How to make video look like movies from the late 80s/early 90s?

Use the camera/stock the movies you like used.
Colour grade within reason, that is don't expect to emulate 35mm film with your canon 600d

You could find a camera that looked like the ones in films that you liked. Google will be your best friend in this situation.

jennifer10038 said:

I like the pale colored and flatness of movies like When Harry met Sally, The Breakfast Club, Chungking Express, Forrest Gump, The Silence of the Lambs and so on.

Click to expand...

That actually seems like a pretty broad range of looks you've covered there. For instance, I wouldn't ever think of 'pale colored flatness' in respect to Chungking Express. Breakfast Club, on the other hand, fits that description pretty well.

In any case, it's not going to be a single thing like a camera or filter that gives you those looks. It's a combination of lighting, art direction, film stock, lenses, and color correction. A good starting point might be to grab a few still frames that have the particular look you are going for, then try to set up your own shot that matches. If you're going for 'pale colored flatness' I'd say you'll be starting with high key lighting, with contrast, saturation, and sharpness turned down in camera.

I'm thinking post might be the best place to create the look you're aiming for.

If you're shooting digital, use the most expensive camera you can get your hands on, then hire a really good colorist. They can come pretty close to emulating that look. If you try to do it yourself without any experience it'll take months or even years of practice to get it right.

jennifer10038 said:

Does anyone know what camera or software settings I have to use to create a video that looks a 80s/90s movie. I don't the look of the movies today, it's too crisp and clear. I like the pale colored and flatness of movies like When Harry met Sally, The Breakfast Club, Chungking Express, Forrest Gump, The Silence of the Lambs and so on.

THANKS!!

Click to expand...

All of those films have different looks.







.

Okay, I'm not sure what exactly you're going for, but I'll try.

The film Breakfast Club seemed to have low contrast and high key lighting.

Turn the sharpness and contrast down on your camera.

When lighting the scene, make sure there are no harsh shadows or dark areas. Everything should be well lit, with no real noticeable shadows or much contrast.
This tutorial is good!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN-9HlwltXU

Then in post, modify the color, contrast, and brightness to your liking.

It's kind of hard to give an answer. Silence of the Lambs and Breakfast Club are two very different films with different styles.

Good luck with your 80's/90's movie!

Sounds like you prefer the look of film with traditional colour timing, as opposed to digtal with a DI process (considering the films you mention have very different looks within that, but are tied together by the fact they shot on film, most likely didn't go through a DI, and some were shot at times when film stocks weren't as sensitive or clean as they are now).

These days, in the DI and grade, shifting contrast is one click away, and you can power window whatevery ou want in frame to grade every pixel.
In the 'old' days of colour timing, things were very different, and that was not possible.

A lot of the look will also be framing, composition and camera movement.

Movies from the 80s and 90s weren't so in to the whole "handheld" look like a lot of movies today.

Another is the lack of heavy color grading. Back in the day, if the people making the movie wanted a scene to look a certain way, it had to be done with lighting. Everything was exposed and adjusted for in-camera to get the best natural colors. Probably why "The Breakfast Club" looks a little "flat" compared to today's movies.

Heavy color grading came around in the mid 90s, when digital was taking the industry by storm and filmmakers realized they could change colors in post to evoke certain feelings. Prime example is The Matrix! Look at how green it is!

So, if you want to make your movies look like they're from the 80s and early 90s, you'll need to focus on getting as natural of color as possible in-camera, not really boosting the saturation in post at all (that SCREAMS digital video!), and maybe only adjusting contrast slightly in post.

Another you can do, after everything's edited and adjusted to your liking, is add some slight film grain and a VERY subtle "jitter" effect - this will help emulate the grainy look of film, and the jitter will add that "running through a projector" feel. BUT REMEMBER! - subtlety is KEY.

Here's a video showing what I mean. I made it to look like it's on an old VHS tape, but you can see what I mean by slight jitter and grain (although I feel it's still a little heavy on the grain/jitter in some instances).

It was all done in Sony Vega Movie Studio, but you can do it in most editors that have noise and "bad TV" filters. Really simple in theory, but in practice it shows to be a bit tough.

https://vimeo.com/22094042

This is interesting since I like the old color timing look as well. Should we keep the saturation all the way down in camera, or should we still have it turned up halfway? I don't like desaturation, but it seems that turning it up halfway in camera, creates more of a 'digital saturation look', rather than a 'film' one. Or is it not possible to get an older film looking saturation and you just have to live with the camera saturation, or keep it all the way turned down, but resulting in desaturation as a downside?

Yodaman said:

Another is the lack of heavy color grading. Back in the day, if the people making the movie wanted a scene to look a certain way, it had to be done with lighting. Everything was exposed and adjusted for in-camera to get the best natural colors. Probably why "The Breakfast Club" looks a little "flat" compared to today's movies.

Heavy color grading came around in the mid 90s, when digital was taking the industry by storm and filmmakers realized they could change colors in post to evoke certain feelings. Prime example is The Matrix! Look at how green it is!

Click to expand...

Umm... actually, this isn't giving credit to the artists that manipulated to look of many films before digital. Colour grading was absolutely done an awful lot pre-digital, although it was referred to as colour timing due to the fact that it originated by adjusting the time the film spent in each portion of the chemical process. Later, it was normally adjusting during the printing stages.

But, they were all definitely crafted long after it was shot as well as in camera and/or with different film stocks. It's just WAY easier to do it in post now digitally.

There's a Dale Grahn iPad app that lets you play with timing the way he used to have to do it. It looks pretty cool, but I don't buy Apple products on principle myself =)

CraigL

harmonica44 said:

This is interesting since I like the old color timing look as well. Should we keep the saturation all the way down in camera, or should we still have it turned up halfway? I don't like desaturation, but it seems that turning it up halfway in camera, creates more of a 'digital saturation look', rather than a 'film' one. Or is it not possible to get an older film looking saturation and you just have to live with the camera saturation, or keep it all the way turned down, but resulting in desaturation as a downside?

Click to expand...

Turn sharpness, contrast, and saturation down. Then correct/grade later.

But if you add saturation later it does produce more noise. I was told before that it was because my DSLR is H.264 and not RAW, and with H.264, it's best to deside saturation, contrast, etc, in camera, since H.264 does not allow much room for color grading. I could turn them all down, it just seems to produce more noise in the tests, and I wouldn't want to paint myself into a corner.

harmonica44 said:

But if you add saturation later it does produce more noise. I was told before that it was because my DSLR is H.264 and not RAW, and with H.264, it's best to deside saturation, contrast, etc, in camera, since H.264 does not allow much room for color grading. I could turn them all down, it just seems to produce more noise in the tests, and I wouldn't want to paint myself into a corner.

Click to expand...

Hack?