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Late 1990s/Early 2000s Look


Nicholas Waters

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Hi Everyone, wanted to get some opinions on this...if you're looking to make a film today but have it look like it was filmed in the late 1990s/early 2000s how would you best describe this to your DP? I'm just talking about camera, lighting, shooting style and not set design, performances, etc. My thoughts would be shooting on a Panavision Panaflex Platinum Camera with Panavision Primo Primes Spherical Lenses and really light the scenes, maybe using Tungsten fixtures.  

The best references I'm thinking of are things like Best in Show and Little Miss Sunshine.

Which other camera and lenses would you recommend? How would you best describe this lighting style? What do you think is most important to achieve this look today?

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I'm no lighting expert. And I haven't seen either film you mention. But I did a search for frames from Little Miss Sunshine (which isn't yet on film-grab.com). Seems to me the following are true:

- Natural light when out of doors

- Well lit interiors that still provide some kind of contrast

- Everything, save for a car interior shot, was properly exposed or even slightly overexposed, but still disciplined

- Nothing dark or moody as per The Batman

- No affectations like pointless color grading - everything looks natural, mostly clean but not always

- No apparent use of haze

- Deep focus over shallow focus as much as possible, except for close-ups

- The film seems to be never over-lit, and in some places you could argue it was under-lit

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Scanner and grade imo is the most important aspect, if your memories of those shows came from blu ray, then they were often scanned on spirit sdc2000 or spirit 2k, and graded on davinci 2k or comparable systems with a very high contrast curve with easily blown out highlights with little knee. If you want to know the difference that different scanner and modern grading style then look at this:  https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Y-Tu-Mama-Tambien-Blu-ray/13035/#Review (original blu ray release) https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Y-Tu-Mama-Tambien-Blu-ray/74263/(remaster on 4k scanity and modern colorgrade).

I think the camera and lenses that you shoot on is not that important imo.

 

Edited by Jack Jin
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I like to watch music videos when trying to get a grasp of the style of a certain era. Mainstream pop/rock videos are the best when trying to evaluate what was "hot" back then. 

To me the most obvious is the extensive use of side key, often tungsten (about 3/4 position or sometimes about 1/2) with little fill or negative fill and simplified lighting (kicker/backlight not always used) with coloured sets and very colourful 90's wardrobe, sometimes coloured background lighting. 

I think as long as the wardrobe is very colourful, the hairstyles are right and you are simplifying the lighting you should be fine. At the end of the 90's and early 2000's when digital grading became a thing the first years were super contrasty, super colourful to the extent of burning one's retinas (they just maxed every possible adjustment just because they could)

some music video examples from the 90's: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXvIUtmF3OxudLoUfBx3qu3dCzvd230--

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Digital grading of film transfers for commercials and music videos started well-before it did for features, which really got started after 2000.  You did see in the 1990's an interest in silver retention printing like ENR, skip-bleach, etc. but that wasn't the standard look of the time.

The camera itself doesn't contribute a look unless it is screwing up somehow -- you can't tell a 35mm movie shot on a Panaflex from an Arriflex or Arricam.

You had a lot of variety of film stocks in the 1990's, even Agfa, which stopped making motion picture negative film around 1994. Fuji and Kodak had a range of stocks, some low-con versions. You had two types of print stock, a normal and a higher-contrast version.

It's hard to generalize about lighting, I don't think the best work by the late 1990s like "Snow Falling on Cedars" or "Sleepy Hollow" (both used a silver retention printing process) would stand-out today as being stylistically dated but they were LIT, which I think is a defining aspect of movies shot on film, they generally did some lighting, even if it was meant to look natural.  Look at "Shawshank Redemption" for example, mostly shot on ISO 200 film using fairly large lights for that prison location. But it feels very natural.

In the late 1980's, early 1990s, there was a trend by some to avoid the high-speed stocks and light everything for slow film, but using large, powerful soft units for a natural look.  So you had a few movies shot all on ISO 100 film until Fuji released a 250T film in 1991 and Kodak released a 200T film in 1992. 

In some ways it may be easier to create a 1990's look that isn't too subtle by actually trying for a 1980's look and imaging a 1990's DP still shooting in the style of the 1980's...

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This is all so helpful, thank you all very much. 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like some of what I'm getting at might come from films in the early 2000s color grading to bring up the saturation? I've attached a few stills for reference. 

Particularly trying to achieve this look in scenes outside, you'd say it's important to utilize natural light but still have my own lighting as well? 

Please excuse the image quality below - these films are not on film-grab so these are images off google. 

Thanks again.

MV5BNzRiMzAxYzQtOGRjYy00ZmI3LTg0MmQtN2QyY2Y3YTYzYjUyXkEyXkFqcGdeQXN3aWZ0dw@@._V1_.jpg.c189352b531f03ea2c21574e7efe2ebf.jpg

maxresdefault.thumb.jpg.2f89942b3a01e4e73166db8841f62aaa.jpg

 

b24fd599-0538-4a40-abc0-7b8c56288f36_screenshot.jpg.6e9ab6faf1c477c075a03c84016b2bd1.jpg

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30 minutes ago, Nicholas Waters said:

This is all so helpful, thank you all very much. 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like some of what I'm getting at might come from films in the early 2000s color grading to bring up the saturation? I've attached a few stills for reference. 

Particularly trying to achieve this look in scenes outside, you'd say it's important to utilize natural light but still have my own lighting as well? 

Please excuse the image quality below - these films are not on film-grab so these are images off google. 

Thanks again.

MV5BNzRiMzAxYzQtOGRjYy00ZmI3LTg0MmQtN2QyY2Y3YTYzYjUyXkEyXkFqcGdeQXN3aWZ0dw@@._V1_.jpg.c189352b531f03ea2c21574e7efe2ebf.jpg

maxresdefault.thumb.jpg.2f89942b3a01e4e73166db8841f62aaa.jpg

 

b24fd599-0538-4a40-abc0-7b8c56288f36_screenshot.jpg.6e9ab6faf1c477c075a03c84016b2bd1.jpg

They are quite lit to some degree, but yeah, most of them seem to use a hard rec709 gamma with little roll off, creating a very distinct look. where as modern grading has a lot more roll off and looks very airy.

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Nicholas,

 Have a look at this thread in the film stock section :

 

Tungsten, HMI and fluorescent fixtures. Older lenses. Light for separation from the background. Locate a post house that has an older telecine that you can then uprez to another format for distribution after the edit..

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What I do is... I shoot on film and get it printed on film. Fotokem has their imitation of lowcon print which is basically the regular print stock going through ECN2 processing. When you watch it on projection, the blacks seem a bit lifted as it is lowcon but when scanned blacks etc snap back to "normal." I do not think DI from OCN yields a classic "movie" look. The mids etc get this weird grain that is not present on a print due to its gamma and contrast. You can get that lowcon print scanned at 4k or whatever and voila. 

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