'Sampled' film plugins?
 

I use audio software such as Acustica Nebula which samples audio hardware. Basically, audio engineers take a piece of really expensive and fancy high end audio gear, put some signals through it and 'sample' all of its settings. Equalizers, compressors, FX processors (reverb, delay units) etc. You end up with an audio plugin that mimics what high end audio gear does for a very small fraction of the cost, and it sounds 90-95% like the original. For example, I paid about $200 to use an EQ that costs about $5000, and it sounds literally 95% or more of the way there. That's a no-brainer.

This is a somewhat new technology and it got me thinking. Has any company ever tried applying this very same thing to film? So many people try and get the film look that I think it would do very well as far as plugins go. I'm thinking they'd have to sample both different kinds of cameras, and different kinds of film. Lots of work, but they do it with audio gear already. I'm also unsure of exactly how they'd go about 'sampling' it. They may need special hardware to do that, or something.

There are audio plugins out there that try to make your digital video like film, but as far as I know none of them use this same approach yet. Does something like this exist yet?