In case you guys didn't realize, Steve Yedlin, the cinematographer who made this demo, is the cinematographer for most of Rian Johnson's movies. He was the cinematographer on Brick, Looper, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and Knives Out. He created more discussion on the film vs. digital debate with Knives Out since that entire movie was shot on digital but was edited to have the visual look of film.
It didn't really look like film though. This example too. Looks way too orange and tealy to me. Seems like today's movies which make the actors look like plastic puppets and blood look purple. When I think good film look I think of Blade Runner.
@@EbonyPopeDefinitely looks like film, because film doesn’t have 1 look to it and is only a small part of the equation. This test looks pretty similar to Looper.
@@EbonyPopeWhat you’re describing is neither a characteristic of film nor digital. And like he said, although you might notice a slight difference, it’s only something that makes a difference when you look at it side by side.
@@akelindstrom1786 It isn't a difference inherent to digital I know. But it is a trend to color grade especially digital movies this way. Hence my suspicion.
One of the strongest characteristics in film that I've noticed (and that I cannot find strong evidence of with any google search) that no one seems to talk about is, how with film, I can see the slight vibrations in the footage, akin to the actual roll of film moving through the shutter, which causes these slight imperfections in steadiness especially noticeable in stable shots. I think this is one of the most beautiful aspects that I can notice myself. The way the roll of film is never going to move completely straight at that speed, causing these slight, imperfectly perfect, random vibrations. There's also a way in which the highlights roll off in film a little differently compared to digital (noticed this in the hairline shots), but I can't quite put my finger on it. Another small one is how there are blips of light changes for 1 single frame, or a random dot in one frame, or a brightness/contrast change. But with higher quality productions that's hardly noticeable. This isn't to say I prefer one over the other. I love both mediums respectfully. I mention this here because I've not seen one person bring this up. To me, this is the most distinguishable and beautiful factor of analog film. I hope someone else has noticed this as well.
4FrameMusic It's called gate weave. I thought I was the only one who liked the look of it because many cinematographers seem to hate it. Wish it could be created digitally
LOL, I add simulated gate weave in after affects with motion blur turned on, to my a7sii and GH5 footage to give it a slightly softer film look. I feel it gives it a more organic look and takes off the harsh 'video' sharpness.
Yes! in simplest terms film looks like a monument where as digital is just an image,to me at least. Digital is great for Indys TV news etc. But for telling a timeless story film is it,and quite simply if i want to draw and color a picture i can do it on my pc,but crayons markers pencils are still widely available. it should be that way with FILM it should always exist and be and be an option. i am hoping the increased use continues and more companies besides kodak rise to the forefront of development as well.
I think I can tell which one is film because of the halation on the film emulsion, which digital sensors don't exhibit (as strongly). It is more apparent on 16mm film and outright stylized on 8mm due to the spread of the light being more or less constant in distance related to the brightness difference of the adjacent areas. For example, at 5:20 you can see an orange/red glow around in the kitchen light most pointed at the camera in 0122323 which is not nearly as present in 0768455. The effect occurs naturally on digital sensors for a different reason, and can be simulated quite easily in post-production, so if the colorist has taken that into consideration, they might have fooled me. The Arri Alexa captures motion almost exactly the same as film, and the colors are the closest I've seen from any other camera. I think most digital sensors have the most trouble capturing the red channel in a way that film does, given the "boost" film gets from halation, and this is why skin tones in films before the 1990s had a bias towards magenta, giving faces a "rosy" glow.
Man I love Steve Yedlin. In a world where everyone is constantly presenting their biases as facts, he bases his opinions on what actually makes a physical difference and what doesn’t at that.
THEDARKKNIGHT1939 basically, the most important part of getting a certain "look" is not from the camera itself, but rather how you prepare he image before it is show.
Yeah, I had to rewatch it again to understand it more. But I wish he talked about how he prepares the scene to get the look of film. Apparently it's more than just color grading.
THEDARKKNIGHT1939 from what I've noticed, it seems to be mostly in the lighting. Getting the intensity of the light on the subject just right, but also making sure the background isn't completely dead, even though it's out of focus and you're shooting something that looks very natural. Meter everything, basically. Cinematographers take readings with their meters of pretty much everything that's seen on camera. I learned on the set of a TV show that that's how they get those extremely intricate, seemingly needless grip and lighting setups we see in behind the scenes photos of movies and tv shows. For example, setups that have the bottom half of a light scrimmed and the top diffused or gelled, 18x24 white fabric with a black strip down the middle on the far wall with a small fixture shining on it, etc. That small, seemingly needless stuff really takes your image higher than the next level.
It doesn't seem like there are differences in lighting between the shots. The Alexa shots were 'prepared' in post, so yes a lot of that was the grading (straight out of camera it is extremely flat and looks nothing like film, it absolutely needs to be graded.) I don't think he changed the lighting as part of his preparation for either camera, i.e. making it more cinematic when switching to the Alexa to match the film look. It's not clear how intensive the actual lighting was here; though there are some 'cinematic' shots (we can even debate what that means exactly. Films have had such a variety of definitive looks over the years), most of it is motivated lighting, except for shots like the one @6:28 but even then it's rather simple. Not knocking it, I really like it! Just saying it's not as much of that 'film look' that some productions go for, not as stylistic. In some cases though this lighting is extremely cinematic but also very natural, which would totally work for a piece of cinema. Shooting this same lighting with an old 5D Mark 2 or even a GoPro it wouldn't look nearly as good nor as cinematic, even with the best possible grading (those shadowed highlighted areas wouldn't contain as much detail as the Alexa or 35mm). It is amazing though how similar they look, especially since he said he graded it as he normally would and without the 35mm footage in mind. I've heard that the Alexa is often the camera of choice from cinematographers who started in film because it behaves more like 35mm etc. than the other cinema cameras. Haven't used it myself yet.
It has nothing to do with lighting. He is talking about matching digital Alexa footage to analog film. It’s a mathematical transformation done to the raw Alexa camera footage to turn it into film. Lighting plays an important part in the story telling through images, but has nothing to do with this.
This experimentation is very interesting and I respect all the time and effort put into it, but it is not an evidence that you can emulate all film stocks with digital cameras. Steve Yedlin used the Kodak Vision 3 stock, which is the film that look the most like digital. I think that would be more interesting to try to emulate older film stocks like all the Eastman, Eastman EXR or Vision1 printed into 5384 for exemple. To me that's those film stocks that really stand appart and shine. Movies like Jackie Brown, Pulp Fiction, Alien, Star Wars IV, V & VI, Terminator 2, Full Metal Jacket, 2001, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, Back to the Future, Titanic, Jurassic Park, The Darjeeling Limited, Apocalypse Now, The X-Files, LOST, and the list goes on....... They have a look that cannot be reproduce today (even with the modern motion picture film Vision3), contrasty, saturated, well seperated tones and colors, very bright look but very natural and smooth and deep blacks. I miss these characteristics a lot. If you don't know what I'm talking about you can watch Jackie Brown and the first scene of Star Wars IV with C3PO and R2D2 in the white spaceship interrior. I hope that one day we will be able to reproduce that, or that kodak will release a new film more like the older ones, but I'm not very optimistic. That being said, I love digital cameras and how they look as well, but not for this kind of aesthetic and more for a look that older film stocks couldn't create.
He has built this one specific pipeline because that's what he likes. If you want to emulate other film stocks, feel free to research for yourself and make your own. It's color science, and it's a wonderful rabbit-hole to dive into but it's certainly not magic. As long as you're capturing enough information (which most high-end cameras do these days), it's up to you to interpret the data. I think instead of mystifying the photo-chemical process (which is fascinating), I'd rather try to figure out what's happening under the hood in order to recreate it through modern digital methods. That question is far more interesting in my opinion. We can probably achieve it, it's just that no one is as determined as Steve Yedlin to actually go through with it (although many colorists around the world are achieving it very accurately).
Im using the vision 3 film for stills on a medium format camera , and i must say that this film look to me very mach like the old film stocks , i can get in post proces the AMAZING colors and contrast of the old eastmen , with a good scanner the ability of strching this film to what ever direction you want is amazing , the latitude of it is so good , im sure even the arri alexa 65 cant get such a good ditails on the hige lights , if you controll your hige lights with this film you can get an ultra realistic middle of the day harsh light in a beautiful way , i never saw any thing like this in digital , i think the way film capture highe light making a big differnt from digital... may be i miss somthing but from wgat i saw till now there is no any movie shoot on digital that have lets say the light on LAWRENCE OF ARABIA , so you can say no one want to get this look , i think its bulsheet ... Here at this video it feels that he took the film to look like the digital , a good test will be the oposite .
For a long time digital has been better in low light, they had to shoot Collateral in digital as it was mostly a night film th-cam.com/video/-vz-2oKIBO8/w-d-xo.html
at the end on 7:12 i think the one on the right with this number 7537462 is the digital camera and the one on the left is the film camera, they look different, the way you move is more smooth on the right and on the left side looks like a higher contrast.
The "look", it's actually the cinematographer's look to me. To me one of the best shot movies lately is The Revenant. All digital, not even trying to look like real film, and is gorgeous, a real work of art. It came in the same year as The Hateful 8, shot on film, another great work from R. Richardson, but cinematography is so much more than choosing sensors or film stock
You, your voice and articulation, this test and even your suggestion to watch without sound....it's just, well, so beautiful. Like listening to Chopin and thinking about how the actual fuck he came up with Fantasie Impromptu Op 66. It's like you're tapped into a true mastery and focus that effortlessly cuts through the times - more precisely, it cuts through the bullshit. Thank you, you legend :) Nicely shot BTW!
Fantastic. Thank you for your hard work. I wish not to compare either one of the mediums but it does make me happy to see how both stand well along one another.
In my opinion this contribution is more about the aesthetic & philosophical aspects of what the medium can do/ mean. However, I think it is very difficult to filter out the digital or to make film digital. It is hard to find a certain look / define a character / or a soul of the medium. As far as I know, I think the digital is still far from nicely developed. Only more developed (as far as my knowledge reachs) digital cameras are beginning to understand the medium. That is why it is also challenging to find and capture a good character or an image with it. I believe more has to be thought over before something is put on the market, and I am happy this video for me shows. So, thank you.
I feel like i just watched a scene from a Movie where the Scientist character explains the Secret he's been hiding from the Goverment or something haha... This is absolutely BRILLIANT and i'm so thankful a video comparison like this exists. Thank you Steven Yedlin; may you never read this, you are a Genius, and My Favorite Cinematographer of the current Era, i can see and FEEL how this techniques were applied to KNIVES OUT as it was entirety shot on digitally and did NOT look any less filmic or 'cinematic' as if it was shot on film stock. Bravo 🙌✨🎥
In the years since this test was done, more and more digital cinema cameras have started to produce images that are ALMOST on par with the Alexa (and with higher resolution). Arri themselves have released the Alexa 35 that unquestionably has more dynamic range than film ever has. I will always love many of the visual characteristics we tend to associate with film but workflow of digital is ultimately much more important to me. I like telling stories with moving pictures. I like working with a DP to craft a look and working with actors to craft a performance. I like the creative stuff so I want the workflow that lets me be more creative. It's the same reason why buying a graphics tablet helped me re-discover my love of hand-drawn/painted art. I know many artists who still find drawing on paper to be a more rewarding workflow and to each his/her own. I just think we should realize how fortunate we are that modern tools have allow us to have such varied and flexible workflows.
