Is it film or is it reality?

As I sit, digitizing a few hours of video, I notice that it look gorgeous. It looks this good because it was originally shot on film. Yes, 35mm, 24 frames... It looks really amazing! I mean, it's just a public service announcement commercial, but the film makes it look so good! Crazy good quality, shallow depth of field...

It's almost as if film is some magical media format that makes images look better than reality!

The talent (actor) is ok looking, but it's the lighting on his face, the framing, the shallow depth of field, and the power that only 24 frames can create.

It looked just like the movies! Now, people have been trying to recreate the look of film on their video cameras for a long time. Oh, I also want to mention that I was digitizing this from DigiBeta. It was transferred from film to DigiBeta to handle better.

But anyway, many camcorders now offer either a "film mode" or 24p (24 frames per second progressive instead of interlaced). Video is usually 60i, which looks pretty different. There are techniques you can do to make video look like film, such as shooting in 24p, lighting it like film, using a shallow depth of field... A good way to obtain shallow dof if you have a regular camcorder is back up from the subject and zoom all the way in.

I've even heard of people putting some panty hose stretched over the lens to soften the image. Or you could bring the footage into Adobe After Effects, put two duplicate layers, one with upper field interlacing first, the other with lower field, then blend the opacity, add noise/grain, and adjust the gamma.

But there are tons of different ways to reproduce the film look and it's best to just toy around with it. I'm thinking of doing some tests when I get some free time, so stay tuned for some video of that. Also, I made a homemade steadicam last year and did some tests with it. Maybe I'll post that if I can find it...

Take care!