emulating certain look

[Andriy Baglay]

Hello everyone! 
So i've been ghosting these forums for a while, I was grading in Premiere Pro for years, It was enough since I had sony a7s and could emulate film look pretty decently, but since I've got myself sony a7siii I switched to DaVinci and was browsing the internet for ways to emulate the look I find most pleasing to my eye. I've stumbled on Tom Bollens CinePrint16 powergrade, which is a great foundation to try and move forward with that cheeky analog look however I just can't get it to look the way I want to.
For example we got this great piece by Mackenzie Sheppard https://vimeo.com/314648479
It was shot on film , but what would it take to make my slog3.cine to atleast look somewhat familiar?  with that pretty flat greenish/blue look, the moment I start to tweak HSL it all falls apart, some parts are getting oversaturated, some parts just look wildly unnatural. what am I missing? 
Most of the tutorials I've watched cover the basics with all those great tips on how to make your footage look the most "realistic" or "cinematic" but it's not quite what I am looking for, I hope I made my self clear and looking forward to your tips

[Marc Wielage]

There's a lot of potential variables. Bear in mind that the specific lighting and exposure on set, plus the art direction (particularly the set design and color) will limit the potential of any grading you do. For example, the teal & orange look isn't necessarily possible with all kinds of images: color contrast happens when the background and foreground lend themselves to this kind of "pushing and pulling" the image.

Downloading an H.264 from the net is problematic, because they will (as you discovered ) "fall apart" when you try to push them too hard. Try to do the grade with 12-bit or 16-bit Raw material, and I'd bet you can get there. Arri Alexa, Blackmagic, Red, and Sony all have free Raw files you can download and experiment with.