take the fucking TIME to
light. Learn to use filters, then actually use them. Learn to move the
camera, and how to use it to direct the flow of attention before the
edit. Learn composition (there's a radical thought).

 

For extra realsim, overlay a silhoette of two fat chicks eating popcorn in
post ;-)

 

One note for the OP: limit your depth of field. Use as wide an iris as you
can, even if it means using ND filters. I've been paying close attention to
a lot of material lately and limiting that depth of focus goes a long way to
*helping* achieve a film look.

You've got a great camera to work with and can produce some spectacular
results but...

....per the other reply you received: eliminate the words "fix it in post"
from your vocabulary.
Get the absolute BEST footage you can on site, in camera. You can do minor
*tweaks* in post but they don't make up for not doing your chores on set.

C.

 

Spoken like someone who's "been there, done that" - and is 100% correct in
everything he said


Mike

 

I don't think Orson Welles was interested in a small DoF when he shot
Citizen Kane ;-)

DoF is only half the story. This is so difficult to get with
especially the 1/3" and smaller DV-cams, more things actually need to
be done, like using lighting and colours to draw the audiences
attention to a certain point.

cheers

-martin-

 

That'd be just as valid if you said "two fat guys", except you'd
have to add "talking loudly and chewing with their mouths open."

 

Maybe I didn't describe exactly what I mean by "film look"
I watched "Open Water" the other night. In the 'making of'
section of the DVD, there is an obvious difference between the raw
video shots and what you see in the final edited version. I'm not
referring to lighting, composition, DoF, or any of those other things
being mentioned. The raw DV video has a very clear and sharp
quality to it, like what you'd see on a CCTV shot, or how soaps
look on afternoon TV. I'm sure you guys know what I'm talking about-
maybe I just don't know how to describe it ...

Mike in Tucson

 

You can adjust the gamma of a piece of DV footage to more closely resemble
film and also colour correct to give it a more "filmic" look. I'm no expert
on that.

I understand Premiere Pro 1.5 comes with the Magic Bullet filter that has
presets built in for various "film looks." Could be wrong but I THINK you
could the same thing manually in Premiere using various colour correction
filters - it would just take longer to create a preset than use the ones
they've already saved for you in the Magic Bullet filter. That all has
nothing to do with motion blur though, just intraframe tinting.

Is there a colourist in the house? If so, would they know what we're talking
about?

I've got Open Water around here... should I be looking at a particular
section of the DVD for an example of what you mean?

I bet a note to the couple who produced and directed Open Water would have
an answer from them on what was involved in post-production of their footage
to give it the look you're talking about.

C.

 

Then it's a simple matter of applying diffusion filters during post to
soften it up a bit.
Might be easier to do it on camera though.
Try various soft focus filters in front of the lens.(I'd think you'd
want it to be very slight something in a grade 1 or 2 should take the
hard edge off. Any fine tweeks could be done in the NLE stage.)

 

Ahhhh, add a Black Pro-Mist or some other softening filtration to your
camera, to make it look a little softener. You can tweak the colours
on your edit-machine.

cheers

-martin-

 

I knew what you meant Mike, I've been looking to try the "film look" for a
while (just as soon as I find time to play).

And, despite what some around here believe, some things really are done in
post. Sorry, but there's nothing for it. It annoys me to see people
discount perfectly good processes just because they are done post-prod.
It's like the "analog music is better." argument. It's completely
fictitious, a lot of these differences only exist in the mind of the viewer.

Tom Padilla

 

Just a thought: turn down edge sharpening in camera.

I'm SURE this is possible with the PD150 class cameras. With my consumer D8,
you have to "trick" the camera by switch to "soft portrait" mode so that it
disables edge sharpening. To my untrained eye, this goes a long way to
helping smooth the image.

BTW: didn't mean to suggest post wasn't good for anything, just that good
source material is critical.

C.j

 

One of the major factors, which I don't think anyone has mentioned yet,
is to remove every other picture field, giving 25 frames per second
rather than 50 fields (or 30 for you NTSC people). This is done a lot on
UK television shows which are trying to look expensive, we call it
"flickovision".

Old premiere used to have a filter called "Posterise time" which would
do it, I am not sure about premiere pro.

 

I know the effect from watching US-programs on commercial stations.
They have no time to do a proper conversion.
But this is not really what this thread is all about. The 24P camera's
only record 24 frames per second, and with some wizardry they try to
make 30 frames per second out of it, and it looks crappy. On a
computer-monitor it should look good. But I reckong you need to set
the frame-rate of your computer-monitor to a multiple of 24 as well
(72Hz).

Psoterize is something else. It makes the picture look very funny
coloured (an effect from photography with overexposure of print).
Don't you mean the flickering-effect?

cheers

-martin-

 

I love your sig

We normally think of Posterization as quantized colors.
Typically the hardware or software breaks down the
image into less colors (similar in effect to converting
a fill color image to a 4 gif image in a paint program.
Some software/hardware will then take those limited
colors and convert them to other seemingly arbitrary
colors. That isn't what "Posterize Time" is in Premiere
does to the video.

Posterize time is more like the strobe function in a TBC
or in some other software. It breaks up time instead of
breaking down color. At any rate, I don't think it is a solution
to this issue.

David

 

If you compare the "deleted scenes" footage in the special features section
of the
Open Water DVD, against the finalized version, you can tell an obvious and
dramatic
difference in the way the video "looks".

This tells me that the effect I'm seeing had to have been applied in post.


Mike in Tucson