How do I get the film/cinematic look with a digital camera?

[Carl Looper]

@ Gregg

 

No problem Gregg - I read what you wrote as being in good humour. And I meant my response to be in a similar vein. And just went on to elaborate the technical details, as I do. Not meant to be anything more than that.

 

cheers

C

[Don Norberto]

Listen to Satsuki! Absolutely right. If you shoot film you have to know how to shoot a movie. Most videographers don't have that background. No "digital" cinema cam, no matter how expensive, will do that job for us. And if the whole world of young filmmakers try to produce "filmic" look in adding digital grain...it really sucks! Film is film, movie is movie. I never saw that weird grain on real film beside improper stored or very old filmstock. It's like putting dirt on a film to show it's film...or like grade in bw, turn off any sounds and play an old piano... I shot on 16 and 35 shorts and features 35 years ago...I had wished to have that quality all the time that a stupid bmpcc and vintage glass gives me nowadays, specially when it comes to develop, grade and edit (cut). Don't worry about gear! Make movies! Storytelling, talents, lights, camtechnics and most important your art! Shoot and shoot and shoot! Less talking and pseudointellectual discussions about analog, digital, silver and poop. Shoot a movie on film if you can, on video if you like and then become a better filmmaker or not. Show it in cenemas and your in another world. Show it in the net only or on tv screens and you can do whatever ypu want. That's never film/cinema. Different stories. **(obscenity removed)**! Let's go out and do something we like. Ther's no right or wrong! We all have our own taste and way to express. Those "teachers" and mother**(obscenity removed)**ing theoretical wimps just spoil your time. I'm too old to die young and I'm just trying to motivate young people who like film to spent their time making film/videos whatever. Make, don't talk. And don't give a **(obscenity removed)** if you don't like it right away. That's part of the experiance! Sorry , I should ease my language but wtf why :-). Cheers!

[Satsuki Murashige]

Listen to Satsuki! Absolutely right. If you shoot film you have to know how to shoot a movie. Most videographers don't have that background. No "digital" cinema cam, no matter how expensive, will do that job for us. And if the whole world of young filmmakers try to produce "filmic" look in adding digital grain...it really sucks! Film is film, movie is movie.

 

Did I say all that? :blink: Regardless, you're point is well taken. Forget about making digital look like film. Just tell a well-crafted story with the tools at hand.

[Don Norberto]

Thank you, you got me right :-)

[Gabe Agoado]

I ended up buying a like new Canon EOS M with lens, flash and battery for $200. Spent another $30 on lens adapters and extra batteries. Bought an audio XLR adapter/preamp for $25 and an EVF. In total spent under $400. Couldn't justify spending more than that when I'm not being paid to shoot anything atm. Nonetheless it takes very nice footage which doesn't look too perfect, which is perfect for me.

[joshua gallegos]

Film look doesn't necessarily come from the camera, whether it be digital or film, I've seen plenty of student films shot on super 16mm that didn't look very cinematic at all. It's really in the eye of the filmmaker, the way the shot is composed, lit, the art design, it's a conglomeration of so many components that make up the image. It's beyond me how anyone expects to make their film look like Mulholland Drive or what ever film they're trying to emulate, by color correcting, etc. It just doesn't work that way. David Lynch made 'Inland Empire' look incredible, despite using a subpar camcorder.

[Jay Young]

Combining a previous thread with this one.

 

Film look AND Camera Technician - Where the hell does that spring go?!

 

[Don Norberto]

fully agree beside the fact that film is film and video is video. But video can also have the "cinematic" look, as you described. The worst thing for my eyes is using digital gear and trying hard to achieve an organic film look. Even if the movie is ok it will destroy the mood. But who am I? Maybe this will become the next aestetic main stream...from limitation to success...

[joshua gallegos]

Truly, the only downside of digital is that many young cinematographers will rely heavily on post-production to find a look, there was an article where Paul Thomas Anderson expressed concern about this, how future cinematographers will not be able to light a film proficiently without cheating it in post. From what I've seen from master cinematographers like Deakins, Elswit, Richardson, is that they have great attention to detail, the work they do is unparalleled. Perhaps they will be the last of their kind, now that digital has birthed a more lazy approach.

[Matthew W. Phillips]

.

