Probably dumb Film Out question

[Bill Parker]

I'm planning a documentary that may or may not wind up being transferred to film for festivals, etc. I recently set up using Tim Dashwood's Film Out settings on my HD100. The picture looked very soft and kind of horrible (I was fine with Paulo Ciccone's True Color - I may have done something wrong)). I realize that it will look different once it's on film, but what should it look like before it's transferred? If you shoot Film Out, are you committed to that? What happens if you decide you're not going to film after all?

Thanks.

[Tim Dashwood]

Bill,

You shouldn't even consider using the filmout curve unless you are recording uncompressed and know for sure that you are skipping a formal D.I. and filming directly out to negative, timing photochemically, and then retransferring back to video with teleciné.
The idea behind using a linear response for a filmout is to allow the film's own curve characteristic to apply the look. MPEG2, 4:2:0 and 709 colorspace do not allow for much of a response, and limits the latitude of the exposure, so I would never use this without extensive experimentation. There will be especially large amounts of 'stepping' in the lower IRE areas making Mpeg2 tape-based recording useless.
Many DPs shoot this way with the Varicam and use a gamma corrected monitor on set, but that recording medium can retain more data.

My settings should in no way look 'soft' because I think I left the detail set on normal. Personally, I always turn it down to at least -7 (usually -9.) This is a must for filmout because you don't want your 35mm print screaming "I was shot on video."

[Steven Thomas]

Bill, I'm sure you checked, but it never hurts to mention.

Double check back focus. I've been nailed by this a couple times.

[Bill Parker]

Thanks for the responses. I doubt I'd be shooting uncompressed so it makes it kind of a moot point. I may play around with it more anyway.

My back focus was fine. I switched back and forth between TC v3 and the Film Out and it just looked so much softer. I'll try again.

Thanks.

[Jack Walker]

Originally Posted by Bill Parker

My back focus was fine. I switched back and forth between TC v3 and the Film Out and it just looked so much softer. I'll try again.

Thanks.

When you say softness, are you talking about focus... are the details fuzzy?

Or when you say soft, do you mean the colors are muted and there is less contrast?

[Bill Parker]

It didn't look so much like a focus thing. It almost had a VHS look to it - oversaturated and fuzzy at the edges. I must have done it wrong. I'll try it again.

[John Yamamoto]

this might be dumber :)
is the film out process is done probably?
I know many post production houses use tape -DVCPROor any tape medium( only have less than 1440 pixels horizontally) to transfer to film lab
others --such lens in focus, set up the LUT correctly?

if u post a screen grab of ur own original clips..
i personally has a workflow of upress to 2k or 3k or even 4k and chroma smoothing to 4:4:4 and output to image sequences of tif,tga or bmp.



JY