How to get that final soft hollywood look

[zvit]

Hollywood uses top notch Full HD and RED cameras. When you watch clips of movies from "The Making Of" a movie, the picture is super sharp. The final movie has a type of softness like Film and is a much smoother picture and funner to watch.

I tried different filters in AE like Boris Looks but all they do is give the picture some blur, contrast or sepia colors. I was wondering if someone can guide me to how they get that movie look in Hollywood? Thanks.

[Bassman]

Are you saying the "making of" shorts show actual full screen dailies from the shoot?

Most of the "making ofs" I have seen show behind the scenes or actual finished edits of the film.

It is tough to know exactly what you are seeing but but it might be related to the "hollywood magic" and a lot of money!

[TrackRanger]

I think one of the big differences to getting the 'film look' is using Progressive output instead of Interlaced. If I recall correctly, Edius only burns Interlaced using the internal DVD, Blu-ray software.

Progressive is perceived by the human eye obviously more like film

I think the 'Making Of' shots are often shown as Interlaced

Try outputting in a format that will allow your vision to be reproduced as Progressive and see if you notice the difference (you may have to try both P & I to be able to make a comparison)

[zvit]

Yes, to get a better final film look, one should shoot in 24p and double the shutter speed. That will make it easier to get a better film look in post.

Unfortunately, we shoot in 1920x1080i and I didn't double the shutter so I'm just trying to get as close as possible to a film look. And I don't mean the cheezy "film look" plugins out there that give you an "old movie" look.

I will try to output it to progressive and play with the contrast and gamma.

To Bassman, no, I'm not talking about "deleted scenes" that are, like you said, edited. I'm talking about "the making of" where you see full screen, full res, how the camera men are making the film. Avatar has a 20 minute video about the "making of" Avatar and so do many other films.

[zvit]

This guy helped a lot:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL3rGFU6VMY

[HamonSerrano]

Those "Making Of..." footages usually shot with just simple videocameras, while the film itself is shot on film negative. That's where the "film look" comes from :)

[Claire]

I think one of the big differences to getting the 'film look' is using Progressive output instead of Interlaced. If I recall correctly, Edius only burns Interlaced using the internal DVD, Blu-ray software.

Progressive is perceived by the human eye obviously more like film

SNIP

Just for the record, progressive footage can easily be carried in an interlaced stream so it is quite possible to use for example 25P footage in an Edius 50i project and burn it to Blue-ray. What you end up with is 2 identical fields per frame which to the eye is the same as 1 progressive frame. In other words... the progressive "look".

This is what I do, shoot 25P PAL destined for 50i Blue-ray.

[tedramasola]

Hello Zvit,

I've been doing some aggressive grading on edius lately, so I think i know what you want, firstly, lets talk about your footage, if you shot in 1080i , I'll bring an ideal scenario then what you can do just on edius.

1. If you've heard of magic bullet, it allows you to convert 60i footage to 24P, thats the ideal, if you can't do that then just start with a 24P timeline and drop your 60i footage on it.

2. Next lets see if your footy can simulate film stock.
Ideally you could have shot with black stretch and used a camera with adjustable gamma during the shoot so it will be ideal to grade in post. If you didnt or couldnt do that with your camera, then just apply YUV curves to your footage on the timelines emulating an s curve typical to film stock, you'd want to lower your highlights and lift the blacks a bit.

3.Do the grade. For some they want the ease of a click using Magic Bullets looks suite to emulate a particular film look based on popular films, like NEO look for that matrix look, or Bronze or EPIC to simulate punchy old classical films for instance. If you can't get magic bullet looks.
You can use white balance filter in edius to, say for instance, cool your shadows while pushing your mids to a bit warmy look. Then add Colo balance on top to give contrast and adjust your chroma saturation to your liking, and for a final touch, add subtle vignette typical of some old films using the old movie filter, just turn off all the 'cheesy' grain, damage etc and leave the darken borders option.

These are just a sample, as film look is a conundrum of several elements mixed together, which includes, DOF control, lighting etc.

You can also play around with the soft blur filter, you'd like to turn off brightening and just leave a pinch of softness to remove the electronic sharpening from your footy.

Play around, have fun.

[Red Union Films]

Hi.

Not only is Claire totally correct, this is also the legal stream requirement to play 25P and 29.97P sourced material on Blu-ray. As far as "Film Look", you are best starting off recording progressive and playing with gamma, this is usually the first thing that would happen to interlaced footage when being applied with "Film Look" type of effects.

Dave.

[Bassman]

The largest difference between the "making of..." footage and the actual film is what was pointed out, one id shot with a video camera, one is shot on film or a film style digital cinema camera. What is the difference?

Video cameras have lower quality optics in use, detail enhancement and less forgiving processing. Basically, the equipment used to shoot the film captures more detail. This allows them to not have to sharpen or enhance the image. This leads to nice round edges, soft lines and that in focus but not overly sharp look.

Also, films are captured, processed, re-processed and colored all at uncompressed levels so the master can really be bent an retain its integrity.

How do you get this look? (outside of film style lighting and film style motion)

1) Turn the detail level down in your camera. Make your hard edges more soft. This is where you see how much detail your camera's sensor is actually capturing. Sharpen in post.

2) Try to lift the gamma level. Video cameras tend to have a lower gamma by nature (especially as the price goes down the scale). You want to avoid crushing the blacks and get some more life in the mids. You can always bring the levels down in post.

3) progressive shooting will look more filmic than interlaced.

This will help but you just can not compete with a $100,000 prime lens in front of a true 35mm film camera.

Hope this helps!

[zvit]

Thanks guys. You all helped a lot. Just explain one thing...

Say I got the footage to 24p and my project is 24p and I got a great look and all is well. The bluray will burn it to Mpeg2 which is not 24p so what will happen to the end result? Will it be viewable on LED and Regular TVs?

Also, if I export 50i footage from a 24p Edius project... won't this alone convert the footage to 24p?

[Claire]

How many tv's can properly display 24P, without judder? I suggest only some of the more upmarket recent sets, certainly not the old CRT sets.

You would be much better filming in 25P.

[zvit]

Claire, the filming is over so what's done is done but are suggesting to convert to 25p instead of 24p? And if so, back to my question, if I just make my Edius Project 25p and export, won't that convert the footage to 25p?

[Red Union Films]

Hi Zvi.

If your footage was shot 24P and edited 24P, then encoded and authored 24P you should not have any problems, as 24P is part of the Blu-ray standard. If you then play this Blu-ray on a stand alone system, between the player and TV it will adjust to play the output correctly. Like Claire is saying, you could have problems with motion, if your final playback system does not handle the signal that well. For normal PAL playback, 24P film content can be sped up to 25P then turned into 50I, this is standard practice for PAL playback.

Cheers.

Dave.

[antonsvideo]

I shoot 50i and avoid all these hassles and all my motion looks super smooth

I tried 25p even with 50 shutter and it sucked when compared to 50i