How do you feel about film grain?

Very well put.

It's funny that you mention Californication. I bought that used at a Used CD store and actually brought it back thinking there was something wrong with the disc because it sounded so awful. That however, is the opposite of how the initial Led Zeppelin CDs were handled. Barry Diament (and Joe Sidore) mastered them to CD very faithfully. They didn't always have the master tapes available but they did their best with what they had and I still think they are the best representation of LZ on CD. I had cassettes as a kid so I never experienced LZ on vinyl but the remasters (done at least twice now) have either been too bright or have lacked bass (not necessarily the same thing, btw). You also can't crank them up without serious ear fatigue. The more I've heard the remasters, the more I appreciated the originals and that's why they remain my go-to CDs for every Zeppelin album.

As for Criterion, they are at least partially responsible for maintaining current aspect ratios for films on DVD/Blu-ray, commentary tracks, tons of extras, etc. Watching the restoration extra on the Apu Trilogy makes you appreciate what goes into restoring old films...and probably why their discs cost twice what a normal Blu-ray costs.

 

Interesting note.

When shooting video at a high ISO, I've found adding "film grain" in post masks the static video noise. Where removing noise can cause the blotchy smeary look. The added film grain doesn't really add more noise, but confuses it rather. Making it look more natural.

 

Ahhh, I stand corrected...

 

The danger is that you wind up with with major-mega-noise: video noise AND film grain on top of each other, kind of like constant record scratch added on top of simulated tape hiss. Neither is ideal. My advice: use more light, stop down, and give the pickup enough signal to work properly.

 

That makes perfect sense. I'm all about more light, and not running at like T1.5-2. So over done and not a great exposure.

Here's where I consult your expertise. I know this varies somewhat from camera to camera.
Is it better for noise/exposure to run at a camera's native ISO, or as low as you can go?
I always thought as low as you can go, adding light to compensate.
Then someone brought up the concept of losing highlight information in lower ISO's.
Is it really a factor? or is it more just splitting hairs?

I run a C100 MK I or 5D2. I also always operate in REC709.

 

That's it! Acufine and Diafine! Thanks!

 

I think there's a lot of "it depends" involved. There are cinematographers (and photographers) who love the look of a very narrow depth of field, so they love lighting so that they have to open all the way up to T2 or less. But you will generally get less noise if you hit the recommended exposure for the particular chip.

Most of what I work with professionally is 10- or 12-bit color images shot in Log color space, but Rec709 can be acceptable provided you're really, really careful at not overexposing the highlights. It's tricky to do.

 

When shooting digitally, what is more common, shooting in Rec709 or do it in Rec2020? What about before HDR first appeard on consumer electronics, let's say from 2009 to 2015?

 

Just shoot it in Log. The decision to color-correct in Rec2100/HDR or Rec709/SDR is something you can do in post. Everything can be adjusted for high-dynamic range/wide-color gamut if you really want it that way later, assuming the camera can hit those specs in production. Ideally, you'd use a 4K 16-bit (or maybe 12-bit) camera for production.

If it's an 8-bit camera, don't even bother. Getting even good Rec709 out of those is tough.

 

No grain, no John Wayne.

 

Ethan: Why don't you finish the job?
[shoots out the eyes of the Comanche warrior]

Reverend Clayton: What good did that do ya?

Ethan: By what you preach, none. But what that Comanche believes, ain't got no eyes, he can't enter the spirit-land. Has to wander forever between the winds.You get it, Reverend.
Ethan: [to Martin] Come on, blanket-head!

 

Isn't that like saying Bruce Springsteens Tunnel Of Love isn't worth listening to, because it was recorded at 16/44? Or Nebraska should be tossed aside because it was recorded on 4-track cassette?

Or more appropriately, 28 Days Later, because it was filmed on HDV?

 

Your argument is one of false equivalence. Sound quality and picture quality are different factors. I've dealt with 8-bit cameras more than anybody on this forum, and trust me, they're horrible. The difference between that and a decent 10-bit camera is like the difference between a $19.95 Radio Shack microphone and a Neumann U87 condensor microphone: the first thing in the signal chain (camera or microphone) drastically affects the quality of everything that comes afterwards. If you start with s***, it ain't ever gonna wind up as shinola.

28 Days Later is hard to watch today, partly because of the terrible picture quality. But a good idea, good stories, and good characters trump almost everything. I've often said that if you have a really good movie, you could project it in Super 8 on a bedsheet, and it could still entertain people (to some degree). And the reverse is also true: I could have a really crappy story and bad acting and shoot it in 70mm IMAX, and it would still be a bad movie.

 

Kodak Super 8 had grain.
3 -1/2 minutes immortality.

 

I don’t mind film grain. I’d rather have it in a film than having DNR used. Sure, you won’t have fine detail on people’s faces but at least they don’t look like wax figures.

 

There is such a thing as a happy medium: grain reduction is a tool like anything else, and the adjustments go all the way from 0 (no NR) to 100% (all the way up). There's no crime in running it at -- say -- 20%, where only the most egregious grain is removed. We also have the ability to only remove grain from a specific color channel; blue is often the noisiest part of a negative film scan, and is sometimes the noisiest channel on a digital camera, too. We can also only remove grain from highlights (bright areas), which is where a lot of the noise is in film negative, while leaving everything else alone. Some people will apply NR to just really dark scenes and then leave other scenes completely alone. And then there's the argument that you basically have to adjust NR on a scene by scene basis.

