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NOVEMBER 08, 2002 Making It Look Like Film
Shutter Speed If you have the shutter speed on your camera set to Auto, the shuter may sometimes run as high as 1/125th of a second. This causes the video to look extra sharp as the camera captures more of the movement from frame to frame. [an error occurred while processing this directive] Film has a natural blur to it due to shutter speed and frame rate. To emulate that motion blur, turn the shutter speed of your video camera to 1/30th of a second. The drawback here is, depending on the camera, it could throw away every other line of information resulting in a loss of information. If you are not happy with the results, you may want to shoot on a camera that offers true progressive scan recording. Color Balance Video cameras are dumb when it comes to knowing what color white is. That is why you have to white balance every time your lighting condition changes. Film on the other hand reacts differently to light depending on the film stock used. It may favor green, or blue, or even have a red tint to it. You can imitate the tint of film, by white balancing the camera on a different color other than white. Try white balancing on a blue card to shift the internal color wheel toward the orange/red range of the spectrum, or white balance on a pink card to shift the color toward the blue. You can further change the white balance by altering the white balance shift found in the internal settings of the camera unit. Warm the video to recreate those golden tones found in films like those of John Woo, or cool the video to make it look more harsh similar to some films by Guy Ritchie.
Tied in somewhat to Color Balance is Color Saturation, experiment with the saturation setting on your camera and see what results you can come up with.
Instead of rushing into your next video shoot, take some time to tweak your camera based on the look you are trying to achieve. Spend some time getting to know your camera, and how it can before when you tweak the internal settings. This is going to lead to very dramatic images and very happy clients. When not working deep in the labs of the DMN Central Division testing the latest and greatest software/hardware products Stephen Schleicher can be found at the local university teaching a few courses on video and web production. He can be reached at schleicher@mindspring.com. You can also visit him on the web at www.mindspring.com/~schleicher Related sites: • AV Video • Broadcast Newsroom • Content Mastering • Corporate Media News • Creative Mac • Digital Producer • Digital Webcast • DV Format • DVD Creation • Film and Video Magazine • Film Imaging • Hollywood Industry • Production Supplement • Siggraph News • The WWUG Related forums: [an error occurred while processing this directive] 
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