Excellent video. I'm a c100 mark ii user myself, and I too feel these days filmmakers prep to enhance the digital aspects of cameras, as opposed to what i consider the more aesthetically pleasing look that comes from film. Subscribing!
Amazing points made. Traditional films had limited processing options, and people made peace with it, therefore not accepting the new solutions. I really like the idea, that the specs are what truely count. And i agree with the aesthetics of traditional films now, with the note, that this mainly comes from being used to that look. I think that this will change over time, as artistic expression could dull down, or enhance colors by intention. And I believe that as the film image is mainly visual sensory stimulation, more stimulation, finer, more realistic images, even stepping to an unreal range will be the way to go. Thank you for your video.
Emulating film is almost the same as emulating tape in the audio world. You can get a song to sound _pretty much_ exactly like it was recorded on tape and analogue gear -- it's just a lot of effort and is _usually_ just a tiny bit "off" from the real thing. All my favorite looking movies are shot on film. However, I am open to the possibility that may be just down to the approach of shooting on film and not the medium itself. I recognize that the gap between the mediums is getting smaller all the time. However, I still think digital cameras have a few years before they can completely emulate film -- even if the specs or tech nerds say otherwise. In my experience, I can almost always spot a movie shot on 35mm -- even if tests like this make it very difficult to spot the differences.
If you prep for any Capture Format, anything can be done to play within the limits of each format and match everything. But film is going to have that intrinsic characteristic of overexposing the negative in a way that even an Alexa will clip, and then under develop with less time in all the photo chemical processes to acquire pitch perfect and detailed (with correct color information) highlights rolling off to natural and tangible (without artifacts) specular, more so with the sun on frame (at every time of the day). In controlled lighting TAKES this is a no brainer, but in long takes with only natural light, like in Terrence Malick films (ex:The Tree Of Life), there is a huge difference. And in 15 perf 65mm IMAX, the under develop technique is going to give astronomic differences. But yeah, sure, I too love digital work arounds because I don't have big budgets. Nevertheless every time I shot sunsets at the beach with the sun on frame summed to talent, back ground and foreground, I wish I had film. And I don't say that digital is the worst for that, I'm just clarifying the science underneath. Now, for low light that's another matter, and that's where I love digital the most. Fincher was before Yedlin in that matter, because he worked in matte photography on The Last Jedi before directing Alien 3, and he broke all the rules more than even George Lucas, only that is not noticeable at first glance. Though Yedlin is very important in the "Open Source" filming community, and Fincher is a bit more hermetic.
tho I preferd the shots that were more in a green tone mostly visible in white areas. Wonder if it was digital or film.. Cause digital Alexa has also quite more green look.
@@pochcalpadlos Yes, the LogC Rec709 Lut is slightly greenish on the AlevIII. Edit: Nothing you can't fix though. So I still can't be sure which is which.
Exactly! It seems like you have to shoot 16mm to show off that you're shooting film, because 35mm looks identical to the Alexa, at least it does to me.
in my opinion, at 7.03 : the right box is digital. the left box is identifiable as film for the quality of grain and light render (imho, see it better in the blu-ray version on Yedlin's website)
Excellent video. Kudos. I was looking for something like this and really appreciate what you said. That is not always the look we should focus on but can the enough of the right kind of data be captured and prepared for the look we ultimately want. Thanks.
To anyone who wants to know "which clip is which": If film looks much better, you should be able to tell. There are only seven different shots, so which ones are film? No seriously, go ahead...
Truth is...they dont know. I used to be a "film purist" and it really messes with your head. You start to build film up as this mystical thing and it gets to the point where even modern film doesnt look like film anymore. Film isnt even a real thing but just some unreachable goal. Seriously, just shoot film and realize the frustrations with it and you will beg to come back to the beautiful rock steadiness of digital.
@@Skrenja There's a high quality uncompressed version on Yedlin's site, linked in the description here. Most movie projectors are only 1080p (or 2K) unless advertised as otherwise, so even a typical computer screen can give you the same viewing clarity in full screen. Please give the video a watch and let me know what you think each shot is
sorry they do… you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference if you didn’t know. So I haven’t watched this in a while and I’ve randomly paused at 1:09. So you genuinely think there’s a difference between those two shots in the production?… cos they look the same to me. If I were to guess it’d be completely 50/50
so this has been a source of alot of debate over the years and you really cannot do it justice with youtube compression on here, i'd encourage everyone to view it in the original source linked in the description here basically, even with this display prep demo shot on 35mm vs alexa (which is known to have the most "filmic" sensors), you can tell the difference if you have a trained eye, but steve is right to an extent that most audiences will not be able to tell the difference. They are extremely subtle but the skin tone reproduction on film is simply unmatched no matter what holy shitfuck digital sensor you use, the gradual blending and the rolloff in the density of the colors feels incredibly natural on film while less so on digital. Also when these images are blown up on a theater screen guaranteed it will look different
I have been working for a long time on this subject, but you've have been at it longer! It would be great for a video to show examples of how you arrived at your end point!
Bland vision3 film made for digital processing looks like digital yes. Try replicating the look of Kodachrome 25. That would be the easiest A/B blind test of all time. Sadly they don't make em like they used to.
I would like to ask a question related to the film vs digital topic. One of the main differences between the two is motion. 24p digital doesn't look like 24 frames shot on film at least to my eyes. It has a different feeling. Am I wrong?
I dont think it is the 24p that is the problem; I think the problem is the rolling shutter in many digital cameras. This will soon not be an issue with global shutter becoming the norm.
I think that for _movies,_ the difference is negligible and often not discernable unless it's paused on a single frame. There's simply too much happening on frame for the eye to ever conceivably pick up on. _However,_ for still photographs, I do think that there _is_ a "look" that is different. I don't know if it's the randomness of the grain that acts as sort of an "inherent anti-aliasing process" to make the image blend more organically, both on the edges of different things and just generally to blur things together, or if there's something else about it that's at play, here, but there is a difference. Of course, a crappy point and click film camera from the 90's will always have a bit of an edge with anyone old enough to remember actually using them, just because the crappy film photograph it spits out will fill most people with nostalgia for a time when _all_ photographs were somehow washed out from the overexposure that the little built-in flashbulb caused while simultaneously still being very poorly lit overall, had a lump of black with a skin-colored halo in the corner from where your finger covered part of the lens, and had your grandma grinning while staring back at you through the photo with glowing red eyes on loan from lucifer. Digital cameras will probably never cause this reaction in people unless some sort of completely different technology comes along to make the fundamental, core idea behind them obsolete.*** But if you take a photograph, side by side, with equivalent level equipment, then I think that there is a noticeable difference. However, once you get up into the crazy high resolutions/ film formats I think the difference goes away by a lot. For instance, a 16k digital image next to a film photograph on, IDK, some kind of stupidly large sheet film format, is going to have so much detail packed into the final image that you're never going to be able to tell the difference on any sort of print or display of reasonable size; you would have to either zoom in a lot or blow up the photo to an absurd size to really be able to see any distance, and this isn't really how most people look at their photographs. But for the low to average and even sometimes professional level photography, I think there's a difference. On the low end, I think that a crappy film camera just looks better than the blocky, weird mess that a crap digital camera will give you. On the average range and up, I think that the difference becomes more subjective. Also, if you're looking at just about any image on just a smartphone screen and not on a print or a decently-sized monitor, then the difference becomes mental. I don't care what anyone says, and I don't care if their phone has a 512k screen on it, you can't see the fucking difference. You just can't, it's way too small for those kinds of details to be even remotely visible when viewing them without zooming in. Oh, one other thing. Part of the difference that I think a lot of people mistake for inherent qualities is post-processing. Basically all smartphones do some sort of post-processing to convert your picture from RAW camera data into common image formats (almost always a jpeg). They do this on the fly as speeds that are honestly amazing. The big smartphone brands with repuations for good cameras pretty much all use some pretty advanced AI/ machine learning (or machine-leanring derived) processes to clean up your photos, and this post-processing is actually what makes the difference between a high-end phone camera and a shit one (and not the actual camera hardware... to a point). But these algorithms make decisions and clean up photos for you that are _fucking sorcery,_ as far as I'm concerned. I can't find the pictures anymore, mostly because I think the keywords are just un-searchable (AI, image, fail, mistake, etc...) and I don't remember the specifics, but there used to be a ton of articles out these describing the early failures of these algorithms when the kinks were still getting ironed out. They would do bonkers shit like add extra teeth inside of your teeth, replace your nostrils with mouths, and all kinds of other nightmare fuel stuff. It was rare, but when it did happen it always made for good tech news clickbait. But these algorithms didn't go away, they just got so good that they're invisible now. And I think all this digital post-processing that comes from the most common types of camera that most people use (in your phone) is part of what makes what most people think of as a "digital photo" feel so artificial. It's because _they are artificial._ They're images that are constructed by sophistocated algorithms that run invisibly on your phone between the camera sensor and your screen when you tap the little circle. But there is a big difference between a photo taken on your phone and one taken by a dedicated digital camera that can dump raw photo data for manual processing with a photo editor. Most people won't notice, wont care, and so wont bother, but I do think that there is something to the feeling of artificiality that can be felt from photos taken with a cell phone (because they're basically what Google, Samsung, Apple, etc... think your photo _should be_ based on the sensor inputs :P ) ***Well, OK, _maybe_ the horrible little cameras on early "feature phones" (you know, back when they were still called "camera phones" because having a camera on your cell phone _was not a given)_ might do this a bit, because there is a specificly terrible look to those phones that can't be easily brought back. You _can_ replicate it now, but it requires a bit of fiddling with the compression. Megapixels aren't everything, and a lot of what made older pictures so bad has a lot more to do with the fact that the algorithms for compressing photos down enough to send via text message/ MMS (or even just to store on the much smaller flash memory of the day) were way, way, _waaaay_ worse than what we have now. They were less efficient and worse quality than even the cheapest prepaid android on the shelf at the Dollar General, which is also why old youtube videos from the late 00's that are only available in 240p or 360p look so much worse than ones uploaded yesterday. The algorithms are just much, much better at squeezing more useful information into an image file without destroying important details. So, IDK, _maybe_ someone will get nostalgic for photos that look like they were taken with the same model of phone that was used to send you your first nude mirror shot; it's not outside the realm of possibility and people have become nostalgic for _far_ stupider shit.
I believe in your argument that if enough information is captured, you can achieve any look. I am curious though, which one is digital and which one is film. If my guess is correct, I think you might be able to achieve more film like highlight roll-off if you slightly desaturate the highlights in your processing of the digital video. Look at 7:00. But I think you pretty much achieved it already!
