Film and Video Looks


Grain is only one of the many properties associated with a film look. People tend to mean different things when they speak about a film or video look. That's because they have different purposes in mind for creating these looks.

I can think of two very different reasons to shoot video and try to make it look like film:

  • The story calls for a sequence to appear as if it was shot on old home movie stock, such as Super 8 (a popular format from the '60s and '70s).

  • The filmmaker wants to shoot as cheaply as possible, yet achieve the look of an expensive feature film.

The first situation is relatively simple and straightforward. In the same way that you match the color and grain of foreground elements to the background, you can match a whole shot to the look of an old film stock using those same grain and color tools, plus maybe extra tricks, such as a vignette effect, which offers the look of projected film, brighter in the center and fading to black at the edges (Figure 9.32). As always, I encourage you to get reference if you're not sure what to do.

Figure 9.32. The easy clichés of film: heavy grain, a light vignette effect, a slight leaning away from saturated reds and yellows. These are stylized ways of telling the audience it is looking at a filmic image.


The second situation, however, is nearly broad enough to constitute a whole other book. I almost hesitate to bring it up in the context of a visual effects book, but I've seen enough situations in which a student or low-budget filmmaker clearly went for a filmic look and missed in elementary ways that it seems helpful to offer a few pointers. If, for example, you are just starting out and creating a shot to go on a reel to apply for jobs in the film industry, your work will be judged more harshly if it seems to have gone for a film look and failed.

This discussion, by the way, is nothing against the look of video. There could, hypothetically, be a situation in which you wanted something shot on film to look as though it were video. That's unlikely given basic economics, however; film is far more expensive than video, and although we may see its virtual demise in our lifetimes, it retains a cachet that video lacks. On the other hand, if you submitted a reel to any of the top of visual effects facilities in the world and you had convincingly made it look like your visual effects shot was taken with a Handycam, there is no doubt you would get the job.


Here are three important distinctions that come into play differentiating film from video that I have seen novices overlook:

  • Garbage in, garbage out. It sounds obvious, but if you're shooting your own footage (say, on miniDV tape), simple decisions that you make when you shoot can have profound consequences when it comes time to make the shot look its best. Too often, artists learn too late what they end up trying (and failing) to fight against in postproduction.

  • Frame rate and format matter. Frame rate and format might seem to be inconsequential or a matter of personal preference, but I would argue that when low-budget video producers are trying to make shots look filmic, frame rate, at least, might be the most important ingredient.

  • Color affects story. Changes to color and contrast can change the overall mood of a shot.

The following sections offer a few simple pointers for anyone with an effects shoot on a tight budget and the goal of producing a shot that will stand up against feature film footage.

Garbage In, Garbage Out

Garbage in, garbage out isn't a new principle. But what does it mean in this context? Here are some specifics (with details following):

  • Don't try to do things on set that you can easily add in post, but equally, don't neglect things on set that will be difficult if not impossible to fix in post.

  • Don't underlight a scene, but for God's sake don't overlight it. Keep the contrast low.

  • Plan carefully: Storyboard, scout, and eliminate variables.

The most radical thing you can do on set to ensure a good result when shooting miniDV or HDV video is to aim for a low-contrast master that looks horrible to the director of photography. As Stu Maschwitz said about shooting this way, "The on-set monitor [is] not the answer print but the negative." Whites in particular, once blown out, are impossible to recover (Figure 9.33).

Figure 9.33. Sunsets are notoriously difficult for digital cameras to capture. Once those hot areas of the image are blown out, they're not coming back, nor is detail returning to the foreground. Even in lower-contrast images, as the color levels approach full white or black, you lose all room to maneuver in After Effects. This problem is a centerpiece of Chapter 11.


Most camera operators would be inclined to deliver an image on set that looked as close as possible to how the final should look. This is often an appropriate strategy with film. With digital video, however, shooting a low-contrast source leaves ample room to bring out a high dynamic range using tools such as Levels and Curves in After Effects.

Frame Rate Matters

Many artists would argue this point, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say it straight out: If you want your footage to look filmic, the frame rate had better be 24 fps.

One of my favorite demonstrations of the difference between 24 fps film and 60 field per second NTSC video dates back to the Golden Age of television and is available on DVD. In 1960, when the original Twilight Zone was in production, the crew decided to shoot on video rather than film during the second season as a cost-cutting measure.