There are debates in the film restoration community as to how much grain reduction is enough, how much grain is excessive, and when to use it and when not to. The trick is that nobody ever gets to see the raw negative in the theater, so using the negative for a film transfer today (which is very standard practice) already tends to overemphasize grain -- to me anyway, because a lot of the sharpness is lost going to print. Most theatrical prints were actually about 4 generations down (OCN -> IP -> IN -> print), and by the time you get that far, I'd guess more than 1/3 of the overall resolution is gone. The sharper the image is, the more you notice the grain; the brighter the image -- as with 4K HDR releases -- the more you notice the grain. You see a lot more grain, and sharper grain, with the negative than you would with a print. So some degree of grain reduction is inevitable. The trick is to apply NR with good taste, and not to crank the knob too hard.

 

I like it.

 

Since this thread was last open, Wim Wenders went back to the original camera negatives of Wings of Desire, rescanned every clip at 4K, and rebuilt the entire film, frame by frame. The result eliminated every bit of film grain that was added during the process other that was in the original negative... and it looks astounding.

For all the talk about how film grain is an artistic choice for directors, in most cases they simply had no other choice. His film had as many additional levels of grain added by internegative, interpositive, effects and converting color scenes to black and white. They also had the effect of raising black levels.

We managed to see this in the theater, Chicago's Gene Siskel Film Center and it was breathtakingly lovely.

Interview with Wim Wenders about the restoration:

“Imagine How Angels Would Look at Us”: Wim Wenders on Restoring Wings of Desire | Filmmaker Magazine

 

The first thing that popped into my head when I started this thread and some of the responses, is that this is almost another "CD (or digital) vs. Vinyl" thread, and I wonder how the way people respond here jives with how they fall on that debate.

For me personally, I fall somewhere in between. There's a Star Wars Original Trilogy 4K restoration project (Project 4K77 | The Star Wars Trilogy ) that I love! The team that did this project sourced it from as much of the original movie reels as they could find. For example, 97% of project "Star Wars 4K77" is from a single, original 1977 35mm Technicolor release print, scanned at full 4K, cleaned at 4K, and rendered at 4K. I think their goal in undertaking this project was to restore the original trilogy to the way it looked in theatres at the time the films were released. These versions of the Star Wars Trilogy are by far my favorites... I guess they just bring me back to my youth when I was sitting in a theatre watching these movies for the very first time.

On the flip side, "The Godfather Coppola Restoration" is by far my favorite way to watch The Godfather I and II.

 

I just watched that, thanks so much for sharing it.

 

I watched Smokey and the Bandit last night for the first time in years. I was amazed at how grainy it was. In fact I found it really distracting. Now I don't mind a bit of grain but that was annoyingly so. However, I can imagine its due to a film emulsion of it's time and the folks making it were not going to Lean/Kubrick technical superlative levels in making the movie. Shooting in a car or truck cab is never going to give you dynamic lighting.

I don't want film to look like pristine video but I also don't want it to look like the set was invaded by a constant midge swarm. A balanced approach.

 

Right -- inconsistent grain is a huge problem. For that, they do what's called Grain Management, which is basically a person making a judgement call about how the grain changes shot-by-shot and scene-by-scene. In some cases, they actually add back some grain to a shot that's too clean, while reducing a shot that's deemed to have excessive green. The key is for the grain level to be constant throughout the whole show, and that takes experience and good judgement.

Yeah, the guys at Warner MPI (Motion Picture Imaging) in Burbank worked tirelessly on the Godfather restoration for months and months. I was told that "$1 million is on the low side" of their budget. Lots and lots of image processing, grain reduction, and sharpening was involved... but you can't really notice it because it's all very subtle. Gordon Willis was known for underexposing his negative -- his title "The Prince of Darkness" was well-deserved -- but this wreaks havoc on video transfers done decades later. I think films from the 1970s and 1980s are among the most difficult to do, and I work with films like this every day. Some are absolute nightmares, because the film stocks were in a state of flux during those eras.

 

Yes, exactly. A 1977 film like Smokey and the Bandit would be shot on Kodak 5247, which is very grainy and kind of unstable (though there were several versions of that emulsion). 40 years later, it looks like crap. They have to deflicker it to stabilize the image, they have to get rid of the color "breathing," and the colorist has to balance out all the weird color issues so that it all looks reasonable. Those are tough.

Grain is a separate issue, and don't forget there's also "jitter" (shaky camera vibration due to mechanical issues), rips, tears, bumps, all kinds of motion-related stuff. What's annoying to me is there is a contingent of film restoration people who feel that all noise-reduction is bad, and the result is we get stuff like the 4K HDR version of Close Encounters, some of which make it look like it's snowing in every scene, just grain-city. There could have been a way to address that in an unobtrusive way; I think no grain reduction is as bad in its own way as excessive grain reduction. There's a happy medium where you have some noise reduction that's almost undetectable.

 

Thanks for sharing that insight. Back when I was just out of high school (mid/late 80's) my dream was to go to the Institute of Audio Research and become a recording engineer. By the early/mid 90's my interests were shifting more toward the video side of things, so whenever I watch anything in the realm of that video I shared, it get's me going and I'm amazed at the artistry of people in that field and what they're able to accomplish. Too bad I was part of that "slacker generation" and I never pursued anything in that field.