Making HD video look like black and white film

[Scotness]

Hi guys if you're interested have a look at this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4-8HHA1Iwo

It's a small segment of HD video made to look like black and white film -- this is an experiment for an upcoming project and I am keen to fiddle with the settings to get it better - hence any advice welcome. The aim is to have a believable bit of b&w film like vision - with a broad range of grey scales.

This is the process to get this far:

- Raw footage: mts file shot with a Canon HF11 in Cinema mode, with Vibrant colours on - this is an AVCHD file at 24mbs
- converted to avi with PCUser video converter 2 - using the huffyuv codec with deinterlacing selected (this shouldn't be necessary as the raw file should be progressive - but the converter seems to do some kind of automatic frame blending!??) -- frame size is also set to 1024x576 (just to keep it small for my limp PC! -- this is a 16:9 image)

- in virtualdub:
- the 1024x576 image is cropped to 1024x426 to make it 2.4:1 (which is what it was originally framed for)
- converted to grey scale
- S shaped film gamma curve is applied with the gradation filter
- dirt speckles and gate movement added with the MSU Old Cinema filter (other capabilities of this filter are switched off)
- resized to 1024x576 to make it a 2.4:1 image letterboxed inside a 16:9 box -- just for standardisation and playback on 16:9 screens
Conversion to wmv for youtube upload - again with PCUser video converter


Things I will do next time:
- shoot with a polariser - to saturate a bit more -> to hopefully translate to more gray shades
- shoot with an ND4 on to allow the apperture to open a bit for shallow DOF (not in wide daylight shots though!!)
- add a film grain effect
- remove or greatly reduce the gate movement effect --> don't like it
reduce the amount of spots (too many in this clip)

ALso find a different mts-->avi converter that preserves the original progressive frames -- in my opinion the loss of resolution through the forced de-interlacing is apparent

Any impressions and ideas welcome

Also I aim to avoid highlights like the plague and try and draw out what I can from the dark areas in post - as I said the aim is to get a nice broad range of grey scales with out any blow outs or many crushed blacks

Thanks,
Scot

[Will2]

I think a grain overly would go a long way to making it more film-like.

I tried something like that about 6 years ago and found that a DV camera actually did ok as long as the highlights weren't blown out.

If you're going for Super 8 b&w you might want to try starting with a lower-res file or simply blurring the footage slightly as that footage looks much sharper than you'd expect from a Super 8 camera and sharper than most average 16mm cameras too.

I never tried adding the jitter, that really helps; but it does seem like what I'd expect from Super 8 rather than 16 or 35,

[Nigel]

I agree with Will2.

1) The jitter should go.

2) Not all film has a lot of dust. Just bad film does. And, the dust seemed to stay in the same spot when you made it pop.

Try a grain filter but don't go overboard. Try a better schmutz filter too.

Good Luck

[wado1942]

The best way to make HD video look like film is to shoot film and have it transferred to HD video!
Seriously though, the biggest problem with trying to make video look like film is that everybody tried to mimic the shortcomings of the medium but can't mimic the advantages. Very limited latitude, grotesquely compressed, artificially sharpened, aliasing, now rolling shutters all contribute to the tell-tale "video" look.
Shoot the highest resolution possible and highest bit rate possible, but turn down the sharpness all the way. If you have to chose between higher resolution and higher bit rate (like 720p HDV vs h.264 1080p 24mbps, take HDV) to minimize compression artifacts. Latitude is a HUGE problem, try a Tiffen Ultra-Contrast filter (I have a #3 which works well) to bring up shadow detail. You'll have to under expose to protect the highlights, then manipulate the curves in post a bit to compensate for the overall exposure and soften the knee of said highlights. CMOS is a big no no, sorry. You might see if there's a firmware hack for your camera to give you a higher bit rate for future shoots at least. If you computer can't handle the resolution, you can resize, using a better CODEC for the intermediary file.

With that specific shot you have, I probably wouldn't get rid of the gate jitter totally, but severely reduce it. Adding a little grain, specifically to the mid tones will help. Reducing the dirt a little would be good as well. The old trick of exaggerating the contrast in the mid tones (S-curve) is in error. Real film does have greatest input contrast/density change in the mid tones, which gets less and less as you get to the extremities. However, video has far less latitude than film, already exaggerating the mid tones, so exaggerating the contrast of the mid tones more in post makes that problem worse. I've found that trying to pull out as much detail from the highlights & shadows as possible (without looking unnatural) gives a more convincing image. That's where using the UC-3 filter comes into play, not touching the mid tones much, but bringing up shadow detail from below what the image sensor could detects. It may also be a good idea to soften the image just a tiny bit.

