Movie color filter?

[Daegalus]

So I have been looking for quite a while and I can't figure out what the filter that movie makers use to give that different color feel to a movie. I think it might be called Technicolor but when I looked that up, it left me more confused if that was it or not.

I am talking about the difference lets say between a Documentary and a feature film. or a film and any home video. That color/difference in the picture that gets added in.

So I am looking for what that is, and how to maybe go about it in AviSynth.

Any help would be appreciated.

[SSH4]

24 fps progressive film vs. 60/50fps interlaced homevideo/soap-operas for example. This is probably main "feel" difference.

hehe, use InterFrame http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=160226 script and made "soap-opera" from any Avatar :)

But better show any samples that can help understand your question.

[Daegalus]

While that is a great tool, and I will probably use it for the project I need this for, it isn't what I am looking for. If you notice the 2 example videos, the colors are pretty much the same.

I am talking about a color difference. For example a documentary has more realistic/washed out colors in cases, while a feature film has warmer colors.

I think I found what I am talking about:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_timing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filmizing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FilmLook

[SSH4]

main is framerate try made 24 for film look. 60i for "video"
play with tweak,smoothajast,levels and other color/gamma corrections filters and scripts
and GrainFactory3/Scaled-tempsmoothed addgrain/other grain for add film look grain.

[Dogway]

I once investigated about this same theme. What I concluded was that it's not one thing that will make your production "film look" but rather an amount of things.

You can play to hit the ball eternally with color grading, or just imitate the procedures done in big CG houses.

For example, film has a defined gamut, then the frames are scanned to 10bit log files, which have their proper gamut. With those files you do compositing, noise reduction, CG effects, tonemapping and Color Grading with dedicated softwares (all in float point processing). When everything is done you apply back again film grain, and print it to film stock with again its proper gamut.

Apart from this you have to be aware of the 24 fps framerate, deep dof, and motion blur to match those from expensive cameras, and correct the rolling shutter in the compositing stage.

If you are serious about it I wouldn't use avisynth other than for denoising or correcting digital artifacts prior to feed to dedicated softwares like Nuke or the likes...

[jmac698]

This keeps coming up, no one seems to answer correctly.
And this is not the correct answer :) But I have some idea. I actually have clip from a film made locally and can take a picture of the same location, and use my new script to derive a color model for it. Anyhow, the answer I think is mainly that there's more yellow and that the levels are log instead of gamma. It gives a warm look. This is emulating the color response of film. You can look up specific films and see on the spec sheet their color response. There is also software for emulating film - http://www.dxo.com/us/photo/filmpack/how_it_works
There is a trial version.
The other aspects would include movie lighting, shutter speed, rolling shutter, grain, lens effects, framerate, dynamic range, maybe some more.
It's on my list of things to do because it bugs me when ppl keep asking this question and there's never a good answer :)

[SSH4]

But what you answer if i say that for me FILM is Kurosawa's 7 Samurais? How about color? %)

I think or topic starter give any example pictures/clips with "what i have / what i want made" or we will talk about what is it "film". Because "film look" is a little bit different for different peoples.

[jmac698]

The filmpack software also converts color to b/w in different ways. The result is that some colors turn out brighter. Photographers commonly also use filters to enhance b/w contrast, for example polarizing filters for the sky or UV filters in daylight. The other differences in 7 Samurai would be due to onset lighting. You wouldn't normally realize it, but someone is holding a big shiny reflector towards the actors to even out the natural lighting. For effects like that I think you would need local constrast filter.
"The levels are log" also covers b/w.

[Daegalus]

Dogway, jmac698, thank you for the info, that will be helpful.

This is a simple quick project with no real importance, but its a bit of a friendly intern competition internally at my job, so I kinda wanted to pull a few extra stops to make the final video that will look a bit nicer. I don't need it to be perfect, nor do I need it to be 100% film like. But if I can even get half way, that would be decent.

I have After Effects and can probably figure something out there, but I greatly prefer using AviSynth for as much as possible, so I wanted to ask how much of this I can pull off through AviSynth. I can also run it through some of the trials for this software. The video wont be published anywhere or be used for any commercial production, so I think its fine if I use trial versions for it.

If anyone has any other suggestions or script examples to get me started, they would be appreciated. Thanks everyone that took the time to reply.

[johnmeyer]

You need to Google "film look" and do a lot of research. There are a LOT of things that make a feature film look the way it does. These things all add up to make it look different than either amateur film or video.

Here is a list of the things that you need to monitor and change in order to achieve the look you are after:


Gamma. The contrast of traditional film stock is different than video. More importantly, the dynamic range is MUCH higher than most video cameras.

Lighting. In the dozens of discussions I have read, this is often cited as the most important differentiator. Most "Hollywood" feature movies have people who light not only indoor scenes, but outdoor scenes as well. These people ensure that the director gets exactly the amount of detail in shadows that he/she wants, but without blowing out highlights. Video tends to have much less dynamic range, and if you want to create similar "feel" to film, you have to light carefully.

Grain. Film has different grain than video, and pro film stocks are different than those used for documentaries. Be careful, however, about using all those "film effects" in AE and other programs. They generally just add all sorts of garbage, like dirt, scratches, artificial-looking grain, etc. The result looks terrible.

Gate weave. All film has a certain movement, even when filming a static object on a tripod. This is due to each frame of film coming to rest at a slightly different position in the camera gate, and later in the projector gate. Cheaper cameras and projectors have more of this, which means that feature films have a different feel than documentaries.

Color grading. This is the object of this post, but it generally is not really the main difference. However, feature films have at least one person -- and sometimes a whole crew -- in charge of "color timing." You can see the results of their work sometimes when you view the "extras" on DVDs where they show outtakes that haven't been graded.

Frame rate. The 24 fps frame rate of sound film is often cited as a main difference between film and video, and there is no doubt that it imparts a "removed" feeling to the motion compared to the 50 or 60 events per second that you get with 50i, 50p, 60i, or 60p.


I could go on, but those are the main things. My point is that you need to think of things other than just color if you are trying to achieve "the film look."

P.S. If you want to see some of the amazing things that can be done by combining all the elements mentioned above, but still using a video camera, check out the portfolio of one of the great wedding photographers in this country:

GM Ellliot Wedding Photography (http://www.gmelliottvideo.com/portfolio.php)

Pay particular attention to his use of lighting, professional camera movement (one thing I forgot to mention), exposure, and color grading.

[Daegalus]

Thanks everyone for the info. Johnmeyer, that was really helpful.

I seemed to have pulled off some of what I wanted, so I feel like this has been very helpful. Thanks.