[Satsuki Murashige]

From what I've seen from master cinematographers like Deakins, Elswit, Richardson, is that they have great attention to detail, the work they do is unparalleled. Perhaps they will be the last of their kind, now that digital has birthed a more lazy approach.

There are at least two generations of cinematographers after those guys who know how to get the final look in-camera with just a light meter or a waveform. But the students in film school today may not.

 

There are a lot of young ACs around now who have never learned to pull focus by estimating distance, pulling tape, laying down marks. The witness marks on the lens mean nothing to them, so they don't understand depth-of-field, circles of confusion, etc. That loss of training and technical knowledge happened within one generation, so it's not crazy to think that's how DPs will be in the near future. After all, many of those ACs will be DPs not that long from now...

[Jay Young]

There are at least two generations of cinematographers after those guys who know how to get the final look in-camera with just a light meter or a waveform. But the students in film school today may not.

 

There are a lot of young ACs around now who have never learned to pull focus by estimating distance, pulling tape, laying down marks. The witness marks on the lens mean nothing to them, so they don't understand depth-of-field, circles of confusion, etc. That loss of training and technician knowledge happened within one generation, so it's not crazy to think that's how DPs will be in the near future. After all, many of those ACs will be DPs not that long from now...

 

 

I live about 30 minutes away from a small film school at a small private university.

 

I asked one of my recent acquaintances who studies there if they had a light meter; his answer was "'No, but maybe - what's a light meter".

 

When I visited their studio (quite the setup, mostly geared towards three cam ENG/News/live broadcast) I found a beautifully kept Sekonic L-398 stuffed behind the DMX board. I asked if they were taught to use it, and he said "No... never".

 

So, there you go. He graduates next year.

[Stuart Brereton]

I don't see any need for snobbery over use or non-use of a meter. It's a valuable tool, and there are times when it's indispensable, but the fact is that there are other ways of determining exposure when shooting digitally. Simply trusting your monitor or VF, or using false color are equally valid approaches. Being able to use a meter is a skill that all DPs should have, but I'll freely admit that I use one less and less these days.

[David Mullen ASC]

I don't necessarily think that the "easier" modern approach of lighting by eye and monitor is bad, it doesn't have to lead to less artistic lighting. At times, it may actually help someone be bolder with the lighting -- Robert Primes, ASC sometimes says something like "your eyes make you brave and your meter makes you afraid". I tend to agree, metering for film can lead one to adding light "just in case" because your meter tells you that you don't have enough light (or you're not sure what that degree of underexposure will look like.)

 

On the other hand, there are times when you don't have an accurate monitor to view on, and your eyes aren't always reliable either, so the more objective meter reading is a useful starting point when making decisions. But keep in mind that a digital camera is a type of reflective meter.

 

Where having training in film is useful is either when you have to light at a very high light level (maybe for a slow-motion shot) and are able to use big lighting units and still achieve a natural look, and when pre-lighting big sets to certain levels, like making sure your "day" level will be at f/2.8-4.0 at 800 ISO, if that's what you want as a starting point.

[Don Norberto]

Josh, agreed.

[Mark Kenfield]

Truly, the only downside of digital is that many young cinematographers will rely heavily on post-production to find a look, there was an article where Paul Thomas Anderson expressed concern about this, how future cinematographers will not be able to light a film proficiently without cheating it in post. From what I've seen from master cinematographers like Deakins, Elswit, Richardson, is that they have great attention to detail, the work they do is unparalleled. Perhaps they will be the last of their kind, now that digital has birthed a more lazy approach.

 

 

I'm really not too worried about that, as I simply don't think it will be the case.

 

Certainly there will always be lazy and incompetent people in any profession, but although budgets are falling and lighting packages are unfortunately shrinking on many levels of production. I don't see any significant waning of interest in the art and craft of lighting among the younger crews I work with.

 

Indeed, it often seems to be the primary interest of the guys and girls who volunteer to come onboard a lot of the short films and overly-independent productions I shoot, in order to work with me. I find I'm constantly fielding questions about lighting, inverse square law or the use of a meter.

 

So although I'm sure a lot of people who are starting to shoot these days are having their introductions to proper lighting technique delayed (crazy high ISO cameras seem to blame there, as once upon a time, not all that long ago, you simply couldn't shoot without lights), I get the impression that as soon as they are exposed to proper film lighting, their eyes and minds open up to it just as thoroughly as generations past.

