Hey, I have this HD mini dv camera. I dont know if it matters but ill tell you just in case, its a Sony HVR-V1U. Anyway, Is there anyway to make the digital footage look more like film. Plus, Im looking around for a 16mm camera I could buy. Do you know where I could find a cheap but decent 16mm camera possibly in the 400-500 dollar range. Thanks.
ADVICE ON FILM...
- Thread starter GRob1211
- Start date
Are you looking for the 'film grain' look or take the footage down to 24P?
What editing software are you using? The majority of higher-end titles have software emulation that can add simulated grain or deinterlace video.
What editing software are you using? The majority of higher-end titles have software emulation that can add simulated grain or deinterlace video.
You can add a layer of noise over your footage in final cut and set the opacity lower on the layer. The noise generator is in the pull down in the bottom of the viewer where you go to make text crawls and stuff.
All this will do though is add grain to what ever footage you have... which has never made sense to me, unless you are specifically going for a badly exposed cheap film look for some artistic reason.
If you do a search on this forum for "film look", you will see a ton of this same question has been asked and responded to. The answer to how do I make video look like film is always that you can't... you can get close, but it's still not film.
If you shoot correctly (flat - no true black and no true white in the scene, but closer to white and properly exposed for your subject) and apply effects in post to approximate the gamma curves and saturation characteristics of film, you can probably get pretty close.
I would start with a color corrector to desaturate the reds slightly, you'll need to use the limit effect section at the bottom of the corrector. Then a 3-way corrector to adjust your tonal ranges, whites bumped up to 100 and blacks stretched down to 0 (use the waveform monitor built in), then play with the mids til it looks right (I usually push them down a bit). Then play with your colors, If you push the darks to bluish/greenish and the mids to orangish, you can get the kind of color wash that is being used in tons of movies. This is something that you'll want to play with before you spend time on set shooting, so you can make sure you know how to shoot it. Tape is cheap, shoot tests!
As for a camera, check e-bay. I've seen lots of film stuff on there.
All this will do though is add grain to what ever footage you have... which has never made sense to me, unless you are specifically going for a badly exposed cheap film look for some artistic reason.
If you do a search on this forum for "film look", you will see a ton of this same question has been asked and responded to. The answer to how do I make video look like film is always that you can't... you can get close, but it's still not film.
If you shoot correctly (flat - no true black and no true white in the scene, but closer to white and properly exposed for your subject) and apply effects in post to approximate the gamma curves and saturation characteristics of film, you can probably get pretty close.
I would start with a color corrector to desaturate the reds slightly, you'll need to use the limit effect section at the bottom of the corrector. Then a 3-way corrector to adjust your tonal ranges, whites bumped up to 100 and blacks stretched down to 0 (use the waveform monitor built in), then play with the mids til it looks right (I usually push them down a bit). Then play with your colors, If you push the darks to bluish/greenish and the mids to orangish, you can get the kind of color wash that is being used in tons of movies. This is something that you'll want to play with before you spend time on set shooting, so you can make sure you know how to shoot it. Tape is cheap, shoot tests!
As for a camera, check e-bay. I've seen lots of film stuff on there.