It isnt just about desaturating highlights; also desaturate shadows too. Black is supposed to be black and white is supposed to be white. This isnt a film vs digital thing; this is just a balanced image, color grading thing. Many digital cameras suffer from IR pollution and end up with red or magenta in their blacks which is a clear giveaway. Use an IRND or get an OLPF kit for your camera to help with that. People tend to forget that film that you see generally has a professional colorist in the chain who makes the image look pretty compared to digital which any old person puts online. Try viewing raw film scans and then realize it isnt that magical.
So I downloaded the full quality versions and took a screen grab of two simultaneous shots (actor by window). I then cropped and superimposed the actor over the other since there were slight variations in framing. When I toggle off one image to see the other underneath celluloid becomes apparent. The film image has more of a baked in or crossed process feel to it. The grain is also evident. The latitude between both images is nearly identical as seen in the two exposures (tree/daylight punching through background window behind actor’s interior). With that said, I do see banding in the shadow areas in the corner of the room which virtually does not exist in the film image. The color information is more evenly spread out. As someone mentioned the "gate weave" or slight rolling effect film stock has going through the camera does add a bit of romanticism to it. One is an electronic image simulating an analog look but I think we’ve gotten to the point where we’ve harnessed digital technology to no longer imitate film but become a medium unto itself. Also the film image is slightly softer but not losing any resolution (if that makes sense). For me film just feels more nostalgic even a bit fantasy. Digital looks more like reality. If I had to go with a "look" it would be film. If I had to go with cost/flexibility it would be digital. I think is one reason cinematographers like Roger Deakins (among many) are embracing the Arri. My final thought is that it is not one or the other: it is both. It’s all about the processing as noted in the video. What you do with the image.
Dan Cortes The reason that film looks softer yet just as detailed (if not more so) is because of the difference in the way the two mediums capture light and color. With digital, the innumerable beams of light being captured must be reduced and corralled into a fixed grid. This creates a very sharp image but throws away subtle detail, while also requiring heavy anti-aliasing filters (which are built into many cameras) that further reduce detail. Film on the other hand is an organic process. In color film specifically, there are 3 dye layers that each capture a separate color. The dyes blend into one another, creating a softer look. Grain is entirely random, as opposed to the rigidness of a digital imaging chip.
@@MrMahn21 Your theory falls apart when you realize that all scanned film footage is still mapped into that "grid" you mentioned. Film cases to be analog once scanned.
As of 2023 there's still some differences in the texture of the grain, where in the dynamic range the grain sits, and where the bulk of usable dynamic range is. But! It's far beyond the point where ticket sales or streaming viewership will vary. However at this moment 65mm and IMAX are a little bit beyond the total image quality available to digital cinematographers, but since we now have 12k digital the future looks bright.
i want to thank you for this. the debate of analog vs. digital is almost endless. what people fail to realize is that digital can emulate analog almost perfectly. it just depends how much time you're willing to put into post-production and preparing the scenes properly.
Exactly. People dont realize that once film is scanned, it is digital. There is no magic to it; it is simply binary data like everything else once on the hard drive.
That is an amazing piece of info. Is there any chance of chatting with you on how I could use your wisdom to apply to my video shot films so I can gain that film look, especially that beautiful Kodak film stock look. I have to say I am very impressed with what I saw on your video. Gave me hope for digital filming. I believe so much has been lost and I work hard to convince young film makers to study carefully those early films shot on real film and how beautiful those imagines are and what can be only achieved with film. At least that has been my experience thus far. Not to say that one is better than the other, they both have their place, but understanding how each can effect the visual impact can allow a cinematographer the tools to create exactly the imagine he wanted to convey Well done and thank you for your efforts
As a non-filmmaker, I feel like I don't have so much authority in this. Being a musician, there is a lot that contributes to the quality of the recording, so I'm assuming this medium would also follow suit. Upon visiting his website and viewing the video there (it is far more detailed than here on TH-cam), the footage on the left-hand side is *ever so slightly* more detailed. *ever so slightly*
It's the same as debate the tape recordings and analog consoles vs recording & mixing everything in a DAW. At the end of the day, the purists stay purists while the newer generation fully adopts the technology.
If most people on Earth are going to be viewing a movie either on a digital screen of a phone or an iPad or a flat screen tv, then does the slight differences really matter when you can't see them on the digital screen you're watching?
But you didn't have the film image as a reference to start with this exact colour match wouldn't be possible. If you shot the same angles but asked the colour grader to make the digital one look like film WITHOUT having the film version as reference there would be so much difference. This is basically frame fucking while grading till it's matched. I love both formats. This debate is silly. There will always be a difference. Shooting on film makes you work differently, only those who have experienced this will understand. xxxxxx
That's not what is being done here! Yedlin created a LUT which mathematically converts the digital signal into something that ressembles film. He does not adjust on a shot by shot basis, he mentions this in the video. His point is that once you have created this LUT (not an easy process and this does require the film stock for side by side comparisons) you no longer need the reference.
I love both, for what they can do but not so much when one tries too much to be the other and fail. It depends on the idea and the project, what it demands. But when one chooses digital ONLY for wider audience and to escape the hassle and hard work, then i hate it, because you're compromising your art. Or when you're trying to go film, but there is not much in the story and acting, then it's a waste. Also, to me, "dated" is not the word for art, because it's the subject and how well you can translate it to either medium, whether you draw on paper with a pencil or you get the pencil effect on photoshop, just about what the reason for using is and not to escape hard work. For example, movies like Found Footage, have a reason to be shot on VHS, if its about that camera. You can't shoot them on film unless the story is about a film camera footage, it serves no purpose. Just use the right medium. As for difference, there is a lot of difference and why shouldn't it be, those mediums are different and to me, trying to achieve the film look is a cheap stunt to escape film, just do what digital does best, for details and colors, but adding fake grains when your result is overly sharp, just looks like a mess. Unless you're like me who can't afford film, you can try the film look, but do it right, study and achieve, dont just slam a Lut and S curve it and add grain and call it a day. Use the right references to achieve the look you want and go into all the details, compare your shot with the one shot on film of a similar location, time and colors. But if your idea says shoot on film and you have the budget and a good story to earn it back, why be lazy and greedy and escape the work. Art is timeless and limitless, use whatever medium and never think that ANY format is bad, as long as you know its the right one for your idea and be true to it and dont sell out or use cheap ways to get fame and money, because that doesn't last long and in the end, how well your work is, will be memorable and you will thank yourself for it's lasting emotional impact
Saying "use film" makes no sense when you yourself admit that you cannot afford it. Truth is that film cameras are expensive, old, many are in bad repair, and require a whole host of other issues and supporting gear to accommodate properly. There arent even new film cameras being made for motion pictures so you will have to complete for the old stuff on eBay or from a rental house. Truth is that you didn't pay any attention to what Steve was saying because he was pointing out that the capture medium has less to do with it now than the prep. I imagine you couldn't tell the difference between what shots were film and which were the Alexa but you are in love with this fantasy notion of thinking that celluloid is "magical".
@@matthewphillips5483 Yeah i guess youre right, i was over emotional on the subject : D BY magical, i know what I mean though, but youre right a lot of the times i cant tell the difference, except some times
If you remembered what Steve said, if your camera captures enough information (not referring to resolution) you can prep it anyway you want to have any look you want. I would assume he’s referring to dynamic range, good color science and bit depth. The GH series is not enough, you need a high end cinema camera to emulate film.
I prefer film, but I would rather watch a movie with a great story on an iPad vs a mediocre movie, shot beautifully, on 35mm. Also, aren't movies being shot in 35mm being converted to digital and shown on digital projectors these days. Isn't something being lost in the conversion, anyway?
My budget computer monitor makes everything look bad. Video compression also makes everything look bad. It's a lossless vs lossy problem. Need a massive hardware upgrade to bring quality to the public.
Is there anyway you could share these digital film emulation as power grades, would absolutely love to deconstruct and have a look at how you got such an accurate representation?
@@gabrielzinho07_ Thank you very much, i'm definitely going to have a play around with this to see what I can produce. So you say your powergrade is expecting a colour managed clip e.g ARRI footage converted too rec-709 with a standerd colour space transform. Or that the entire project is in a managed colour space such as Davinci's Own.
@@gabrielzinho07_ Okay perfect cheers thank you, I am currently running some tests with my Blackmagic Camera shooting in 4K BRAW Gen 5. As the Powergrade is expecting the K1S1 LUT would a colour space transform from BRAW to ARRI Log C, then then the K1S1 LUT thrown in the pipeline, followed by a final noode for the YedLook poowergrade work, in my results the powergrade renders everything very cool. Any suggestions? I have tried Jaun Malaerez BMPCC4K to arri followed by your powergrade but I am getting a similar result.
Digital film camera is good. Only problem is high compression during recording. They should recorded at least 3000mbps to obtain higher contrast ratio like film. Currently most filmmakers records at 1000mbps due to ssd hardware restrictions. Ssd companies should work with filmmakers
The most incredible thing is that his display preparation is always exactly the same. Effectively his lut (et al) is the MOST accurate of all film print emulations.
@@gabrielzinho07_ Well most (if not all with very few exception) are selling a cheap xerox of film print emulation. Very rarely does someone get it in the genuine ballpark. Those variables you meantioned are all very easy to tell if they're organic or altered. Halation being the most obvious. It usually looks like someone has taken a colored marker to the edges of a subject, looking like a coloring book. It's surface level. Mr Yedlin actually hits every aspect perfectly.
@@gabrielzinho07_ in his display prep follow up he addresses those qualities you described. In this display prep though his intwnrion was to match what the filmstock was giving him, incidentally not much halation and not much of the other qualities were as intense either. They were all very subtle. But he does tinker with those elements in nuke by showing his algorithms turned on an off. The point being that he can mathematically approximate the intensity of the variables and have full control over them. These points are demonstrated clearly.
If you can watch a direct film print directly compared to all digital, the 3D look of film and 2D look of digital become VERY apparent. Pretty much everyone can see it.
Film prints are pretty...however, they have a down side. Not only are they extremely limiting in what you can do with them but printing causes generation loss. You make the neg and then you need to make dupe negs, print from the dupe neg, and each generation is degraded. Digital can be lossless.
This should have been titled, "How I color matched Alexa footage to look almost like film." Good illustration of how a film emulation LUT can sometimes make digital look like film. And how the LUT is great for scenes with little to no color and low contrast. However even in these scenes, the LUT inevitably fails as a large portion of the clips don't match. I'm guessing that the film footage also had a nudge or 2 to make it look similar to the Alexa.
I understand your point but I think it's limited in reality. Certain cameras DO have certain looks; just think of the thousands of videos you'll find of amateurs desperately trying to recreate the 'film look' on DSLRs and how de off they are. Despite purposely trying to emulate a film look they just any because it's too far from the cameras original look. So while I would agree that you can modify the look and you're not locked into presenting the image just in the way the manufacturer set up the camera, you can only deviate and modify this within a certain range, as opposed to being able to create ANY look.
