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The Quote Unquote "Film Look" - Using FCP

jeremyroggero

jeremyroggero

I'm just curious as to everyone's tips on achieving the so called "film look". Been editing for about 3 months w FCP.

I've been duplicating the clip, adding Gauss Blur to top layer, radius about 10 and setting composite to soft light. Then 3 way Color Corrector as needed. Important side note: Shooting & cutting in black and white.

Any other noteworthy tricks?
 
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The so-called 'film look' comes more from the way you shoot than the filters you add in FCP.
Nattress have some good stylistic film filters, but unless it's been lit specifically for black and white, there's not going to be much you can do in editing to make it look like film, especially without a proper colour grade, not shooting in Log, etc.
 
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Filtration in post has next to nothing to do with the film look... the film look tries to replicate the look and feel of big hollywood movies on video. For years, the attempt has been to address the capture technology to try to "Fix" the problem. People with huge expensive film cameras were gathering glorious images, while kids with their video cameras were failing to do so... the big secret is that the pros with the kids video cameras would still be able to capture big glorious pictures! It has nothing to do with the camera.

It has everything to do with the amount of time and money spent on what you're putting in front of the camera... including the quality of motion your actors have. Film actors learn to move in a way that A) the camera, at its cadence of 24fps, likes B) the camera operators can follow more easily.

Yes, there's a small component of the response curves of film v. video, but most of that is a simple levels and gamma adjustment... what is in front of the camera is the film look, it has very little to do with the camera, and if it's not done up front, there's nothing to do in post that can make it work.

The post pipeline is part of the larger puzzle, but it's only a part. It's not the end all be all of the "Film Look"
 
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Addendum: If you are looking for the old crappy film look, there's tons that can be done to make it look like poorly taken care of old film that's been printed to paper tape for storage at the LOC, then printed back to film again. Most of what we see from old film has lost all of the beauty that the original prints had through poor handling, poor storage, and processes of recovery that are only limited in their success.
 
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lets be fair, there is an entire market for "film look" that is software based only. In this, I think people are looking for that vintage, somewhat degraded 1970's look, with light burns etc. This is achievable from a can if you like. Magic Bullet Looks and presets are all about that..
in this example

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69uJxNNvZM8

I used MBL, film dust and other post tricks to get a "film look" Sure, I think the shots and frame help ...


Using my iphone and the 8mm app I got this film look.. no post at all
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBB6GwOjeTM
 
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The most obvious difference to me is the fact that film has grain and digital doesn't. Use film grain software, or even better, film grain clips on an overlay layer over your footage. But the more subtle the grain, the better, in my opinion.
 
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On my last S16 shoot, I got the post suite to de-grain, and then add just a little bit of grain. Worked great, and we ended up (after rating 250 stock at 160) with footage that looked almost as good as 35mm. AFAIK, this is the same process movies like the Hurt Locker use.

Adding grain to an Alexa/Red/F3/C500/F65/Genesis source may look good, but adding to a DSLR/HVX202/AF100/FS100/NX5 IMO would just look somewhat fake.
 
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For my money you can't go wrong with the Magic Bullets stuff. Like everyone else said, you'll need to learn to get a good image infront of the camera. But once you get tha, the filters will really help with getting a nice rich look to your video. Here's some incredible info from Shane Hurlburts site on shooting with dslr cameras but really translates to any cameras that don't cost 50 grand.

http://www.hurlbutvisuals.com/blog/category/cinematography/
 
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