The experiment lasted six episodes ("Static," "Night of the Meek," "The Lateness of the Hour," "The Whole Truth," "Twenty-Two," and "Long Distance Call"), then was abandoned. The difference in how the drama "reads" on video versus film is simply incredible. The video versions are almost like watching a soap opera; the film versions retain all of the spare, noir ironic distance and mystique that made the series famous. In short, the videotaped versions have immediacy, but the film versions seem timeless.

If you're with me on this, but you're still faced with shooting NTSC video, consider carefully if there's any way to capture your footage using the slower frame rate. It is certainly possible to convert 29.97 fps video to 23.976 fps (other-wise known as 24 fps), but the resulting motion will stutter as every fifth frame is skipped. Many contemporary video cameras include a 24 fps mode; prior to that, digital filmmakers would use 25 fps PAL format cameras and slow the footage down to 24 fps. These options are worth considering.

Again, if the immediacy of the reality television look is what you're after, by all means, go for it: Shoot your source with a consumer video camera and match elements to that. It's not a question of better or worse, it's a question of immediate versus timeless.

Format Matters

The numbers "1.85" and "2.35" referred to the ratio of the width to a height of 1, so it's the same as saying 1.85:1 or 2.35:1, respectively. The 16:9 format, which has become popular with digital video, is equivalent to a 1.77:1 ratio, slightly narrower than Academy, but wide compared to the standard television format of 4:3 (which translates to 1.33: 1). See Chapter 11 for more on this.


As the world transitions from standard definition to high-definition broadcast television, formats are making the same transition that they made in film half a century ago. The nearly square 4:3 aspect ratio is giving way to wider formats: 16:9, 1.85 Academy aperture, even 2.35 Cinemascope, and who knows what next.

Big-budget films are often made for more than one format, and you can do the same with some preplanning. When the film is intended both for theatrical release and the home video market, all of the effects might be created at a 4:3 aspect ratio and then masked off for the wider theatrical version. This is fine as long as you're aware at every stage of production what the safe areas of your frame are. For example, on The Day After Tomorrow the theatrical mask sat near the top of the frame, so that all of the less-essential action had to be planned for the bottom of the frame. This one had the nickname Ueli-mask, after the film's cinematographer, Ueli Steiger.

Color Affects Story

The influence of color decisions on the final shot, and by extension on the story being told in the shot, is a big topic, discussed by cinematographers and colorists the world over. Trying to distill it into a few pithy paragraphs here would do it a disservice.

So here's a suggestion: If you're new to the idea of developing a color look for a film or sequence, get reference. Study other people's work for the effect of color on the mood and story in a shot, sequence, or entire film. Figure 9.34 is taken from an independent short film series shot on DV but intended to parody the look and attitude of big budget action movies; the transformation of before and after is fairly radical.

Figure 9.34. Radical color transformation is undertaken to give this no-budget action movie parody the feel of one of the films it satirizes. Techniques such as using a color solid to transform the lighting and color of footage are explored throughout Chapter 12. (Images courtesy of markandmatty.com.)


You can find third-party plug-ins dedicated specifically to lending a film look to video. Many are dedicated to the first motivation for creating a film look: They can make your shot look grainier, scratched, vignetted, jittery, and generally like it was shot with the oldest, most poorly maintained film camera in the world, with the negative being dragged across the floor of the lab and stepped on for good measure.

Reliable methods for fabricating the expensive film looks of twenty-first century Hollywood, however, are harder to come by. Stu Maschwitz developed the Magic Bullet Suite (a set of plug-ins for After Effects and Apple's Final Cut Pro) so that The Orphanage could help filmmakers who want to shoot on cheap and easy miniDV cameras, but who demand the look of film; thereafter, the software was made publicly available. Amongst the suite's many tools are Magic Bullet, which converts video footage to 24 fps with special emphasis on de-artifacting, and Look Suite, which contains preset looks designed to match existing film styles and processes. There is no direct replacement for these tools (which you can check out for yourself on the book's CD-ROM), but Chapter 12 looks at simpler ways to match certain looks.



Adobe After Effects 6. 5 Studio Techniques
Adobe After Effects 6.5 Studio Techniques
ISBN: 0321316207
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 156

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