Well thats not true because of mathematics; film is analogue and therefore the values are continuous, digital is discrete and therefore is limited by its bit depth. Take an extreme case of a camera that only captures in 1-bit i.e. either on or off. So each pixel is simply a 1 or a 0. The resulting footage could not be given the 'film look'; it simply wouldn't have the bit depth. Or a 4-bit image with 16 discrete brightness steps still could not capture the "film look". This differs from the analogue film which can take ANY value. Obviously these are extreme examples, but they show there must be some lower floor to the bit depth required to give the look, and also that the equipment CAN limit the ability to give the desired look. Consumer DSLRs typically record video in 8-bit which is fine for most uses, but doesn't grade nearly as well as say 12-bit cinema camera, which captures 16x as much information ie for every discrete 'jump' in 8-bit, the 12-bit camera can see 16 different shades in between which gives HUGE extra scope to grade and achieve the "film look".
You'e literally too stupid for words. You're saying the camera is not a limiting factor, and then list all the ways the camera IS a limiting factor. My point is that DSLR's will never accurately capture that 'film look'. Because they lack those capacities such as too low DR and bit depth and so on. Therefore NOT every camera can be made to look like it was shot on film. You try taking a 2010 mobile phone video and making pass for film. I think not. If the footage is too low quality from the camera then no amount of post production can fix it. Dumbass
I dont think you understand how digital technology works enough to speak on it. Saying "film is analogue" is true but not the whole story. Film that you view online is scanned in using a film scanner that has Analog/Digital converters. Once on your hard drive, the "film" is just a digital file; not different than anything else. If you view raw film scans (I have), they are low contrast and not that much different than a log file in a high quality digital cinema camera. In Resolve, you can apply a color transform that adds the Cinelog gamma curve and that "stretches" the film image out on the waveform and starts to give it shape. Then you taper your highlights and shadows, add your color saturation, and do any power windows, etc. Whatever you think is "magical" about film is probably a combination of film grain structure, uneven exposure on the emulsion due to vignetting, gate weave, soft focus, and film carrying more detail in highlights as opposed to shadows. Here, try a basic experiment...load some digital footage into Resolve and crank the Shadow detail up to max and lower the Highlight detail by about -30 to -40. You will already start to see how much different digital looks just from changing the emphasis of the image. It wont look completely like film but you begin to see where the differences are.
With all due respect Steve I have a problem with your demonstration. You fail to tell us which is which ??? Why did you do it that way Sir ? Would it not be more to the point to reveal which is which so that we have a *baseline* to the experiment ?
Thats the whole point of the video. The tools are there to get whatever look you want. There is really no objective better tool these days. Digital as basically caught up to 35mm in terms of both dynamic range, color handling and detail.
If you need to be told which is which then film is not inherently better. So many people here are sure that 35mm is better but could be choosing the Alexa without realizing it.
Why are both versions exhibiting gate weave? Digital should be absolutely steady. On my computer screen the split screen comparisons look the same in detail and color. Most of the ways anyone will see motion pictures now will be digital. Film is redundant. The 'Look' that everyone goes on about is ENTIRELY due to film's poor resolution of motion at 24fps. EVERY display method massages this to reduce flicker (projecting every frame twice optically or scanning with complex 'pulldown' methods for video) whereas digital motion cameras do not need any of this nonsense. In the early days of non linear editing, AVID etc, a trick to reduce storage and computer processing demands was to drop every other field and display video as if it were at 24/25 fps. Startlingly it looked immediately like it was shot on film. Similarly running a film through a Steenbeck at fast speed gave the impression that the screen was a TV tube rather than a back projection device. The other factor is that to get the film clips into a state to even make this video, they would have to be digitised using a telecine! I cannot understand why everyone goes on about the incredibly tiny difference (if any) of the way the image is resolved and yet ignore the glaringly obvious difference in motion resolution. You may like the stuttering flicker of film complete with its backwards rotating wagon wheels, but come on, digital is far superior and will be even more so in the future with cameras being able to record metadata, slow motion and very very long takes or being so small and lighr that can get POVs that a large camera cannot.. The latest natural history programs in the Attenborough series have shots that would be impossible on film and look stunning.
What you say has no substantial meaning. What quality are you talking about? Because if you’re talking about the qualities that make the photographic look that’s shown by print film (which is basically the photographic look of Lawrence of Arabia), these are all present in the demo.
@@VariTimo i mean both demo looks so modern.technicolors not same that.the classic film looks thick and rich.digital looks fine its hd but its over blown specialy at daytime shot.
Film is better than dightal main reason film better than dightal film can be rescan in future if 35k come out digital camera are good as it get u can not make in 35k in future for example I shot film in 1999 and dightal I can make film 8k video were the dightal on can not
Let’s say Steve is correct. Let’s say you could develop a custom algorithm/pipeline using some complex math to prep digitally acquired images for a photochemical “look”. Im not sure who Steve made this video for. Certainly not for the consumer, who could never afford a professional post house to make them custom algorithms to match film attributes like grain, gate weave, halation, focus blur etc. And certainly not for DP’s who work in Hollywood with major budgets. Please tell me why a DP with a 200 million dollar budget would learn or pay for someone to develop a complex mathematical program/algorithm/machine learning to match an Alexa 65 to a Film Camera? Wouldn’t it be easier to just outright use the film camera instead of trying to emulate it if they really wanted the “film look”? This makes no sense.
TLDR: Film emulation LUTs are used widely both for small filmakers and big studios and are easily available if you look for them These mathematical equations are called LUTs. Basically, Hue, Saturation, and Luminance are mapped out as 3 vectors and thought of as a Matrix. You can then mathematically bend and shape this matrix. People use LUTs all the time, from small filmmakers like myself or big studios (both display and grading) - and there are lots of extremely high quality film emulation LUTs available for the general public.
ok, if this is a video film comparison, I felt one side appeared like a tv/video production, the other appears as art and story with richer colors (Film) more depth
Both have this horrible Orange and Teal look. When will this madness stop? Hollywood uses it ad nauseam and I can't see it anymore. People look like plastic puppets and blood looks purple.
I applaud you on your work and your efforts but to be really honest it didn't feel the same. The film clearly was more enjoyable except in that night shot which showed an empty alley. Still it was close and very insightful.
@@baskenmannzwei1234 Nah. Even if there isn't any objective, quantifiable reason that film _should_ look better than digital -- it just does. Same with music recorded to tape. It's "inferior" technology that shouldn't sound better but it just does. Some things just can't be explained.
@@Skrenja It is distinctive in his look, although there are ways to emulate it (like Dehancer). It's also highly subjective to say what's looking better.
@@baskenmannzwei1234 you think I´m zeolots, may be... I´m zeolots of film, I understand the technoloy advances in the movies, I lived other times, the 70mm, the Cinemascope, and I love those time, which does not mean that I deny current technology and digital cinema, what I published is simply an opinion, I can be wrong especially for the new generations, it's just my point of view, just that... to summarize: I admire the new technologies, I know them, but my preference in terms of cinema is the one I published.
Guys 2 years ago i was an idiot, i dont know why i disliked this video, but my poin of view has changed and so did i, i actually think it is very good and important video, however i still dont get the Numbers, if they are there than a short explanation would be very helpful. Have a great day 👍
In case you guys didn't realize, Steve Yedlin, the cinematographer who made this demo, is the cinematographer for most of Rian Johnson's movies. He was the cinematographer on Brick, Looper, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and Knives Out. He created more discussion on the film vs. digital debate with Knives Out since that entire movie was shot on digital but was edited to have the visual look of film.
It didn't really look like film though. This example too. Looks way too orange and tealy to me. Seems like today's movies which make the actors look like plastic puppets and blood look purple. When I think good film look I think of Blade Runner.
@@EbonyPopeDefinitely looks like film, because film doesn’t have 1 look to it and is only a small part of the equation. This test looks pretty similar to Looper.
@@EbonyPopeWhat you’re describing is neither a characteristic of film nor digital. And like he said, although you might notice a slight difference, it’s only something that makes a difference when you look at it side by side.
@@EbonyPopeThe Last Jedi is shot on film and digital but you will never notice when that switch happens because the difference is minimal.
@@akelindstrom1786 It isn't a difference inherent to digital I know. But it is a trend to color grade especially digital movies this way. Hence my suspicion.
Damn, just saw the crew credits of this camera test. RIP Halyna Hutchins.
One of the strongest characteristics in film that I've noticed (and that I cannot find strong evidence of with any google search) that no one seems to talk about is, how with film, I can see the slight vibrations in the footage, akin to the actual roll of film moving through the shutter, which causes these slight imperfections in steadiness especially noticeable in stable shots. I think this is one of the most beautiful aspects that I can notice myself. The way the roll of film is never going to move completely straight at that speed, causing these slight, imperfectly perfect, random vibrations.
There's also a way in which the highlights roll off in film a little differently compared to digital (noticed this in the hairline shots), but I can't quite put my finger on it. Another small one is how there are blips of light changes for 1 single frame, or a random dot in one frame, or a brightness/contrast change. But with higher quality productions that's hardly noticeable.
This isn't to say I prefer one over the other. I love both mediums respectfully.
I mention this here because I've not seen one person bring this up. To me, this is the most distinguishable and beautiful factor of analog film. I hope someone else has noticed this as well.
4FrameMusic It's called gate weave. I thought I was the only one who liked the look of it because many cinematographers seem to hate it. Wish it could be created digitally
martrese14 Wow, thanks for the info! Guess you're not the only one now. So glad you helped. Going to do more research on this.
LOL, I add simulated gate weave in after affects with motion blur turned on, to my a7sii and GH5 footage to give it a slightly softer film look. I feel it gives it a more organic look and takes off the harsh 'video' sharpness.
4FrameMusic yedlin actually wrote about gate weave on his site: he definitely takes it into consideration
Yes! in simplest terms film looks like a monument where as digital is just an image,to me at least. Digital is great for Indys TV news etc. But for telling a timeless story film is it,and quite simply if i want to draw and color a picture i can do it on my pc,but crayons markers pencils are still widely available. it should be that way with FILM it should always exist and be and be an option. i am hoping the increased use continues and more companies besides kodak rise to the forefront of development as well.
I am seeing this with a lot of compression artifacts. I would need a 4k version of this to really see how good any of it looks on my editing screen.
check description
I think I can tell which one is film because of the halation on the film emulsion, which digital sensors don't exhibit (as strongly). It is more apparent on 16mm film and outright stylized on 8mm due to the spread of the light being more or less constant in distance related to the brightness difference of the adjacent areas.
For example, at 5:20 you can see an orange/red glow around in the kitchen light most pointed at the camera in 0122323 which is not nearly as present in 0768455. The effect occurs naturally on digital sensors for a different reason, and can be simulated quite easily in post-production, so if the colorist has taken that into consideration, they might have fooled me.
The Arri Alexa captures motion almost exactly the same as film, and the colors are the closest I've seen from any other camera. I think most digital sensors have the most trouble capturing the red channel in a way that film does, given the "boost" film gets from halation, and this is why skin tones in films before the 1990s had a bias towards magenta, giving faces a "rosy" glow.
