Shooting Digital and Printing on Film

[kaylee]

Shooting Digital and Printing on Film – what do you think?

Guys one of these days I'm gonna make a feature film – a simple, indie feature. Lately I've been wondering if printing the final digital product on film – only to scan it back to digital – is worth the effort or how it would come out... do people do this? is this a thing in 2017? idk!! i never hear about it

some of the d16 footage posted on this board recently got me thinking about how lovely that bolex grain is, but, *please correct me if im wrong*, i would have to remove that noise as part of my vfx process... yes?

my film has virtually no vfx "in the script", but ill prolly do some set extension/god only knows what, in addition to fussy art director things like changing a problematic sign in the background or removing a logo or whatever... lots of that. skin retouching, maybe some age reduction... hell theres kind of a lot now that i think about it lol

anyway, > is it correct that in working with almost any video footage, denoising and renoising is part of the vfx process? i mean i know that exists, but if youre shooting d16 lets say, thats a heck of a lot of messing with the integrity of your source material in post, am i rite??

so then i started thinking about creating a noiseless digital product and adding some authentic analog feel by printing on film grain... only to scan it back to digital for distribution

what do you guys think, any experience with this stuff?? imagine that someone else is 100% paying for this

[AaronChicago]

I would just denoise your plate footage, then add grain on top of the composition.

For grain overlays I like this one: http://rgrain.com/

[hijodeibn]

I had a similar idea some years ago, but a little different, I wanted to shoot in digital and later transfer it to film, the purpose was different, I wanted to release the movie in film in a local cinema, and the main issue is the cost, it is really expensive, but let me tell you how I was going to do it, first you have to produce the final cut of the movie, adding all the effects, etc, then using a DIY process transfer the digital movie frame by frame to film, my idea was to create a system to project each frame of the digital movie to the lens of a Konvas camera, using a step motor to rotate the film, I have seen this done for 16mm cameras; but I wanted it for a 35mm konvas camera, if you only want to transfer to a 16mm camera there are some tutorials available in youtube. In your case you also will have to do the inverse process (called Telecine), also some tutorials are available in youtube, if the money is no restriction probably in a formal Telecine company can help you to do the whole process, but again, is not going to be cheap…. 

[mercer]

Yeah, it's definitely expensive to do it the "right" way.

First... are you thinking of unloading your Mark iii to get a D16?

What kind of budget are you looking at for your film... is it self financed, or do you have help?

Personally, I would be very cautious with location scouting and preproduction to make sure you don't have logos, and such, ever filmed. If your story requires specific logos or street signs then make them a physical, filmable entity rather than something you "fix" in post... unless you are planning to do some green screen work and are either very proficient in After Effects or are paying someone who is.

Finally, regarding noise, do people clean up the noise on the D16 or with ML Raw? I know Aaron uses the Ursa, so I assume by his comment he is cleaning up the Ursa footage, but I believe he shoots commercial projects from inception to delivery, so it would make sense for him to have a clean, final product... for an indie narrative, I would think you would want to allow some of the D16's organic noise to show through and then build your grain as a second textural element.

[fuzzynormal]

Certainly very common back in the day of indies shooting on videotape.  Does FotoKhem in Burbank do it?  Anyway, I think the cost was somewhere around $200 a minute... but this was 15 years ago.

The cool thing, for your inner hipster, is that you'll get a can(s) of a 35mm print to show off.  So, a "real" film, you know?

[Hans Punk]

@kaylee Unfortunately for the cost of printing digital onto film (huge) - then telecine/ scanning back again you would probably find it cheaper to actually shoot film in the first place, then get telecine rushes made in your edit file formats of choice and then select take scanning for higher resolution DI conforms. If you can negotiate a deal with a lab, and get very lucky - it might just still be economically viable on a lower budget (shooting 2perf for example)...but for a feature it would be very expensive to do vs shooting digital.

Not sure by going through the digital-film-digital transfer process will impart the 'filmic' feel you might be after anyway, since modern processes are meant to be as clean as possible - with virtually no degradation/ grain applied to the image. The best way to achieve the film look is still to shoot on film. Alexa is the best of both worlds - filmic rendering of image directly from the camera..with the workflow convenience of digital. Grain overlays and film stock emulations are never the same as true film....but if applied correctly, can have a very good look. Nowadays it is more cost effective to shoot raw and save a decent chunk of the budget for a talented colourist to make the images emulate a 'shot on film' aesthetic...sad but often true.  

Perfectly working 35 & s16mm cameras can be cheaply hired or picked up on ebay for cheaper than an A7s body...but the film stock/processing/telecine/scan costs are the real killer.

Here is an example of a 'cheap' telecine from 2 perf 35mm...still looks better than most digital cinema footage IMHO so if you can afford to shoot film, go for it!

