The coveted film look. What is it and how can I get it?
The “film look” is the visual aesthetic that we have learned to associate with high quality film making. I say learned because in Japan most things are shot on video and the Japanese tend to appreciate the sharper image quality and smoother motion that is inherent to video. I believe it comes down to what we grew up with and we are used to. I’m not going to get into the artistic debates as to if and/or why film looks better. I will just assume that if you grew up in the western hemisphere you think it does. I know I do.
On a more practical note, as an indie film maker if your project looks like it was shot on film it will gain a small amount of credibility right off the bat. It shows that you are serious about what you are doing and not just shooting crap for YouTube. Of course, this isn’t a cure all. The story is always the most important thing. If your story sucks then making it look like film won’t magically fix it, but at least it will look good whilst sucking.
Some of the most recognizable characteristics of a motion picture shot on film are 24 frames per second, progressive scan images, a non-linear gamma curve, and a specific depth of field that comes with using a 35mm lens.
24 frames per second means that for every second you are watching you are seeing 24 separate images flash before your eyes to create the illusion of motion. Video in North America is closer to 30 frames per second. (29.97fps to be exact but we won’t get into that here.) This creates a much smoother illusion of motion that is more like real life and less like the magical dreamlike motion when we see movies on the big screen.
Progressive scan means the frame is presented to your eye all at once or at least from the top down without skipping lines. Video signals sent to your TV on the other hand are interlaced. An interlaced image draws every other line of the image in one pass and then fill in the missing lines on the second pass. More info on that here.
The gamma curve refers to how contrasty the image looks. Video has a much flatter gamma curve resulting in a less contrasty image. Film naturally has more contrast giving it a richer appearance. Super technical info about that here.
Depth of field refers to how much of the image is in focus. If an image has a large DoF than everything is in focus whether it is close to the camera, far away, or somewhere in between. A shallow DoF on the other hand gives you an image that only has focus on the things that are a specific distance away from the camera.
So if that’s what makes film look cool how do we get that look for our project? Well, the easiest way to get the film look is to shoot on film but since we are self funding this project that ain’t gonna happen so we’re gonna have to fake it. Most of todays “pro-sumer” cameras have the ability to shoot a 24 frame per second, progressive image which is a great start. The gamma curve inherent to film can also be pretty reliably mimicked in today’s non-linear editing programs, so that’s not going to be to much of a problem.
That leaves us with depth of field. This cannot be accurately faked. It boils down to physics. A 35mm lens takes the light coming into it and focuses it onto an area that measures 35mm diagonally; the size of one frame of 35mm film. The sensors in most video cameras are much smaller; usually around 6mm. The depth of field created when getting an image to focus on an area that measures 35mm is going to be much different than am image focused on an area that is 6mm.
To get around this we will connect 35mm lenses to an adapter that will focus the image onto a spinning piece of textured glass. The video camera will then capture the image from the spinning glass and Presto! We have the “film look”. Take a look below and see for yourself. This trailer was shoot using a similar rig that we will be shooting with. It may not be the Red One but it looks pretty damn good.
Tags: Film Making, Pre-production by Dan
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What is it with my scheduling abilities on this project?! What was scheduled to be a 3ish hour ADR session on Sunday turned into a 12 hour marathon. I suppose it might have something to do with me going over the location audio with Wayne and saying, “F@#k it. We need to redo the whole thing.” Wayne was nice enough not to slap me and we settled in for what was going to be a long evening. Once everything was set up Eric, Wayne and I spent the next 9 or so hours stuffed in my little office, re-recording all of the dialog… 2 words at a time.
Script - check!