John Jay
October 6th, 2002, 09:35 AM
You know those DVDs that come with a bonus disc showing how the movie was made? I have been watching quite a few of them recently. In some scenes they show the same shot on pre roll video and then in the finished movie.
Ok, the lighting is the same, the framing and angle of view is the same etc, but the end result is quite different. The film version has a flatter look than video which is not wholly due to DOF, there is something else going on - a sort of compression in the film response (similar to tape compression on RTR audio deck).
On DOF
I performed an experiment with my 35mm still camera. With a standard 50mm lens I set up a portrait shot at f2.0 such that the background was nicely blurred, the objective was to find out how to get the same shot with my DVcamcorder. Now my digicamcorder has 1/4" chips - meaning that the image area is about 1/10th that of 35mm. At full zoom the focal length of the DVcamcorder is 50mm so in order to frame the shot as before I had to move further away from the subject and shoot at f2.0 and I got a similar result on DOF to the 35mm shot.
On Film Response
I was looking for something to mimic film response and I found it in Photoshop Image>Adjust>Curves command. This amazing function can control the tonal range of the image, but it is difficult to judge on a still and required experimentation with some footage. I found the exact function in After Effects and went to work to try to imitate the 'Filmlook'. Sure enough my efforts were rewarded - instead of a straight line response I adjusted the curve command to produce a faster ramp with a softer rounding off at the top - in other words a typical compression type response. This gives motion video footage a sort of sheen/smoother quality which is due to the clamping of the tonal response and kills the undesirable electronic feel to the footage making it look like film.
In summary even without resorting to progressive scan a filmlook can be achieved by shooting telephoto/wide aperture for low DOF and applying the curve function in post.
Try it
Ok, the lighting is the same, the framing and angle of view is the same etc, but the end result is quite different. The film version has a flatter look than video which is not wholly due to DOF, there is something else going on - a sort of compression in the film response (similar to tape compression on RTR audio deck).
On DOF
I performed an experiment with my 35mm still camera. With a standard 50mm lens I set up a portrait shot at f2.0 such that the background was nicely blurred, the objective was to find out how to get the same shot with my DVcamcorder. Now my digicamcorder has 1/4" chips - meaning that the image area is about 1/10th that of 35mm. At full zoom the focal length of the DVcamcorder is 50mm so in order to frame the shot as before I had to move further away from the subject and shoot at f2.0 and I got a similar result on DOF to the 35mm shot.
On Film Response
I was looking for something to mimic film response and I found it in Photoshop Image>Adjust>Curves command. This amazing function can control the tonal range of the image, but it is difficult to judge on a still and required experimentation with some footage. I found the exact function in After Effects and went to work to try to imitate the 'Filmlook'. Sure enough my efforts were rewarded - instead of a straight line response I adjusted the curve command to produce a faster ramp with a softer rounding off at the top - in other words a typical compression type response. This gives motion video footage a sort of sheen/smoother quality which is due to the clamping of the tonal response and kills the undesirable electronic feel to the footage making it look like film.
In summary even without resorting to progressive scan a filmlook can be achieved by shooting telephoto/wide aperture for low DOF and applying the curve function in post.
Try it