Should You Make Your HD Videos More "Film-Like"?

Most of our Double Espresso videos are still from digital tape and not high def.  For the nature of what our series is for and about, I sort of like the old (old?!) way, the feel is truer to the material we're presenting.  We did however shoot several videos with a high def camera last season and when we did, we always played with the results in Adobe After Effects ... toning down the contrast and fuzzying (warming) up the colors ... the results were mixed.  There was still an "artificial" feeling to what was a video with a warm glow.  When the industry jumped from film to video, many people complained about how cold video looked.  It got better, I believe, and then ... with the advent of HD, we found ourselves back to where we were.  Some videos, mostly journals, and documentaries, live reporting ect, thrive in HD ... storytelling, I believe, loses something.  What are creators doing when faced with this problem?  I read a David Lynch quote once "Film is like a dream while video is like a hallucination." Kind of sums up the differences.  Well, HD is that hallucination compounded.

Tags: HD, adobe, after, def, effects, film-like, high, quality, video

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Permalink Reply by Rich Mbariket on May 18, 2011 at 11:17am
My take is to make content you're proud of. It doesn't matter if it's HD, SD or Film. Just make good content you're proud of and leave the rest to the world.
Permalink Reply by AfterTheBeast on May 18, 2011 at 1:44pm
Agreed. 
Permalink Reply by AfterTheBeast on May 18, 2011 at 1:46pm

Maybe the discussion could be "How can I make my digital production feel more like film?"

In that case there are a bunch of things you can do to sweeten up that video...

Permalink Reply by Ryan McCalla on May 18, 2011 at 2:30pm

do what works for your production - heck even if its SD, up size it to HD keep the grain, compression etc... make it work for you instead of seeing it as a limitation. (make that your style!)

if you are using After effects - I recommend grabbing Colorista free from Red Giant (http://www.redgiantsoftware.com), just register in the downloads section and you get access to all the free plugins (even the full suite is fairly cheap though)

Its great for adjusting the white balance of your footage in post and for adjusting your color grade so easily along with throwing on a S-curve to give that film look this will really boost the prod value of your footage.

Another great trick after you have done this is to duplicate your layer and put your blend mode to Softlight adding a gaussian blur to that layer (this will add a sort of soft dreamy look to it) 

 

 

To give you an idea of what you can do in color grading to change the feel of your footage. (we add noise,grain, scratches etc as well to really dirty up our footage)

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Permalink Reply by Ryan McCalla on May 18, 2011 at 6:42pm
I think its not so much shooting in HD over SD (plenty of discussions here about that already lol) - but what are we doing to make this footage look more film like are you treating this in post? making it look like film? going grainy, keeping compression artefacts? things like that... or are you keeping it Raw

Permalink Reply by Todd Marks on May 18, 2011 at 7:10pm
The beauty of RED cameras! A very filmic look from a digital camera. Of course, way high end and not necessarily practical for the indie web series. BUT, definitely something awesome to use if the chance arises.
Permalink Reply by AfterTheBeast on May 19, 2011 at 9:36am
Or using the Cannon 5D, T2i or similar.   These ARE within the price range of an indie web series, and definitely worth it.   In fact the director of TV's "House"  opted to film last year's season finale with the Cannon 5D over the RED 1, because he felt it was more cinematic.
Permalink Reply by Simon Pauley on May 19, 2011 at 3:43pm
It depends on your budget.  If you can afford the RED, go RED.  There were four Oscar Nominated films this year alone that were shot on the RED ONE.  I think that makes it pretty cinematic.  I don't think there were any shot on the 5D.  Black Swan used two shots from a 7D in a Subway but that was intercut with 16mm footage.  Looked noisy and soft though.  That said, a Canon 5D, 7D, T2i, GH2, or GH1 is all you need for web series.  In the end, what you put in front of the camera is more important than the camera itself.
Permalink Reply by AfterTheBeast on May 20, 2011 at 3:45pm
They shoot movies with the Red because it shoots in 4K, which you need for a movie theater.  But the best TV's currently are only 1080p.  BluRay is only 1080p. So unless you're going for a theatrical release, there's no point to shooting 4K.  Unless your future proofing it for 2050 or whenever TV's are 4K   : )
Permalink Reply by Simon Pauley on May 20, 2011 at 6:24pm
Currently, 4K is not necessary for a theatrical release as very few theatres have 4K projectors.  Almost every film you see is presented in 2K, which is ever so slightly bigger than 1080p.  1080p is 1920 x 1080, or 1.92K.  With 4K, since you are downsizing to 2K, you have the option to "punch in" and take medium and close-up shots from wide shots without sacrificing resolution.  However, the real beauty of RED is the RAW recording.  With raw you can manipulate the footage like a digital still image, without the footage falling apart.  The Dslr's are so heavily compressed they crumble like cookies when you mess with the footy.  I'll say it again.  If you can go RED, then go RED.  But it's not a necessity.  You can make wonderful images with an IPhone if you know what you are doing :)
Permalink Reply by Jason W.Ellis on May 20, 2011 at 7:13pm
or you can use a device like the nanoflash or atomos ninja which will take your footage from the cameras sensor uncompressed and jump up the 1080 quality to 2k so you could use it in the theaters. The only big negative is that these units only work on camcorders and non DSLR cameras. I wrote a topic on this today in a forum on this site if you want to learn more about this.
Permalink Reply by Simon Pauley on May 20, 2011 at 9:31pm
As far as I know the Nanoflash and Ninja max out at 1080p.  Where did you learn of their alleged ability to uprez to 2K?  The benefit of an external recorder is to record a less compressed signal than the in-camera recording.  Thus giving you more leeway/information to work with in post and possibly taking advantage of a 10bit signal (with the Ninja, Nano is 8bit).  No where near the latitude as RED but an improvement none the less.

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