Man I love Steve Yedlin. In a world where everyone is constantly presenting their biases as facts, he bases his opinions on what actually makes a physical difference and what doesn’t at that.
I understood none of this.
THEDARKKNIGHT1939 basically, the most important part of getting a certain "look" is not from the camera itself, but rather how you prepare he image before it is show.
Yeah, I had to rewatch it again to understand it more. But I wish he talked about how he prepares the scene to get the look of film. Apparently it's more than just color grading.
THEDARKKNIGHT1939 from what I've noticed, it seems to be mostly in the lighting. Getting the intensity of the light on the subject just right, but also making sure the background isn't completely dead, even though it's out of focus and you're shooting something that looks very natural. Meter everything, basically. Cinematographers take readings with their meters of pretty much everything that's seen on camera. I learned on the set of a TV show that that's how they get those extremely intricate, seemingly needless grip and lighting setups we see in behind the scenes photos of movies and tv shows. For example, setups that have the bottom half of a light scrimmed and the top diffused or gelled, 18x24 white fabric with a black strip down the middle on the far wall with a small fixture shining on it, etc. That small, seemingly needless stuff really takes your image higher than the next level.
It doesn't seem like there are differences in lighting between the shots. The Alexa shots were 'prepared' in post, so yes a lot of that was the grading (straight out of camera it is extremely flat and looks nothing like film, it absolutely needs to be graded.) I don't think he changed the lighting as part of his preparation for either camera, i.e. making it more cinematic when switching to the Alexa to match the film look. It's not clear how intensive the actual lighting was here; though there are some 'cinematic' shots (we can even debate what that means exactly. Films have had such a variety of definitive looks over the years), most of it is motivated lighting, except for shots like the one @6:28 but even then it's rather simple. Not knocking it, I really like it! Just saying it's not as much of that 'film look' that some productions go for, not as stylistic. In some cases though this lighting is extremely cinematic but also very natural, which would totally work for a piece of cinema. Shooting this same lighting with an old 5D Mark 2 or even a GoPro it wouldn't look nearly as good nor as cinematic, even with the best possible grading (those shadowed highlighted areas wouldn't contain as much detail as the Alexa or 35mm). It is amazing though how similar they look, especially since he said he graded it as he normally would and without the 35mm footage in mind. I've heard that the Alexa is often the camera of choice from cinematographers who started in film because it behaves more like 35mm etc. than the other cinema cameras. Haven't used it myself yet.
It has nothing to do with lighting. He is talking about matching digital Alexa footage to analog film. It’s a mathematical transformation done to the raw Alexa camera footage to turn it into film. Lighting plays an important part in the story telling through images, but has nothing to do with this.
This experimentation is very interesting and I respect all the time and effort put into it, but it is not an evidence that you can emulate all film stocks with digital cameras. Steve Yedlin used the Kodak Vision 3 stock, which is the film that look the most like digital.
I think that would be more interesting to try to emulate older film stocks like all the Eastman, Eastman EXR or Vision1 printed into 5384 for exemple. To me that's those film stocks that really stand appart and shine. Movies like Jackie Brown, Pulp Fiction, Alien, Star Wars IV, V & VI, Terminator 2, Full Metal Jacket, 2001, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, Back to the Future, Titanic, Jurassic Park, The Darjeeling Limited, Apocalypse Now, The X-Files, LOST, and the list goes on.......
They have a look that cannot be reproduce today (even with the modern motion picture film Vision3), contrasty, saturated, well seperated tones and colors, very bright look but very natural and smooth and deep blacks. I miss these characteristics a lot.
If you don't know what I'm talking about you can watch Jackie Brown and the first scene of Star Wars IV with C3PO and R2D2 in the white spaceship interrior.
I hope that one day we will be able to reproduce that, or that kodak will release a new film more like the older ones, but I'm not very optimistic.
That being said, I love digital cameras and how they look as well, but not for this kind of aesthetic and more for a look that older film stocks couldn't create.
Of course it can be reproduced. It's not magic. As long as you could get the film stocks, which is the big if, then it can be done.
He has built this one specific pipeline because that's what he likes. If you want to emulate other film stocks, feel free to research for yourself and make your own. It's color science, and it's a wonderful rabbit-hole to dive into but it's certainly not magic. As long as you're capturing enough information (which most high-end cameras do these days), it's up to you to interpret the data. I think instead of mystifying the photo-chemical process (which is fascinating), I'd rather try to figure out what's happening under the hood in order to recreate it through modern digital methods. That question is far more interesting in my opinion. We can probably achieve it, it's just that no one is as determined as Steve Yedlin to actually go through with it (although many colorists around the world are achieving it very accurately).
Im using the vision 3 film for stills on a medium format camera , and i must say that this film look to me very mach like the old film stocks , i can get in post proces the AMAZING colors and contrast of the old eastmen , with a good scanner the ability of strching this film to what ever direction you want is amazing , the latitude of it is so good , im sure even the arri alexa 65 cant get such a good ditails on the hige lights , if you controll your hige lights with this film you can get an ultra realistic middle of the day harsh light in a beautiful way , i never saw any thing like this in digital , i think the way film capture highe light making a big differnt from digital... may be i miss somthing but from wgat i saw till now there is no any movie shoot on digital that have lets say the light on LAWRENCE OF ARABIA , so you can say no one want to get this look , i think its bulsheet ...
Here at this video it feels that he took the film to look like the digital , a good test will be the oposite .
We need in depth videos of those filmic characteristics you learned!!!
The definition of lights and shadows of the film is unparalleled, I hope that the films will continue shooting with analog film.
For a long time digital has been better in low light, they had to shoot Collateral in digital as it was mostly a night film th-cam.com/video/-vz-2oKIBO8/w-d-xo.html
Which one is 35mm are we suppose to guess?
Watch it and listen.
Listen and you'll understand... But tbh TH-cam compression ruins this a little
at the end on 7:12 i think the one on the right with this number 7537462 is the digital camera and the one on the left is the film camera, they look different, the way you move is more smooth on the right and on the left side looks like a higher contrast.
The "look", it's actually the cinematographer's look to me. To me one of the best shot movies lately is The Revenant. All digital, not even trying to look like real film, and is gorgeous, a real work of art. It came in the same year as The Hateful 8, shot on film, another great work from R. Richardson, but cinematography is so much more than choosing sensors or film stock
I love the look of film. Always have
If I were a director, it would be a no brainer what i’d use
You, your voice and articulation, this test and even your suggestion to watch without sound....it's just, well, so beautiful. Like listening to Chopin and thinking about how the actual fuck he came up with Fantasie Impromptu Op 66. It's like you're tapped into a true mastery and focus that effortlessly cuts through the times - more precisely, it cuts through the bullshit. Thank you, you legend :) Nicely shot BTW!
Fantastic. Thank you for your hard work. I wish not to compare either one of the mediums but it does make me happy to see how both stand well along one another.
Wow, Halyna Hutchins helped out with this video. Rest In Peace…
In my opinion this contribution is more about the aesthetic & philosophical aspects of what the medium can do/ mean. However, I think it is very difficult to filter out the digital or to make film digital. It is hard to find a certain look / define a character / or a soul of the medium. As far as I know, I think the digital is still far from nicely developed. Only more developed (as far as my knowledge reachs) digital cameras are beginning to understand the medium. That is why it is also challenging to find and capture a good character or an image with it. I believe more has to be thought over before something is put on the market, and I am happy this video for me shows. So, thank you.
This man FULLY fooled me with Knives Out, I 100% believed that film was shot on film
I feel like i just watched a scene from a Movie where the Scientist character explains the Secret he's been hiding from the Goverment or something haha... This is absolutely BRILLIANT and i'm so thankful a video comparison like this exists.
Thank you Steven Yedlin; may you never read this, you are a Genius, and My Favorite Cinematographer of the current Era, i can see and FEEL how this techniques were applied to KNIVES OUT as it was entirety shot on digitally and did NOT look any less filmic or 'cinematic' as if it was shot on film stock. Bravo 🙌✨🎥
In the years since this test was done, more and more digital cinema cameras have started to produce images that are ALMOST on par with the Alexa (and with higher resolution). Arri themselves have released the Alexa 35 that unquestionably has more dynamic range than film ever has. I will always love many of the visual characteristics we tend to associate with film but workflow of digital is ultimately much more important to me. I like telling stories with moving pictures. I like working with a DP to craft a look and working with actors to craft a performance. I like the creative stuff so I want the workflow that lets me be more creative. It's the same reason why buying a graphics tablet helped me re-discover my love of hand-drawn/painted art. I know many artists who still find drawing on paper to be a more rewarding workflow and to each his/her own. I just think we should realize how fortunate we are that modern tools have allow us to have such varied and flexible workflows.
Excellent video.
I'm a c100 mark ii user myself, and I too feel these days filmmakers prep to enhance the digital aspects of cameras, as opposed to what i consider the more aesthetically pleasing look that comes from film.
Subscribing!
Amazing points made.
Traditional films had limited processing options, and people made peace with it, therefore not accepting the new solutions.
I really like the idea, that the specs are what truely count.
And i agree with the aesthetics of traditional films now, with the note, that this mainly comes from being used to that look.
I think that this will change over time, as artistic expression could dull down, or enhance colors by intention. And I believe that as the film image is mainly visual sensory stimulation, more stimulation, finer, more realistic images, even stepping to an unreal range will be the way to go.
Thank you for your video.
Emulating film is almost the same as emulating tape in the audio world. You can get a song to sound _pretty much_ exactly like it was recorded on tape and analogue gear -- it's just a lot of effort and is _usually_ just a tiny bit "off" from the real thing.
All my favorite looking movies are shot on film. However, I am open to the possibility that may be just down to the approach of shooting on film and not the medium itself. I recognize that the gap between the mediums is getting smaller all the time. However, I still think digital cameras have a few years before they can completely emulate film -- even if the specs or tech nerds say otherwise.
In my experience, I can almost always spot a movie shot on 35mm -- even if tests like this make it very difficult to spot the differences.
If you prep for any Capture Format, anything can be done to play within the limits of each format and match everything. But film is going to have that intrinsic characteristic of overexposing the negative in a way that even an Alexa will clip, and then under develop with less time in all the photo chemical processes to acquire pitch perfect and detailed (with correct color information) highlights rolling off to natural and tangible (without artifacts) specular, more so with the sun on frame (at every time of the day). In controlled lighting TAKES this is a no brainer, but in long takes with only natural light, like in Terrence Malick films (ex:The Tree Of Life), there is a huge difference. And in 15 perf 65mm IMAX, the under develop technique is going to give astronomic differences. But yeah, sure, I too love digital work arounds because I don't have big budgets. Nevertheless every time I shot sunsets at the beach with the sun on frame summed to talent, back ground and foreground, I wish I had film. And I don't say that digital is the worst for that, I'm just clarifying the science underneath. Now, for low light that's another matter, and that's where I love digital the most. Fincher was before Yedlin in that matter, because he worked in matte photography on The Last Jedi before directing Alien 3, and he broke all the rules more than even George Lucas, only that is not noticeable at first glance. Though Yedlin is very important in the "Open Source" filming community, and Fincher is a bit more hermetic.