 

Edit: I still think 5D3 ML raw with some creative work in Resolve can yield some pretty damn close results to the look of film, it is why I no longer regret selling my Arri...5D3 delivers dynamic range and great colours, which are probably the hallmarks of what makes film such a good capture medium. Good couple of 5D raw / 35mm comparison shots here - and the ML version was still not as refined as it is today:

 

[kaylee]

yaaaa thanks for the feedback guys!!

16 hours ago, AaronChicago said:

I would just denoise your plate footage, then add grain on top of the composition.

For grain overlays I like this one: http://rgrain.com/

im with ya

i guess my question is: if i want my final image to be in the bolex neighborhood in terms of noise, but im gonna do vfx on 90% of the frames, isnt it counterproductive to shoot such a noisy camera to begin with?

14 hours ago, mercer said:

First... are you thinking of unloading your Mark iii to get a D16?

no way i might keep this 5d forever lol. we've bonded. seriously tho, regarding my film, im prepared to rent *whatever camera is necessary* to get what i want and make post as easy as possible. this shoot wont happen for prolly a few years still so my options may change. if i had to do it tomorrow? id prolly go alexa and add grain in post

14 hours ago, mercer said:

What kind of budget are you looking at for your film... is it self financed, or do you have help?

oh *I* have no money, pretty soon im going to go pitch all my fine art stuff ive made the last couple years to big time galleries... the kind of galleries that could and would support a long term vision, making my film with me, etc. so im gonna tell them i need $200k for my feature (but id be happy enough with $175k, and i think i could *squeak* by with $150k). the idea of course being that this is for a *finished* film, not a half finished half assed piece of shit with no direction... like i spent all your money and now ive got nothing bc im an idiot. lol anyway thats the budget zone

14 hours ago, mercer said:

Personally, I would be very cautious with location scouting and preproduction to make sure you don't have logos, and such, ever filmed. If your story requires specific logos or street signs then make them a physical, filmable entity rather than something you "fix" in post... unless you are planning to do some green screen work and are either very proficient in After Effects or are paying someone who is.

yeah i agree, "logos" isnt what i meant, bad choice of words, i mean like... a random car on the street drives by behind a character, the car has a huge yellow and black bumper sticker which is really distracting – removing stuff like that. and some set extension/alteration. and beauty retouching on some characters. and god knows what else lol

12 hours ago, fuzzynormal said:

Certainly very common back in the day of indies shooting on videotape.  Does FotoKhem in Burbank do it?  Anyway, I think the cost was somewhere around $200 a minute... but this was 15 years ago.

thats exactly what i remember! sounds about right lol, at least it was back then

12 hours ago, fuzzynormal said:

The cool thing, for your inner hipster, is that you'll get a can(s) of a 35mm print to show off.  So, a "real" film, you know?

i kno, and i would love that, but i just cant justify the expense if its not going to add anything to what people see on their ipads smh. but *I* think its hot lol

8 hours ago, Hans Punk said:

[a bunch of great stuff]

!!!!!!

8 hours ago, Hans Punk said:

Here is an example of a 'cheap' telecine from 2 perf 35mm...still looks better than most digital cinema footage IMHO so if you can afford to shoot film, go for it!

ugh omg i love that!! looks sooo nice. ...ykno what i REALLY want to do? shoot film and pick up shots when its impractical for my shoestring budget with 5d3 raw. if i could do whatever i wanted i would.... BUT?? im scared there i said it i admit it ? im scared of shooting film in general and not having instant playback and data copied in triplicate on set

this is the part where i should tell myself to face my fear? i guess? hmm maybe ill have a beer instead...

[mercer]

Shoot your exteriors on film and your interiors with your 5D... I think old episodes of Dr. Who used to do that...

I think I just dated myself and dorked myself in one sentence. 

[Matt Kieley]

You could also do what the filmmakers of Operation Avalanche did; shoot digital, do film transfer by filming a computer screen and shooting one frame of 16mm at a time, then scanning the film.

[AaronChicago]

3 hours ago, kaylee said:

im with ya

i guess my question is: if i want my final image to be in the bolex neighborhood in terms of noise, but im gonna do vfx on 90% of the frames, isnt it counterproductive to shoot such a noisy camera to begin with?

How much of your frame with be VFX? The more VFX, the easier to replicate real film grain. You don't want your plate footage to be too noisy, but a little is fine. Just run a denoiser so that it's on a level playing field as the VFX.

[odie]

there's something about shooting on 35mm film...maybe start with that...it will be  beautiful and timeless..

( free camera from rental place or cheap 35mm cam from ebay  with 35mm film short ends will keep the budget very low but the image very high)

[Tash]

Hey all, don't know if anyone is still following this thread but i wanted to put a quick line of enquiry out there about facilities where i could transfer a digitally shot film onto 16mm film celluloid. Any ideas? Any help much appreciated!