Video to FIlm (RGB YUV LOG)

[Mike Most — account bouncing, bad address]

Unless you also own the film recorder and are doing the actual film recording, you don’t necessarily have to think about any of this. Talk to the facility that’s doing the film out and ask them what they can accept as source files. My guess is that the Quicktime will be fine.

Of course, none of this changes the fact that the film result may or may not look like the video you supply. Unless you do proper color correction in a properly film-calibrated environment, all bets are off. You need to look at it under these conditions and decide whether you do or do not need to make adjustments. Once again, the facility doing the film recording should be able to accomodate this.

[Mark Hatch]

Mike,

There in lies the problem. We sent the film place a tiff sequence of our video. Just a couple of minutes for a test. They sent us back film and we went to a local theatre to view it sand it seemed desaturated and was more contrasty than we expected. Somewhere in the process, something didn’t convert correctly. So, we are trying to fix that ourselves by doing the linear to logarithmic conversion ourselves. Who know, would that even make a difference?

Thanks,
Mark

[Arnie Schlissel]

The odds of you fixing this yourself are astronomical. You really need to have this done by a colorist who’s not only skilled in film work, but who’s familiar with the specific lab that’s making your negative.

Every lab has their own way of doing things, and these idiosyncrasies make it all but impossible for there to be any kind of generic answer to this problem. The colorist needs to be calibrated to the film stock & chemistry mix, and then needs to know instinctively how what they see on the monitor translates onto an inter-positive, then onto a negative, then onto a print, then onto a screen. It’s part rocket science, part black art.

Arnie
Now in preproduction: Peristroika (Cosmological Congress), a film by Slava Tsukerman
https://www.arniepix.com

[Chris Paul]

I have been reading a blog frome someone who says he has worked this out and is available for consulting. Here is his link:

https://www.hdforindies.com/

Chris Paul
POV

[Mike Most — account bouncing, bad address]

Well, yes, that’s not surprising. That’s exactly what I was hinting would likely happen.

The only way to ensure that you will get what you expect to get is to look at the original material in a calibrated-for-film environment, and color correct in that environment. If you haven’t done that, no amount of format changing or lin to log conversions is going to help you, because you’ll just be taking the same images, with the same color settings, into another file format. If you really think you can do this yourself, you’ll need to have a monitor that’s appropriate for the purpose, a probe to properly profile that monitor, a profile of the print stock you’ll be using (preferably derived from a print made by the particular lab you’re using and particularly derived from a negative created by the particular film recorder your material is being recorded with), and a 3D lookup table made from those profiles so that your monitor can show you an image that is a reasonable facsimile of the film print. Then you will need to have someone skilled in color correction. The only other thing you can do is fudge your existing material to combat what you now know will happen to it, in other words, make it lighter and more saturated. But in doing this, you are guessing as to what you will get, and guessing when film recording is involved is a very, very expensive process.

Still think you can do this yourself? Or is it time to consult with the facility (or another digital intermediate facility) and figure out where and how they can help you with this?

[Mark Hatch]

Mike,

No, I really don’t think I can do this myself. You know, the interesting thing is that we did the same video to film test with a company out of Canada called Digital Film Group and the results were excellent. However, because of reasons beyond my control, we decided to go with this other film house which delivered unexpected results. Perhaps it’s time to go back to Digital Film Group. So, how do you suppose that they got the process right on when so many things can go wrong?

Thanks,
Mark

[Mike Most — account bouncing, bad address]

Some companies that do a lot of video to film work (I work for one) have a good idea of what adjustments to make, based on knowledge of their particular combination of film recorder and shooting stock, in order to make the film result look reasonably close to the video original. That said, film and video are two completely different mediums with completely different color gamuts and completely different visual characteristics. It is often not a particularly good thing to make the film look more like the video original, for the simple reason that the result is quite a bit less, shall we say, “filmic” than might be desired. While it is possible to make the film out look a bit more like the video original, much more can be done if the proper steps are taken in post production to produce the best **film** product, if that is the intent. That is what properly calibrated environments and properly done color correction are all about.

If, however, you only want projected film that looks like your video screen, there are shortcuts to that, as you’ve discovered. What I’m saying is that it can be much more than that, if proper approaches are taken.