[MovieStuff]

...Seriously though, the biggest problem with trying to make video look like film is that everybody tried to mimic the shortcomings of the medium but can't mimic the advantages....

That is exactly right. Well said.

Roger

[Will2]

...Seriously though, the biggest problem with trying to make video look like film is that everybody tried to mimic the shortcomings of the medium but can't mimic the advantages....

That is exactly right. Well said.

Roger

True about mimicking the shortcomings, but the real pros mimic the advantages everyday with really high-end shoots and good colorists.

Not to open a can of whoop-ass on myself, I've seen amazing work out of RED and Alexa but the best work always seems to come from PDs who started in film and take the time to shoot & light it right. Off the camera it looks like crap but when they are done in post it looks amazing. Just like anything, it's cutting corners that leaves us with "video" looking crappy video. Doesn't have to be that way if you have time and a budget.

[wado1942]

light it right.

That's the key right there. I remember my first HD video shoot, they had a great art director and DP working on set. Absolutely nothing was black or white. There were no intense colors of any kind for that matter. The lighting was very even with the exception of subtle accent lighting here & there, the keys were only a little stronger than the fills etc. and it looked rather boring. On screen, it looked like a movie. The editor absolutely sucked, though, and that was enough to ruin the movie by itself.
So, I take back what I said about manipulating the curves in post. Design your set & lighting so that no manipulation is necessary and you'll avoid a very lossy, time consuming process.

[MovieStuff]

True about mimicking the shortcomings, but the real pros mimic the advantages everyday with really high-end shoots and good colorists.

Actually, I totally agree. I was really referring to what you typically see when video people want to emulate a cheap film look. They always seem to mimic massive grain, jumpy images, dirt, scratches, etc. But you are quite correct that we see HD footage all the time that has been processed to look like film and never even know it. I've done it myself successfully many times. It can work fantastically, if handled correctly, and film people always do it better because they understand what film looks like whereas video people that have never shot film just go for the quick and dirty method described earlier.

Roger

[Scotness]

Hi guys thanks for all the feedback - I'm in a bit of rush now so can't respond in detail - but I'll be putting the advice into practise early next week and posting a new clip. I really like the bit about focusing on what film does well, as opposed to what it doesn't ~ which was one of my aims particularly in relation to the exposure lattitude and not getting blow outs.

I did an early test before these where I had the ND4 and polariser on and that did soften the image a bit -- I just forgot it on this dohll!

Got to fly

Scot

[Will2]

My experiment a few years ago was to come close to the look of Super 8 because I had a video clip with sound that I wanted to use on a film that was mostly Super 8...looking back now I would laugh at the effort but at the time I thought it was great.

I only had one opportunity to shoot Super 8 sound film, some really old Kodachrome sound film I shot right before processing went away. It was great fun and I wish I could get some more of that sound film. The audio was so bad that it was great.

[wado1942]

I've heard some Super-8 sound that was actually quite decent. It depends a lot on the camera, mic, environment etc.

That brings up a good point though. Most microcinema I've seen has absolute crap for sound because that task is left merely for whoever happens to be free and willing to work for free (not experts). When competent sound guys are involved, the audio may be decent, but does not fit the image a lot of times. I recently saw a movie that was supposed to look like "found" 16mm film. The problem with that was that the audio was obviously done with pristine microphones and high end digital recorders. The picture by itself was great, the sound was great by itself. Together, it just DIDN'T work. If they were smart, they would have used an old ENG mic and and recorded to the optical track of their camera. So, if you want your movie to look like Super-8 or 16mm, don't forget that it has to SOUND like Super-8 or 16mm as well or the illusion is nulled.

[Scotness]

Most microcinema I've seen has absolute crap for sound because that task is left merely for whoever happens to be free and willing to work for free (not experts).

So true!

So, if you want your movie to look like Super-8 or 16mm, don't forget that it has to SOUND like Super-8 or 16mm as well or the illusion is nulled.

Good point