For me Alexa did really good job with digital so its harder to say, but if it was Red cam or any other digital camera it would be much easier guess.
tho I preferd the shots that were more in a green tone mostly visible in white areas. Wonder if it was digital or film.. Cause digital Alexa has also quite more green look.
@@pochcalpadlos Yes, the LogC Rec709 Lut is slightly greenish on the AlevIII. Edit: Nothing you can't fix though. So I still can't be sure which is which.
So which one is Film and which on is the Alexa?
Exactly! It seems like you have to shoot 16mm to show off that you're shooting film, because 35mm looks identical to the Alexa, at least it does to me.
in my opinion, at 7.03 : the right box is digital. the left box is identifiable as film for the quality of grain and light render (imho, see it better in the blu-ray version on Yedlin's website)
Digitization to 1080p sure doesn't help any.
@@SimoneBuono I would think the one on the right is film because of increased color variety and blending.
@@spokzac12 i was referring only for the frame at 7.03 , did u?
Excellent video. Kudos. I was looking for something like this and really appreciate what you said. That is not always the look we should focus on but can the enough of the right kind of data be captured and prepared for the look we ultimately want. Thanks.
I love this so much! Can you go over the process/algorithm you applied on the Alexa? That would be awesome!
To anyone who wants to know "which clip is which": If film looks much better, you should be able to tell. There are only seven different shots, so which ones are film? No seriously, go ahead...
Truth is...they dont know. I used to be a "film purist" and it really messes with your head. You start to build film up as this mystical thing and it gets to the point where even modern film doesnt look like film anymore. Film isnt even a real thing but just some unreachable goal. Seriously, just shoot film and realize the frustrations with it and you will beg to come back to the beautiful rock steadiness of digital.
Almost impossible to tell on TH-cam. However, put it uncompressed on a big screen and I could tell you.
@@Skrenja There's a high quality uncompressed version on Yedlin's site, linked in the description here. Most movie projectors are only 1080p (or 2K) unless advertised as otherwise, so even a typical computer screen can give you the same viewing clarity in full screen. Please give the video a watch and let me know what you think each shot is
4:05 You may only be one person to the world but you may be the world to one person.
Both look identical quality
Ehh no…
sorry they do… you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference if you didn’t know. So I haven’t watched this in a while and I’ve randomly paused at 1:09. So you genuinely think there’s a difference between those two shots in the production?… cos they look the same to me. If I were to guess it’d be completely 50/50
@@latenightlogic the body and shirt have very different textures if you look closely
so this has been a source of alot of debate over the years and you really cannot do it justice with youtube compression on here, i'd encourage everyone to view it in the original source linked in the description here
basically, even with this display prep demo shot on 35mm vs alexa (which is known to have the most "filmic" sensors), you can tell the difference if you have a trained eye, but steve is right to an extent that most audiences will not be able to tell the difference. They are extremely subtle but the skin tone reproduction on film is simply unmatched no matter what holy shitfuck digital sensor you use, the gradual blending and the rolloff in the density of the colors feels incredibly natural on film while less so on digital. Also when these images are blown up on a theater screen guaranteed it will look different
Pls do a test of 70mm film camera vs wide angle modern cameras
I have been working for a long time on this subject, but you've have been at it longer! It would be great for a video to show examples of how you arrived at your end point!
and this was more than 5 years ago...
Bland vision3 film made for digital processing looks like digital yes. Try replicating the look of Kodachrome 25. That would be the easiest A/B blind test of all time. Sadly they don't make em like they used to.
I would like to ask a question related to the film vs digital topic. One of the main differences between the two is motion. 24p digital doesn't look like 24 frames shot on film at least to my eyes. It has a different feeling. Am I wrong?
I dont think it is the 24p that is the problem; I think the problem is the rolling shutter in many digital cameras. This will soon not be an issue with global shutter becoming the norm.
I think that for _movies,_ the difference is negligible and often not discernable unless it's paused on a single frame. There's simply too much happening on frame for the eye to ever conceivably pick up on. _However,_ for still photographs, I do think that there _is_ a "look" that is different. I don't know if it's the randomness of the grain that acts as sort of an "inherent anti-aliasing process" to make the image blend more organically, both on the edges of different things and just generally to blur things together, or if there's something else about it that's at play, here, but there is a difference. Of course, a crappy point and click film camera from the 90's will always have a bit of an edge with anyone old enough to remember actually using them, just because the crappy film photograph it spits out will fill most people with nostalgia for a time when _all_ photographs were somehow washed out from the overexposure that the little built-in flashbulb caused while simultaneously still being very poorly lit overall, had a lump of black with a skin-colored halo in the corner from where your finger covered part of the lens, and had your grandma grinning while staring back at you through the photo with glowing red eyes on loan from lucifer. Digital cameras will probably never cause this reaction in people unless some sort of completely different technology comes along to make the fundamental, core idea behind them obsolete.***
But if you take a photograph, side by side, with equivalent level equipment, then I think that there is a noticeable difference. However, once you get up into the crazy high resolutions/ film formats I think the difference goes away by a lot. For instance, a 16k digital image next to a film photograph on, IDK, some kind of stupidly large sheet film format, is going to have so much detail packed into the final image that you're never going to be able to tell the difference on any sort of print or display of reasonable size; you would have to either zoom in a lot or blow up the photo to an absurd size to really be able to see any distance, and this isn't really how most people look at their photographs. But for the low to average and even sometimes professional level photography, I think there's a difference. On the low end, I think that a crappy film camera just looks better than the blocky, weird mess that a crap digital camera will give you. On the average range and up, I think that the difference becomes more subjective.
Also, if you're looking at just about any image on just a smartphone screen and not on a print or a decently-sized monitor, then the difference becomes mental. I don't care what anyone says, and I don't care if their phone has a 512k screen on it, you can't see the fucking difference. You just can't, it's way too small for those kinds of details to be even remotely visible when viewing them without zooming in.
Oh, one other thing. Part of the difference that I think a lot of people mistake for inherent qualities is post-processing. Basically all smartphones do some sort of post-processing to convert your picture from RAW camera data into common image formats (almost always a jpeg). They do this on the fly as speeds that are honestly amazing. The big smartphone brands with repuations for good cameras pretty much all use some pretty advanced AI/ machine learning (or machine-leanring derived) processes to clean up your photos, and this post-processing is actually what makes the difference between a high-end phone camera and a shit one (and not the actual camera hardware... to a point). But these algorithms make decisions and clean up photos for you that are _fucking sorcery,_ as far as I'm concerned. I can't find the pictures anymore, mostly because I think the keywords are just un-searchable (AI, image, fail, mistake, etc...) and I don't remember the specifics, but there used to be a ton of articles out these describing the early failures of these algorithms when the kinks were still getting ironed out. They would do bonkers shit like add extra teeth inside of your teeth, replace your nostrils with mouths, and all kinds of other nightmare fuel stuff. It was rare, but when it did happen it always made for good tech news clickbait. But these algorithms didn't go away, they just got so good that they're invisible now. And I think all this digital post-processing that comes from the most common types of camera that most people use (in your phone) is part of what makes what most people think of as a "digital photo" feel so artificial. It's because _they are artificial._ They're images that are constructed by sophistocated algorithms that run invisibly on your phone between the camera sensor and your screen when you tap the little circle. But there is a big difference between a photo taken on your phone and one taken by a dedicated digital camera that can dump raw photo data for manual processing with a photo editor. Most people won't notice, wont care, and so wont bother, but I do think that there is something to the feeling of artificiality that can be felt from photos taken with a cell phone (because they're basically what Google, Samsung, Apple, etc... think your photo _should be_ based on the sensor inputs :P )
***Well, OK, _maybe_ the horrible little cameras on early "feature phones" (you know, back when they were still called "camera phones" because having a camera on your cell phone _was not a given)_ might do this a bit, because there is a specificly terrible look to those phones that can't be easily brought back. You _can_ replicate it now, but it requires a bit of fiddling with the compression. Megapixels aren't everything, and a lot of what made older pictures so bad has a lot more to do with the fact that the algorithms for compressing photos down enough to send via text message/ MMS (or even just to store on the much smaller flash memory of the day) were way, way, _waaaay_ worse than what we have now. They were less efficient and worse quality than even the cheapest prepaid android on the shelf at the Dollar General, which is also why old youtube videos from the late 00's that are only available in 240p or 360p look so much worse than ones uploaded yesterday. The algorithms are just much, much better at squeezing more useful information into an image file without destroying important details. So, IDK, _maybe_ someone will get nostalgic for photos that look like they were taken with the same model of phone that was used to send you your first nude mirror shot; it's not outside the realm of possibility and people have become nostalgic for _far_ stupider shit.
Yes you are correct that’s why even some no name phones use a relatively high end sensor but still have photos that are not good.
I believe in your argument that if enough information is captured, you can achieve any look.
I am curious though, which one is digital and which one is film. If my guess is correct, I think you might be able to achieve more film like highlight roll-off if you slightly desaturate the highlights in your processing of the digital video. Look at 7:00. But I think you pretty much achieved it already!
It isnt just about desaturating highlights; also desaturate shadows too. Black is supposed to be black and white is supposed to be white. This isnt a film vs digital thing; this is just a balanced image, color grading thing. Many digital cameras suffer from IR pollution and end up with red or magenta in their blacks which is a clear giveaway. Use an IRND or get an OLPF kit for your camera to help with that. People tend to forget that film that you see generally has a professional colorist in the chain who makes the image look pretty compared to digital which any old person puts online. Try viewing raw film scans and then realize it isnt that magical.
@@matthewphillips5483 Colorists are key
So I downloaded the full quality versions and took a screen grab of two simultaneous shots (actor by window). I then cropped and superimposed the actor over the other since there were slight variations in framing.
When I toggle off one image to see the other underneath celluloid becomes apparent. The film image has more of a baked in or crossed process feel to it. The grain is also evident. The latitude between both images is nearly identical as seen in the two exposures (tree/daylight punching through background window behind actor’s interior).
With that said, I do see banding in the shadow areas in the corner of the room which virtually does not exist in the film image. The color information is more evenly spread out. As someone mentioned the "gate weave" or slight rolling effect film stock has going through the camera does add a bit of romanticism to it. One is an electronic image simulating an analog look but I think we’ve gotten to the point where we’ve harnessed digital technology to no longer imitate film but become a medium unto itself.
Also the film image is slightly softer but not losing any resolution (if that makes sense). For me film just feels more nostalgic even a bit fantasy. Digital looks more like reality. If I had to go with a "look" it would be film. If I had to go with cost/flexibility it would be digital. I think is one reason cinematographers like Roger Deakins (among many) are embracing the Arri. My final thought is that it is not one or the other: it is both. It’s all about the processing as noted in the video. What you do with the image.
Dan Cortes The reason that film looks softer yet just as detailed (if not more so) is because of the difference in the way the two mediums capture light and color.
