What is your workflow for using Film Print Emulation LUTs(eg. Kodak Vision 2383)

[Anonymous]

There are a set of LUTs inside the Film Looks folder in DaVinci resolve. How should one go about using it in their color grading workflow? I generally use a Color Space Transform node to input gamma as Rec. 709 and out gamma as Cineon Film Log and then place the FPE LUT(This is done in the last 2 nodes). In nodes prior to the color space transform, I do LOG to Rec. 709 and secondary grading. 

[Santiago Rivero]

The CST ofx is not supposed to work from R709 to Log. Go from your Log to Cineon Log and in the next node add the FE-LUT. Grade everything under the LUT and after just tweak. Davinci is supposed to work with the LUT last.

[Marc Wielage]

I have actually worked in workflows where the LUT comes first. If the end result is correct, then it IS correct.

In truth, I think if you're just trying to get the "look" of 2383 print stock -- which is more contrasty than I think most people know (particularly people who've never done a film-out and struck a print from digital files) -- you can actually fake it pretty well.

I think a lot of the so-called Print LUTs and plug-ins out there are a lot of smoke and mirrors with very little real science or usefulness behind them. Having said that, I've been experimenting with Video Village's Filmbox lately, and I really like their philosophy and approach. They say this:

Filmbox does not represent pure empiricism. We certainly tried to gather good data and stay close to that data but our methods are not prefect and there were subjective decisions made about how to tune and implement the data into a functional system that produces creatively satisfying results. We encourage you to try it and see if our model of film lives up to your mental model of film.

It’s worth noting that both film and Filmbox can be made to have many looks, and what people think “film” looks like is a bit of a moving target. This is especially the case now that almost nothing is actually printed to film, and many people’s memory of “film” is actually of some hybrid film/digital processes. Some might say film looks like Vision3 negative stock scanned at their favorite post house and graded by their favorite colorist or processed by their favorite LUT. That process may or may not look anything like printing that same negative to a print stock. And even that might not look like an older film that used a different photochemical process.

Ultimately our intent is that a high-end cinema camera processed with Filmbox faithfully reproduces the characteristics that have been hard to achieve since the advent of digital cinema.

As skeptical as I am, and as outspoken as I've been in the past on the borderline-fraudulent claims made by some companies on their film emulation products, I have to say I agree with what they say. If your description is, "hey, it's not exactly like film, it's not like all film, but it's kind of in the ballpark of 5219," I can buy that because it's a film that still exists and you can actually shoot it and test it today. Video Village goes into the methods and testing process they went through to create Filmbox in this FAQ file:

https://videovillage.co/images/filmbox/features/FAQ.pdf

Two caveats: the software is not cheap (about $395 a year), and it's Mac-only at the moment. I have zero connection with the company except as a customer. But I'm impressed with what I see so far.

[Anonymous]

Have been experimenting with Look Designer and Colour Lab more recently. Again it's not cheap ($499) like most good things but their approach is creative and scientific. I like that they're about developing looks beyond a 'film look' and encouraging us all to play and experiment abit more.

I've found it's much more useful to understand the characteristics of film and why we like rather than trying to replicate film exactly. Also a big fan of Steve Yedlins approach. Definitely worth checking him out.

[Luca Di Gioacchino]

I've been using Colorlab for a few months now and am really impressed with it.  I've also tried Dehancer, another great film emulation plug in, and liked that one as well.  It feels like the market is starting to saturate with PFE plugs ins, no?  You could try creating your own negative stock and combing than with one of the PFE luts that ships with Resolve. 

 

[Marc Wielage]

On 5/26/2021 at 3:31 AM, Jamie Neale said:

Have been experimenting with Look Designer and Colour Lab more recently. Again it's not cheap ($499) like most good things but their approach is creative and scientific. I like that they're about developing looks beyond a 'film look' and encouraging us all to play and experiment abit more.

I've found it's much more useful to understand the characteristics of film and why we like rather than trying to replicate film exactly. Also a big fan of Steve Yedlins approach. Definitely worth checking him out.

