Recently I've been trying out real film.
This time Super 16, the format used for The Hurt Locker,
City of God,
and Moonrise Kingdom.
I like it a lot. It doesn't look as vintage as Super 8,
but it has a bit more character than Super 35.
Really, I want to shoot on film every day,
but I simply cannot afford it .
So, I thought I'd setup my DSLR right next to the film camera,
record with both,
and then match the film look as closely as possible.
Here's what I've learned:
Firstly, you've got to remember
this isn't just a filter you can apply while editing.
So let's start by setting up the camera correctly.
Starting with the frame rate.
24 is the standard for film cameras,
so we'll choose that. Although on a digital camera
we can change our shutter speed all over the place,
film cameras at 24 frames will use a shutter speed of 1/48th or 1/50th.
Which is close enough.
Also most modern cameras use digital sharpening,
which simulates extra detail
by adding contrast at the edges.
If I turn it all the way up you can see what it does.
Whereas film cameras are typically softer.
So let's go into the picture settings
and turn sharpness all the way down.
And finally, if you're going for maximum authenticity
then you might want to avoid wide apertures like f 1.8
on larger sensor cameras.
Because those ultra blurry backgrounds
with really shallow depth of field
aren't really that possible on Super 16.
Now plenty of those settings
are pretty standard for digital filmmakers,
so clearly, the big difference comes with software.
Comparing the footage, I reckon there are
three main differences between digital and film.
First up is the grain.
Now the film stock we used wasn't that grainy,
so I'm just going to use the tiniest amount for this shot,
but in general, adding more grain
is probably the easiest way to make digital look like film.
There are plenty of places
you can buy or download film grain
to overlay onto your footage,
but I personally don't use it as much as I'd like to
because grainy footage often turns into a pixelated mush
after going through YouTube's compression.
So do watch out for that.
The second difference is color.
And of course this varies a lot
between cameras and film stocks,
But here's what I noticed with our footage.
In general, I found myself lifting the mid-tones
to match the kind of soft roll off into the shadows.
And then I'll also check on the waveform
while adjusting the shadows
so they don't quite hit the bottom.
I definitely noticed a shift towards magenta
especially in the very brightest and the very darkest parts of the image.
So, in practice that meant taking the highlights
quite far towards red-blue and
countering that with green-yellow in the mid-tones.
And then finally a little touch of magenta in the shadows.
In general though, it didn't take that much.
Just aimed for neutral colors mostly.
Just making sure that the white parts of the frame
were actually white and that the skin tones
weren't too green.
And the third big difference I noticed
was looking at the waveforms.
See how the super 16 film is kind of jittering?
Where is the same shot on digital stays rock solid.
That's the flicker, a slight variation in
brightness between each frame.
I think it gives a kind of subtle energy
that hits you subconsciously.
So to replicate that I made this gray video that flickers.
And then we can just drop that on top of the footage
and change the blend mode to overlay.
And now we have flickery footage.
Here's a side-by-side comparison.
You might have also noticed that adds a bit of a vignette
which is pretty common for Super 16.
It draws the eye away from the edges of the frame.
If it's too strong, we can always reduce the opacity
until the flicker is subtle enough for our tastes.
So with grain, color, and flicker
we can get fairly close to the Super 16 look.
But of course, It's not just the final image
that makes Super 16 special.
If we really wanted to get closer
to the shooting on film experience,
then we could bring just the minimum amount of media storage.
Like enough for say 2 hours of recording.
That way, it's like shooting on film,
where everyone on set knows that we can't
just go for eight more takes.
So it kind of makes you stop and think
before you hit the record button.
We could also go further
and cover up the preview button on the camera
so we can't watch back any of the footage
until after the shoot.
Now again doing this feels like a step backwards
but the benefit is that it forces you to be 100% engaged
during every single take.
Whereas sometimes with digital
I find myself kind of wondering about the next shot while we're filming.
Because you know that you can just watch it back later.
We could even wait until a few days after the shoot
to look at our digital footage for the first time
to kind of simulate what it's like to have the film go off
for processing before you get to see it.
And again, why would you want to do that?
But it kind of gives you this perspective.
Where you've had a bit of time away from set to kind of
forget about all the problems and solutions
that happen there and now all you have is
fresh eyes to look at what you actually have shot.
So to be honest, I don't know if I'd ever actually remove
these conveniences that I've got say used to with digital.
But I'm kind of tempted to
because there really is something magical that happens
when everyone knows that you can't watch the film back
and that you only have a limited supply.
Either way, hopefully this has been helpful.
If you do want to remove some of the clinical perfections
of digital and get a more organic cinematic kind of feel.
I'm going to be doing a video soon
about what I learned from shooting on real film.
So look out for that.
And finally if you liked the music that I made for this video
then you can license it for your own projects.
So I'll put a link to that in the description.
It's basically the best way to support me
and keep these videos coming.
So yeah, I'll see you next week.