With digital, the innumerable beams of light being captured must be reduced and corralled into a fixed grid. This creates a very sharp image but throws away subtle detail, while also requiring heavy anti-aliasing filters (which are built into many cameras) that further reduce detail.
Film on the other hand is an organic process. In color film specifically, there are 3 dye layers that each capture a separate color. The dyes blend into one another, creating a softer look. Grain is entirely random, as opposed to the rigidness of a digital imaging chip.
@@MrMahn21 Your theory falls apart when you realize that all scanned film footage is still mapped into that "grid" you mentioned. Film cases to be analog once scanned.
Based on what I've just seen, the pb is that film feels more 3D to me. Everything else, I can role with.
As of 2023 there's still some differences in the texture of the grain, where in the dynamic range the grain sits, and where the bulk of usable dynamic range is. But! It's far beyond the point where ticket sales or streaming viewership will vary. However at this moment 65mm and IMAX are a little bit beyond the total image quality available to digital cinematographers, but since we now have 12k digital the future looks bright.
Which was which? They aren’t labeled
I don’t understand why some crap about grading etc. gets millions of views and something like this is on mere thousands
Excellent comparation.
I prefer digital just because of the post production workflow. Sue me.
No fault there. Digital workflow is much easier to deal with.
I was dialing that telephone number right down corner, but nobody hanged on. 😮
Find a ML guy to help you and you can get pretty close to a universal film emulation transformation
Yeah I wonder why this hasn’t been done. Or has it? It would seem to be a fairly easy thing to train.
Out of curiosity, was this shot in Los Angeles? The scene at 2:42 looks like typical LA to me; palm tree, Dodge Dart parked next to a Lexus.
Yes
which one is film and which one is digital
i want to thank you for this. the debate of analog vs. digital is almost endless. what people fail to realize is that digital can emulate analog almost perfectly. it just depends how much time you're willing to put into post-production and preparing the scenes properly.
Exactly. People dont realize that once film is scanned, it is digital. There is no magic to it; it is simply binary data like everything else once on the hard drive.
@@matthewphillips5483 an unprinted film roll looks like log footage
This dude is shooting the Last Jedi and I'm pumped.
Jacob Scoggins Films
Shitty movie. Star Wars has turned into SJWars and ruined by disney...even more after the crappy prequels.
@@GackZalifinakis but cinematography was great
aaaaand, it was shit.
That is an amazing piece of info. Is there any chance of chatting with you on how I could use your wisdom to apply to my video shot films so I can gain that film look, especially that beautiful Kodak film stock look. I have to say I am very impressed with what I saw on your video. Gave me hope for digital filming.
I believe so much has been lost and I work hard to convince young film makers to study carefully those early films shot on real film and how beautiful those imagines are and what can be only achieved with film. At least that has been my experience thus far. Not to say that one is better than the other, they both have their place, but understanding how each can effect the visual impact can allow a cinematographer the tools to create exactly the imagine he wanted to convey
Well done and thank you for your efforts
As a non-filmmaker, I feel like I don't have so much authority in this. Being a musician, there is a lot that contributes to the quality of the recording, so I'm assuming this medium would also follow suit. Upon visiting his website and viewing the video there (it is far more detailed than here on TH-cam), the footage on the left-hand side is *ever so slightly* more detailed. *ever so slightly*
It's the same as debate the tape recordings and analog consoles vs recording & mixing everything in a DAW. At the end of the day, the purists stay purists while the newer generation fully adopts the technology.
If most people on Earth are going to be viewing a movie either on a digital screen of a phone or an iPad or a flat screen tv, then does the slight differences really matter when you can't see them on the digital screen you're watching?
I know this much, with the digital version, I'm not going to see dust, debris, and yellow spots all over the print.
8128430 - I can bet that it is film. It's just gold to my eyes.
How is it different from the one after that?
bruh there's no scene with that number in it? did we watch the same video lmao
I understood none of this but it is interesting
But you didn't have the film image as a reference to start with this exact colour match wouldn't be possible. If you shot the same angles but asked the colour grader to make the digital one look like film WITHOUT having the film version as reference there would be so much difference. This is basically frame fucking while grading till it's matched.
I love both formats. This debate is silly. There will always be a difference. Shooting on film makes you work differently, only those who have experienced this will understand. xxxxxx
That's not what is being done here! Yedlin created a LUT which mathematically converts the digital signal into something that ressembles film. He does not adjust on a shot by shot basis, he mentions this in the video. His point is that once you have created this LUT (not an easy process and this does require the film stock for side by side comparisons) you no longer need the reference.
I love both, for what they can do but not so much when one tries too much to be the other and fail. It depends on the idea and the project, what it demands. But when one chooses digital ONLY for wider audience and to escape the hassle and hard work, then i hate it, because you're compromising your art. Or when you're trying to go film, but there is not much in the story and acting, then it's a waste. Also, to me, "dated" is not the word for art, because it's the subject and how well you can translate it to either medium, whether you draw on paper with a pencil or you get the pencil effect on photoshop, just about what the reason for using is and not to escape hard work.
For example, movies like Found Footage, have a reason to be shot on VHS, if its about that camera. You can't shoot them on film unless the story is about a film camera footage, it serves no purpose. Just use the right medium.
As for difference, there is a lot of difference and why shouldn't it be, those mediums are different and to me, trying to achieve the film look is a cheap stunt to escape film, just do what digital does best, for details and colors, but adding fake grains when your result is overly sharp, just looks like a mess. Unless you're like me who can't afford film, you can try the film look, but do it right, study and achieve, dont just slam a Lut and S curve it and add grain and call it a day. Use the right references to achieve the look you want and go into all the details, compare your shot with the one shot on film of a similar location, time and colors. But if your idea says shoot on film and you have the budget and a good story to earn it back, why be lazy and greedy and escape the work.
Art is timeless and limitless, use whatever medium and never think that ANY format is bad, as long as you know its the right one for your idea and be true to it and dont sell out or use cheap ways to get fame and money, because that doesn't last long and in the end, how well your work is, will be memorable and you will thank yourself for it's lasting emotional impact
Saying "use film" makes no sense when you yourself admit that you cannot afford it. Truth is that film cameras are expensive, old, many are in bad repair, and require a whole host of other issues and supporting gear to accommodate properly. There arent even new film cameras being made for motion pictures so you will have to complete for the old stuff on eBay or from a rental house. Truth is that you didn't pay any attention to what Steve was saying because he was pointing out that the capture medium has less to do with it now than the prep. I imagine you couldn't tell the difference between what shots were film and which were the Alexa but you are in love with this fantasy notion of thinking that celluloid is "magical".
@@matthewphillips5483 Yeah i guess youre right, i was over emotional on the subject : D
BY magical, i know what I mean though, but youre right a lot of the times i cant tell the difference, except some times
What was the camera being used for the 35mm film footage?
At the end it was listed as the Arri 435
Really great video, I'm downloading the blu-ray files now for comparison.
left is film, image is trembling and the light is worse
Great work! What lens was used on the Arri 435?
Can I make a GH4 look like an alexa or film just by changing the colors? Whats the best way for me to get the closest possible?
A Sony A6500 will come closer as it has a Super 35mm size sensor.
@@charvelgtrs The "look" has nothing to do with sensor size.
If you remembered what Steve said, if your camera captures enough information (not referring to resolution) you can prep it anyway you want to have any look you want. I would assume he’s referring to dynamic range, good color science and bit depth. The GH series is not enough, you need a high end cinema camera to emulate film.
@@syd2000-j1g Exactly
Which is which?
I prefer film, but I would rather watch a movie with a great story on an iPad vs a mediocre movie, shot beautifully, on 35mm. Also, aren't movies being shot in 35mm being converted to digital and shown on digital projectors these days. Isn't something being lost in the conversion, anyway?
Well with a proper scan 35mm will always inherently have film grain that digital won't unless you add it in post.
@@charvelgtrs This has been discussed. Grain can be algorithmically added since it is random pattern analog noise.
I can see clear differences between the two shots. To say the differences don't matter is complete bull.
The shots that are really dark and lack contrast are the only obviously digital ones to me. 🤷♂️
The guy looks like older peter parker
I dont Care If It was shot on film or digital, this guy is hot
But he really is.
My budget computer monitor makes everything look bad. Video compression also makes everything look bad.
It's a lossless vs lossy problem. Need a massive hardware upgrade to bring quality to the public.
Is there anyway you could share these digital film emulation as power grades, would absolutely love to deconstruct and have a look at how you got such an accurate representation?
@@gabrielzinho07_ Thank you very much, i'm definitely going to have a play around with this to see what I can produce. So you say your powergrade is expecting a colour managed clip e.g ARRI footage converted too rec-709 with a standerd colour space transform. Or that the entire project is in a managed colour space such as Davinci's Own.
@@gabrielzinho07_ Okay perfect cheers thank you, I am currently running some tests with my Blackmagic Camera shooting in 4K BRAW Gen 5. As the Powergrade is expecting the K1S1 LUT would a colour space transform from BRAW to ARRI Log C, then then the K1S1 LUT thrown in the pipeline, followed by a final noode for the YedLook poowergrade work, in my results the powergrade renders everything very cool. Any suggestions? I have tried Jaun Malaerez BMPCC4K to arri followed by your powergrade but I am getting a similar result.
@@gabrielzinho07_ Do you have an email account, I can send you some screen grabs as well as some other bits?
@@gabrielzinho07_ emailed cheers
Digital film camera is good. Only problem is high compression during recording.
They should recorded at least 3000mbps to obtain higher contrast ratio like film.
Currently most filmmakers records at 1000mbps due to ssd hardware restrictions. Ssd companies should work with filmmakers
The end product will barely be 20 mbps so why bother?
@@HAWXLEADER obviously you don't have knowledge of digital films. Higher the mbps..it can capture more contrast ratio of image and colors.
@@lolplo6115 I know how mbps and compression works, but on H265 10bit 1000 should be more than enough...
film actually is low contrast; not high contrast.
The most incredible thing is that his display preparation is always exactly the same. Effectively his lut (et al) is the MOST accurate of all film print emulations.
@@gabrielzinho07_ Well most (if not all with very few exception) are selling a cheap xerox of film print emulation. Very rarely does someone get it in the genuine ballpark. Those variables you meantioned are all very easy to tell if they're organic or altered. Halation being the most obvious. It usually looks like someone has taken a colored marker to the edges of a subject, looking like a coloring book. It's surface level. Mr Yedlin actually hits every aspect perfectly.
@@gabrielzinho07_ in his display prep follow up he addresses those qualities you described. In this display prep though his intwnrion was to match what the filmstock was giving him, incidentally not much halation and not much of the other qualities were as intense either. They were all very subtle.
But he does tinker with those elements in nuke by showing his algorithms turned on an off.
The point being that he can mathematically approximate the intensity of the variables and have full control over them. These points are demonstrated clearly.
If you can watch a direct film print directly compared to all digital, the 3D look of film and 2D look of digital become VERY apparent. Pretty much everyone can see it.