Yes to both. Dado Valentic is a real character, but he's passionate about what he does, and I'm actually pressed with the ideas and interface of Look Designer and GrainLab. ColourLab isn't compatible with the way I work -- I'm not a fan of the idea of having one different LUT and a CDL (or whatever it is) per shot for 1500-2000 shots per feature reel, created in a different program, and then bring it over to Resolve with a script -- and as far as I'm concerned, I match perfectly quickly on my own with Gallery stills, Memories, and scopes. But Look Designer has some fascinating ideas. I would say Look Designer and Filmbox are lightyears beyond something like FilmConvert or a mere LUT. 

BTW, I'm also impressed with the same company's Scatter, which is the best OFX diffusion plug-in I've ever seen. Remarkable tool. 

[Jamie Neale]

30 minutes ago, Marc Wielage said:

Yes to both. Dado Valentic is a real character, but he's passionate about what he does, and I'm actually pressed with the ideas and interface of Look Designer and GrainLab. ColourLab isn't compatible with the way I work -- I'm not a fan of the idea of having one different LUT and a CDL (or whatever it is) per shot for 1500-2000 shots per feature reel, created in a different program, and then bring it over to Resolve with a script -- and as far as I'm concerned, I match perfectly quickly on my own with Gallery stills, Memories, and scopes. But Look Designer has some fascinating ideas. I would say Look Designer and Filmbox are lightyears beyond something like FilmConvert or a mere LUT. 

BTW, I'm also impressed with the same company's Scatter, which is the best OFX diffusion plug-in I've ever seen. Remarkable tool. 

100% agree, I haven't really worked out a solid workflow for going back and forth yet. I tend to use ColourLab more like a sketch book, I grab my references, tweak settings and I get to see (very roughly) a decent starting point for a look. This is mad (considering all that it can do) but I really like the fact you can output a pdf with all the looks in one file that I can fire over to everyone.

I know they're working on having an alternative to the LUT/CDL workflow that could see the OFX be placed into the node tree instead. 

Scatter is amazing, I picked up a copy last week and it's been a revolution. It's pricey but worth every penny. I come from a DP background so working in a more photographic way just feels right.

[Marc Wielage]

BTW, for yet another approach to film print emulation, check out Stefan Ringelschwandtner's blog and link here:

https://mononodes.com/photochemical-film-look/

He's giving away a Resolve correction (4 or 5 nodes) that are actually pretty effective from what I see. (You can tip him a coffee if you like it.) His approach is fairly complicated, but it's certainly cheaper than buying a film emulation plug-in, and there's a lot of good thought behind it. Having said that, if I had to do film emulation, I'd just use Filmbox and call it a day: it's one node and actually looks pretty good. But it's not free.

[Jamie Neale]

8 hours ago, Marc Wielage said:

BTW, for yet another approach to film print emulation, check out Stefan Ringelschwandtner's blog and link here:

https://mononodes.com/photochemical-film-look/

He's giving away a Resolve correction (4 or 5 nodes) that are actually pretty effective from what I see. (You can tip him a coffee if you like it.) His approach is fairly complicated, but it's certainly cheaper than buying a film emulation plug-in, and there's a lot of good thought behind it. Having said that, if I had to do film emulation, I'd just use Filmbox and call it a day: it's one node and actually looks pretty good. But it's not free.

Love the amount of effort he's gone into there. Great resource covering the some of the main characteristics. 

[Stefan Ringelschwandtner]

Thanks for sharing my "monondes" blog post here.
Just want to say Hi!  I am here, too.

Setting up seems a bit complicated but the beauty of using PowerGrades is that you can save it all as preset (light, middle, strong halation), (light, middle, strong camera shake) for 2k, 4k. You just have to set it up once and after that it is just "drag and drop". 

In the past  I often thought... well "a LUT" (or color grade) and a bit of grain is "enough", but Halation and camera shake, and other small details really complete the emulation. 
 

[Marc Wielage]

44 minutes ago, Stefan Ringelschwandtner said:

In the past  I often thought... well "a LUT" (or color grade) and a bit of grain is "enough", but Halation and camera shake, and other small details really complete the emulation. 
 