Edited July 12, 2016 by Mark Kenfield

[joshua gallegos]

I actually think most of the films shot professionally before digital color grading looked simpler and relied more on costumes, art design, etc. For instance a film like 'Black Narcissus' or Vincente Minnelli's 'Meet Me in St. Louis'. It seems nowadays cinematographers are relying too much on color grading, shifts in color temperature are beginning to look very distracting, especially on TV, some scenes look green or are exaggeratedly warmed up. If you look at Elswit's 'There Will Be Blood', it has a classical tradition to it, because it only uses tungsten and day balanced stocks. I have nothing against digital, but there seems to be a cinematographic revolution on TV where images are being deeply altered in post-production and it's very noticeable, especially in shows like Mr. Robot, and that is tradition is beginning to creep into modern films. I think films shot on digital should at least maintain more of a classical approach to photographing, it looks better.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

I think there are still plenty of movies shot digitally in a straight-forward manner using lights and gels to create the color effects with minimal grading in post, not that differently than if film were used.

[joshua gallegos]

This is just one example of exaggerated color temperature shift, and it doesn't look very good at all, the lighting is pretty terrible and the composition is far too distracting. They should have placed the camera lower on Rami Malek, it looks like floating heads. it doesn't make sense to me.

[Matthew W. Phillips]

This is just one example of exaggerated color temperature shift, and it doesn't look very good at all, the lighting is pretty terrible and the composition is far too distracting. They should have placed the camera lower on Rami Malek, it looks like floating heads. it doesn't make sense to me.

Not that I am defending that Cinematography, but when I watch it as a Director, I can see what they were going for. The positioning of him magnifies his vulnerability. Notice how she sits so high and lofty relative to his position? They did a good job of establishing who was in control of the situation.

 

Edit: i didnt actually listen to the audio so I could be wrong about what is actually going on. But that is what the visuals would imply to me.

[joshua gallegos]

It's incredibly well written and acted, but I just don't understand why the composition is so jarring. It actually reminded me of Psycho when Norman Bates confides to Janet Leigh in the hotel office.

[Tyler Purcell]

I think there are still plenty of movies shot digitally in a straight-forward manner using lights and gels to create the color effects with minimal grading in post, not that differently than if film were used.

There are guys who shoot this way, absolutely... But I think there aren't very many. I have yet to work on any project of any kind related to digital where the color correction process wasn't intense with multiple nodes, mattes and trackers. Heck the two shows I'm cutting know, we're lit very well but the color out of the camera is so far off and doesn't match shot to shot, thanks to camera shifting day by day, it's hard to watch the rough cut. We have scenes shot with two identical cameras, matched in the rental house, which fall out of sync with one another as the days of production moved on. It's been an absolute nightmare, and it's going to take weeks to color.

[Satsuki Murashige]

I understand what Joshua is talking about, it's somewhat related to the teal/orange phenomenon of recent years. I think grading can quickly start to feel overly manipulated once you start shifting Shadows/Midtones/Highlights hues independently.

 

For example, I've noticed one of my first go-to corrections these days is to add a small amount of green to the shadows. Whether that's because I'm picking up on slight amount of IR pollution or because it's purely an aesthetic preference for cooler shadows, I'm not certain. But I find it interesting that I've conditioned myself to automatically shift things away from reality in order to chase a look instead of accepting the image as received.

[David Mullen ASC]

There were plenty of movies shot on film in the past that played with color temperature to get a warm or cold cast -- I don't see that particularly as an aspect of digital image manipulation anymore than pulling the 85 filter off when shooting on tungsten film to make a day scene go blue as being a "digital" technique. Or shooting on daylight-balanced stock with tungsten lamps for an orange cast -- something that Robert Richardson did for a night campus exterior scene in "Born on the Fourth of July".

 

And certainly odd, disturbing, off-putting compositional choices have nothing to do with digital technology -- Jane Campion did the same type of framing in this shot from "Mr. Robot" in her first movie, "Sweetie" (1989):

 

[David Mullen ASC]

As for movies with a warm cast along with photochemical manipulation, take a look at "Delicatessen" (1991):