Film prints are pretty...however, they have a down side. Not only are they extremely limiting in what you can do with them but printing causes generation loss. You make the neg and then you need to make dupe negs, print from the dupe neg, and each generation is degraded. Digital can be lossless.
Strange comparison. Arii is very filmlike. Compare it to the videoish Sony camera.
"Arii is very filmlike"
Yes, and it is still a DIGITAL cinema camera, so it counts.
Interesting! Also what ive learned by looking at the video on the link version: TH-camS COMPRESSION IS SHIT.
This should have been titled, "How I color matched Alexa footage to look almost like film." Good illustration of how a film emulation LUT can sometimes make digital look like film. And how the LUT is great for scenes with little to no color and low contrast. However even in these scenes, the LUT inevitably fails as a large portion of the clips don't match. I'm guessing that the film footage also had a nudge or 2 to make it look similar to the Alexa.
Geez, it's almost like you didn't even watch the video and/or listen to what he said at all.
I think it is all in your head.
Maybe next time listen to the video before commenting.
What a stupid comment. This guy has no idea who Steve Yedlin is.
Uhhhh… he didn’t use a LUT. He used mathematical equations to transform the digital footage to emulate film, this is far better than using a LUT.
I understand your point but I think it's limited in reality. Certain cameras DO have certain looks; just think of the thousands of videos you'll find of amateurs desperately trying to recreate the 'film look' on DSLRs and how de off they are. Despite purposely trying to emulate a film look they just any because it's too far from the cameras original look. So while I would agree that you can modify the look and you're not locked into presenting the image just in the way the manufacturer set up the camera, you can only deviate and modify this within a certain range, as opposed to being able to create ANY look.
Ernesto López soz cn u understand me now bro
Well thats not true because of mathematics; film is analogue and therefore the values are continuous, digital is discrete and therefore is limited by its bit depth. Take an extreme case of a camera that only captures in 1-bit i.e. either on or off. So each pixel is simply a 1 or a 0. The resulting footage could not be given the 'film look'; it simply wouldn't have the bit depth. Or a 4-bit image with 16 discrete brightness steps still could not capture the "film look". This differs from the analogue film which can take ANY value. Obviously these are extreme examples, but they show there must be some lower floor to the bit depth required to give the look, and also that the equipment CAN limit the ability to give the desired look.
Consumer DSLRs typically record video in 8-bit which is fine for most uses, but doesn't grade nearly as well as say 12-bit cinema camera, which captures 16x as much information ie for every discrete 'jump' in 8-bit, the 12-bit camera can see 16 different shades in between which gives HUGE extra scope to grade and achieve the "film look".
You'e literally too stupid for words. You're saying the camera is not a limiting factor, and then list all the ways the camera IS a limiting factor. My point is that DSLR's will never accurately capture that 'film look'. Because they lack those capacities such as too low DR and bit depth and so on. Therefore NOT every camera can be made to look like it was shot on film. You try taking a 2010 mobile phone video and making pass for film. I think not. If the footage is too low quality from the camera then no amount of post production can fix it. Dumbass
I dont think you understand how digital technology works enough to speak on it. Saying "film is analogue" is true but not the whole story. Film that you view online is scanned in using a film scanner that has Analog/Digital converters. Once on your hard drive, the "film" is just a digital file; not different than anything else. If you view raw film scans (I have), they are low contrast and not that much different than a log file in a high quality digital cinema camera. In Resolve, you can apply a color transform that adds the Cinelog gamma curve and that "stretches" the film image out on the waveform and starts to give it shape. Then you taper your highlights and shadows, add your color saturation, and do any power windows, etc. Whatever you think is "magical" about film is probably a combination of film grain structure, uneven exposure on the emulsion due to vignetting, gate weave, soft focus, and film carrying more detail in highlights as opposed to shadows. Here, try a basic experiment...load some digital footage into Resolve and crank the Shadow detail up to max and lower the Highlight detail by about -30 to -40. You will already start to see how much different digital looks just from changing the emphasis of the image. It wont look completely like film but you begin to see where the differences are.
@@matthewphillips5483 Did you look at Raw-files from Arriscan?
To me this seems like an attempt to hide the supremacy of film
With all due respect Steve I have a problem with your demonstration. You fail to tell us which is which ??? Why did you do it that way Sir ? Would it not be more to the point to reveal which is which so that we have a *baseline* to the experiment ?
Thats the whole point of the video. The tools are there to get whatever look you want. There is really no objective better tool these days. Digital as basically caught up to 35mm in terms of both dynamic range, color handling and detail.
If you need to be told which is which then film is not inherently better. So many people here are sure that 35mm is better but could be choosing the Alexa without realizing it.
To negate the bias
Why are both versions exhibiting gate weave? Digital should be absolutely steady.
On my computer screen the split screen comparisons look the same in detail and color.
Most of the ways anyone will see motion pictures now will be digital. Film is redundant.
The 'Look' that everyone goes on about is ENTIRELY due to film's poor resolution of motion at 24fps. EVERY display method massages this to reduce flicker (projecting every frame twice optically or scanning with complex 'pulldown' methods for video) whereas digital motion cameras do not need any of this nonsense.
In the early days of non linear editing, AVID etc, a trick to reduce storage and computer processing demands was to drop every other field and display video as if it were at 24/25 fps. Startlingly it looked immediately like it was shot on film. Similarly running a film through a Steenbeck at fast speed gave the impression that the screen was a TV tube rather than a back projection device.
The other factor is that to get the film clips into a state to even make this video, they would have to be digitised using a telecine!
I cannot understand why everyone goes on about the incredibly tiny difference (if any) of the way the image is resolved and yet ignore the glaringly obvious difference in motion resolution. You may like the stuttering flicker of film complete with its backwards rotating wagon wheels, but come on, digital is far superior and will be even more so in the future with cameras being able to record metadata, slow motion and very very long takes or being so small and lighr that can get POVs that a large camera cannot..
The latest natural history programs in the Attenborough series have shots that would be impossible on film and look stunning.
you rock!
A natureza é maravilhosa
Film is more smooth in motion scenes..
Global shutter will fix this for digital.
Film will always have a much better texture. It looked best in the mid 90s.
Agreed. Mid to high budget films of the 90's were the golden era of cinematography.
He is right. It also doesn't mean you can use the tools the same way as you would use film. Each tool requires a radically different approach.
The film is the Best. it has more rich colors, more details, texture. digital is the worst washed out clip. it's crap.
Are we watching the same video? You probably had it on mute too.
@@rainzhao2000 I was thinking the same thing.
lol. the bias is real.
booth are same 'video like 'quality.real film should be' LAWRENCE OF ARABIA like quality'.no digital camera can replicate that!
What you say has no substantial meaning. What quality are you talking about? Because if you’re talking about the qualities that make the photographic look that’s shown by print film (which is basically the photographic look of Lawrence of Arabia), these are all present in the demo.
@@VariTimo i mean both demo looks so modern.technicolors not same that.the classic film looks thick and rich.digital looks fine its hd but its over blown specialy at daytime shot.
th-cam.com/video/Fh-7WQr_daM/w-d-xo.html. Give me digital cam same as this thick and not overblown daytime shot
Can digital surpassed this shot? Then give me example th-cam.com/video/cgJuVOrXv68/w-d-xo.html
modern film doesnt even look like Lawrence of arabia so what is your point?
Film is better than dightal main reason film better than dightal film can be rescan in future if 35k come out digital camera are good as it get u can not make in 35k in future for example I shot film in 1999 and dightal I can make film 8k video were the dightal on can not
Debunked already. Film (35mm) is not going to give more than 4k of resolving power consistently. 65mm can give around 8k resolving power.
@@matthewphillips5483 I find that hard to believe that 65mm is "only" around 8k. Where'd you read that?
lol "35K"
Who upvoted this nonsense?
too much nonsense talking at the start. We don't need a Freudian analysis of that stuff. Just show us the shots.
Let’s say Steve is correct. Let’s say you could develop a custom algorithm/pipeline using some complex math to prep digitally acquired images for a photochemical “look”.
Im not sure who Steve made this video for. Certainly not for the consumer, who could never afford a professional post house to make them custom algorithms to match film attributes like grain, gate weave, halation, focus blur etc.
And certainly not for DP’s who work in Hollywood with major budgets. Please tell me why a DP with a 200 million dollar budget would learn or pay for someone to develop a complex mathematical program/algorithm/machine learning to match an Alexa 65 to a Film Camera? Wouldn’t it be easier to just outright use the film camera instead of trying to emulate it if they really wanted the “film look”?
This makes no sense.
TLDR: Film emulation LUTs are used widely both for small filmakers and big studios and are easily available if you look for them
These mathematical equations are called LUTs. Basically, Hue, Saturation, and Luminance are mapped out as 3 vectors and thought of as a Matrix. You can then mathematically bend and shape this matrix. People use LUTs all the time, from small filmmakers like myself or big studios (both display and grading) - and there are lots of extremely high quality film emulation LUTs available for the general public.
ok, if this is a video film comparison, I felt one side appeared like a tv/video production, the other appears as art and story with richer colors (Film) more depth
Oh please. I can guarantee that in a double blind test, you wouldnt predictably be able to tell the difference.
Both have this horrible Orange and Teal look. When will this madness stop? Hollywood uses it ad nauseam and I can't see it anymore. People look like plastic puppets and blood looks purple.
I applaud you on your work and your efforts but to be really honest it didn't feel the same. The film clearly was more enjoyable except in that night shot which showed an empty alley.
Still it was close and very insightful.
I would be very skeptical that you actually knew the difference in every shot without cheating and finding out what was what.
the film is incomparable, unique, the definition of digital is like tv.
I think it is in your head.
@@matthewphillips5483 I think this is like speaking to zeolots, facts don't change their perception.
@@baskenmannzwei1234 Nah. Even if there isn't any objective, quantifiable reason that film _should_ look better than digital -- it just does. Same with music recorded to tape. It's "inferior" technology that shouldn't sound better but it just does. Some things just can't be explained.
@@Skrenja It is distinctive in his look, although there are ways to emulate it (like Dehancer). It's also highly subjective to say what's looking better.
@@baskenmannzwei1234 you think I´m zeolots, may be... I´m zeolots of film, I understand the technoloy advances in the movies, I lived other times, the 70mm, the Cinemascope, and I love those time, which does not mean that I deny current technology and digital cinema, what I published is simply an opinion, I can be wrong especially for the new generations, it's just my point of view, just that... to summarize: I admire the new technologies, I know them, but my preference in terms of cinema is the one I published.
Adderall-fueled rant to satisfy a word quota lacking substantial meaning.
Same goes for your comment.
Why do u put the numbers without making it clear what we are watching?
What is what?
And yet you talk about stuff.
Bad move. 1.45 sec in and i am out.
Seems he thinks being obscure = technical and professional
Guys 2 years ago i was an idiot, i dont know why i disliked this video, but my poin of view has changed and so did i, i actually think it is very good and important video, however i still dont get the Numbers, if they are there than a short explanation would be very helpful. Have a great day 👍