Making miniDV look Grainy...

[Timothy David Orme]

So, I was planning on shooting a short on super8mm and just found out the camera isn't up to par and we can't just bag the production (we're way too far into it), so we're resorting to our backup, a Panasonic DVX100B. I had chosen super8mm to get that grainy, gritty look, because quite frankly it just matches the character.

 

Now I'm left wondering what I might be able to do to get a look that's something like that on the Panasonic. I was doing a little experimenting yesterday and I liked the white washed look of raising the Master Pedestal to about +10, and I thought the Gamma should be Low, but I wonder if there aren't other things I can do to make the image look a little less flat. I guess that is the problem with digital cameras though, isn't it?

 

Any ideas?

[Michael Collier]

Have you considered telecining a bit of un-exposed 8mm stock (or lightly fogged stock) then you get a grain referance that you can overlay on the video. I seem to remember fight club shot a bit of EFX against a blackscreen instead of greenscreen so they could lay that grain over the CG.

[Guest AshG]

When you up the pedestal that high you are going to get a SUPER flat image with all the blacks turning grey. Why not shoot it normally and post the effects? The only way to get grain in digital world is with gain, but to make it tolerable, you need to turn down the sharpness. Here is an example from a doc I shot where there was NO light and I had to use gain so I created a B&W "look" to make it more motivated. These are raw DV grabs from an XL1s, no treatment in post.

 

 

 

 

 

One with some color...

 

 

 

ash greyson =o)