LUT’s make my footage look like…

[Tero Ahlfors]

Is the film likeness for you in the motion or the look? If you have both of those worked out you might to want to slap some grain on it. Here’s a few grain footage files you might want to test: https://www.cineticstudios.com/blog/2015/3/4k-film-grain-a-public-experiment-with-free-stock-footage.html

[Aditya Yashvardhan]

Right. Considering you are not a professional, your approach to learning these is amazing Duke. And you are in no way, way way below an amateur coz you stumped a pro in this very thread, remember?

Cheers to the process and the video looks neat!

[Nathan Walters]

Sounds to me like you’re a man with particular tastes (which is a very good thing) but looking for simple solutions. I think instead of looking for LUTs and simple ways to get those high end looks, you should continue color grading and exploring that side of post production. It doesn’t need to look identical to that perfect film look. I’d argue the only way to really get the film look is to shoot on film. Everything else is an artistic choice inspired by the film look, but not the film look. Find the look that suits you, but don’t get bogged down in trying to make it perfectly match images from movies that cost millions of dollars to make.

And also, it may not be LUTs or anything of that nature that’s making you say it’s just not quite what you’re wanting visually. I had a t3i back in the day, and you sometimes just have to realize the limitations of your camera. In order to get a better look, you may just have to invest in a better camera and some nice lenses.

I know you’re claiming to be an amateur, but most amateurs I would say have no clue what a LUT is as well as curve adjustments. So I think you’re someone with bordering professional tastes but trying to get away with amateur equipment. You may need better equipment to satisfy your needs. But I guess it depends what level of DSLR you’re using.

Nathan Walters
Halo Union Productions
https://www.HaloUnion.com

[Duke Sweden]

Wow, so much to respond to, but you all took the time to respond to me so the least I can do is answer some points that you all brought up, starting from the bottom up.

Nathan, yes I do have particular tastes but sometimes even I don’t know what they are 😉 Now, just so we’re clear, I did start this thread 3 months ago. I’ve learned a lot since then. As for looking for a simple way to do things, actually I wasn’t. I had shot some footage that I wanted to give a fall evening look too, heavy on blue. I saw a scene in a movie I can’t remember now that had the look I was going for, but the flames in the lanterns and street lights still had a strong orange/yellow glow. When I tried setting white balance in PP to blue, EVERYTHING turned kind of blue, so I asked on videocopilot how to get the effect I was going for. It was THERE that someone who does effects for a living told me I needed to use LUTs. Not knowing better I went off on a 2 month journey trying to find the perfect LUT. That’s how I got caught up with them. I’d much rather color grade myself. I only use the Cinematic 1 and 2 LUTs because they do give me that film look I try to achieve (rather than soap opera effect as I mentioned before).

Finally I just want to add that I’m 61, my eyesight is really going on me, so I’m not really looking to make a career out of this. It’s very difficult when you can’t see what you’re doing. As for equipment, I’m using a Nikon D5500 and I also learned after my initial post 3 months ago that RAW and h264 are two different animals and I can’t expect hollywood results out of a mid-range camera, but I’m still pretty happy with what I’ve been able to do.

Aditya (sorry for misspelling your name before), this is how I’ve always approached everything I do, going back to my guitar playing, coding, whatever. I want to know and be proficient at everything I do. At this point I’m only trying to keep my brain from atrophying so I’m lucky I found this hobby (both videography and post production). I appreciate the compliment on the video, but I didn’t stump anyone. It had just been a few days since I got a response so I thought I’d tweak an ego or two to get things rolling again 😉

Tero, the film likeness for me is in the look. I’m getting the 24fps blur ok, but I think, back when I first posted this thread, that I was sharpening too much. I have since replaced my cheap computer monitor with a flat screen HDTV and that video above is actually my first video that I color corrected and graded using it. I opened some previous rendered videos that looked great on the computer monitor and they were awful. I fixed one of them and it’s much better. I could never figure out why people always told me they looked bad on youtube. Once I replace the computer monitor I could see what they were talking about.

Anyway, thanks to all of you for responding, for your advice and help and for your compliments. I really appreciate it.