Hey, Stefan. I agree with you to a point, but from my point of view (and Kodak's), Halation and vibration are actually flaws, not always a positive creative look. The halation is a conditional thing: I've been using Glow, Scatter, and sometimes BorisFX tools to add selective diffusion when the scene needs it. But it's not something I'd want all the time, and sometimes I only want it over a specific part of the frame, and I need to eliminate it from some shots entirely.

I concede it's a creative choice. 90% of my work these days is color-correcting 1980s/1990s films for reissue, and because I started in telecine more than 40 years ago, I'm extremely aware of what actual film looks like. The trick is that different stocks have different looks, negative looks different than print, both look different than IP and IN, and not all these looks are desirable. When we were doing film D.I.'s in the 2000s, we actually calibrated the LUTs so that we knew how the image would be interpreted in the film recorder, and by doing tests with the lab, we knew how an answer print struck off the digital negative would look. That's a case where we had a "real" print look (created by Kodak) that would resemble a projected print right next to it in the D.I. theater. Making film-outs was a huge headache, and I was not sorry to see that part of the business (mostly) go away.

But as the Filmbox people have said: "this is not exactly film, but it kind of resembles film to a point." I can accept that with no problem. It's an interesting look that might be beneficial for certain projects. BTW, @Walter Volpatto agrees with you: he's actually using ResolveFX Grain more than other tools these days at CO3, and it's very telling that a colorist at his level can get great results out of off-shelf tools. 

[Jamie Neale]

10 hours ago, Stefan Ringelschwandtner said:

Thanks for sharing my "monondes" blog post here.
Just want to say Hi!  I am here, too.

Setting up seems a bit complicated but the beauty of using PowerGrades is that you can save it all as preset (light, middle, strong halation), (light, middle, strong camera shake) for 2k, 4k. You just have to set it up once and after that it is just "drag and drop". 

In the past  I often thought... well "a LUT" (or color grade) and a bit of grain is "enough", but Halation and camera shake, and other small details really complete the emulation. 
 

I think what you've done is super useful, especially for explaining the parts that make up a classic film look. Thanks for putting the time in to recreate the grade. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on creating film density.

Often this is the characteristic that clients want but never know how to ask for. I tend to use a combination of curves (hue/luma) with colour separation underneath a print style S curve. Plus there's various saturation tekkers that get thrown into the mix. 

[Stefan Ringelschwandtner]

Thanks for your kind words, Jamie.  I cannot really say much about "film density".  Maybe the colors shifted with different density, and the grain structure changes. I am just using a LUT and adding elements from my PowerGrade and grade it. I like the "filmconvert" plugin (But I rarkly use it.).

The colors from filmkonvert are excellent. But for grain I don´t care if the highlight rolloff emulates film 100% correctly. The grain itself should look good. And if the wall you are shooting is a little bit brighter or darker that will also have an impact on your grain structure. And the light on set The grain itself can be very different from shot to shot. I think it is good to get close to the original film look. As close as possible. But also keep things simple. Don't overthink every element to much. 

I like the Quote "Perfect is the enemy of good". 

if you google the meaning you find something like "The Best is the Enemy of Good means that close is sometimes GoodEnough, and exact is far too costly."

For ColorGrading. If you spend weeks, month, years fine tuning "one thing" ...so what. Yes. It is important to observe, to actually look at "behind the scenes" (This is what I am doing on my website). Look at the colors. and look at all the elements (grain, color, gate weave). Try to replicate it, if you like it. Try to get close. If it "feels" like film, you made it. Even if its just 95% accurate. Use the tools to be creative. Prqactise. Work on projects. Film is always changing. If you want that 100% .. shoot film. If you want to emulate film, try to reach 95, 96%, no need to reach 99%. 

Hope that makes sense.

 

Edited June 17, 2021 by Stefan Ringelschwandtner

[Jamie Neale]

@Stefan Ringelschwandtner Agreed, if it looks right then it's right.

For film emulation these days I'm  90% of the time going to Look Designer and building on top of that. I'm also using a few DCTLs to save time in other areas too. Like you say, if we want the film look then we should shoot on film, everything else is borrowing characteristics.