THE CATCHY NOSTALGIA FOR WHAT NEVER WAS…

Yoyi’s analysis and thoughts about FILMCONVERT

My father laughs at, disowns and curses celluloid nostalgics.

He, who used it a lot during his career as an advertising director and postproduction operator, always comments that even back then it seemed to him to be a real piece of shit; namely, full of noise/grain that annoyed him with the tricks, “that shit that Kodak and the lab give you as a tip” -I quote-. Inaccurate and unstable in its representation of color, something vital for him; Specialized in his time in the “magic” of blue screen chromas, it annoyed him greatly that these mutated in tone between different emulsions or different days of development in the laboratory.

If you ask him, he is very happy now with every digital camera that comes out, and he finds it a bad joke that generations that never worked with celluloid have mythologized it to an unreal status and therefore feel nostalgia and morbid pleasure for anything that reminds them of the vague attributes they associate with it: warmth, definition -or perhaps, lack thereof-, intensely saturated or desaturated colors (this I have found to change according to season), grain that makes the image become something “alive”, “organic”, “magical”, “with soul”, in short, with “texture” (those who know me know that I hate this term that seems empty to me and I only use it in this article because it is part of popular speech).

I for my part owe practically all my experience in the sector to video and if I have nostalgia for anything it is the first visit I had with 18 years of the dogma film “Festen” (CELEBRACiÓN, if you did not see it, stop reading this and look for it) and how it encouraged me to take a miniDV and feel that I could tell stories with a camera, whatever it was; the important thing was to put some guts and have something to say (or shout).

It should be added that this quickly led me to take my first steps in post production, trying to add a plus to my short films, with “magical” processes that I didn’t quite understand, which consisted of “deinterlacing fields” and “retouching color”, so that what I ended up showing my friends didn’t look like a damn wedding video (BBCs that I also made at the time).

For all those people my father laughs at and perhaps for those among whom I am not (or am I?)… I present to you FILMCONVERT PRO.

This product is available both as a plugin (FCP, PREMIERE, AE, VEGAS, PHOTOSHOP) and as a stand-alone application. In its version as a program it has additional functions of timelines conformation by XML and some basic color tools (3-Wheels, Histogram/Levels) that it does not present in its plugin version, which is the one we are using in this article.

What is so special about it compared to the millions of filmlooks and more or less effective color correction presets?

Three words: nostalgia (for celluloid), “add shit” (quoting my father again) and MATRIZATION.

Nostalgia: it has several presets to simulate the color response of different films that we will no longer be able to use in this celluloid apocalypse (FUJI VELVIA, KODACK VISION, ILFORD, POLAROID). According to their creators, they have shot countless color charts to ensure that the simulations are indeed realistic, so let’s give them a vote of confidence. However, there are many simulations on the market and this in itself is a point that, to be honest, does not interest me in the least. I would like to point out that I have found the B&W preset prints to be very ingenious and very successful when it comes to color conversion.

Adding crap: FILMCONVERT lets you add grain and if you adjust presets called 35mm,16mm,8mm, it will apply a more or less sophisticated blur formula (according to my tests, not very sophisticated) that will lower the resolution expected in a HD/4k image until it is as blurry as our memories….. The grain changes size in relation to these simulations (logical in the celluloid world it simulates). The plugin when downloaded weighs a lot (800MB) so I suspect that in that weight will come different movies (they speak of realism to 6k) on a gray background that skillfully mixed in loop. On their site the creators claim that they have again made strenuous efforts with (again) countless test charts to ensure that the grain appears non-uniform, responding to how it would realistically appear on film (i.e. with different increments in high, medium and low light). Ciértamente el grano se calcula MUY MUY rápidamente en After Effects (si habéis probado con generadores matemáticos de grano, sabréis que este es un proceso leeeeeeento), lo cuál me lleva de nuevo a sospechar el tema de que estamos mezclando capas de video sin más…. Although I understand my father’s reasoning, I do recognize that grain can have interesting applications: it mainly reduces/hides pixelization and banding problems in images with poor color sampling (DSLRs), increases the apparent resolution of the image and looks cool for the client. The problem usually arises if the video has internet as its only output, since the codecs we use in youtube/vimeo tend to make it invisible or suffer when compressing images with a non-logical discontinuity and are forced to reduce resolution.

MATRIX: I FIND THIS INTERESTING.

Is that a complicated word, truth???? Nothing to do with Keanu’s bland movie. Stick with the general concept: the secret formula that each manufacturer applies to its camera to ensure that its colors are beautiful and supersaturated (CANON), realistic and cool (SONY), red (PANASONIC) or fucking shit (JVC).

To the point, one of the strong problems we have in the world of pre-ACES color correction (if you don’t know what I’m talking about and consider yourself postpo, you should read more) is that often when shooting with several different camera models, they all have their “magic” curves (LOGC, Technicolor, Canon LOG) that work reasonably well but make mixing them together, without their different color shading being obvious, a headache. The guys at FILMCONVERT have shot countless color charts (THANK YOU!!!!!) with many of these cameras (5D, RED, GH3, ALEXA) and they promise that if we get it right to tell you what curve each of them had, they can get them to agree on their film simulation (It’s not ACES, but it’s certainly helpful). The company is constantly releasing new camera profiles to bring them closer to the wonderful world of film, so you’ll have to check their website to download the presets for each of them.

Also, in the quest for “perfection” in film, they have made an effort to get “nice” results when representing skin color, which is not always easy in some cameras (Coff, cofff, REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED you’reaaaaaaaaaaaaamooooooosss looking at !!!!!). As a colorist I recognize myself as a lazy guy and I hate having to fight for a long time to give them a nice tone, just apply this filter and bingo!!!!!.

For this reason FILMCONVERT has deserved to be called among friends “the green remover in the faces”, at first the name was a joke, but reviewing the official documentation of its creator….. ALSO THEY CONSIDER THAT IT IS THE MOST OUTSTANDING THING THEIR PRODUCT HAS!!!!!! (if you don’t believe me check the article they have about the color of the trees in “film” VS “digital”).

There is only one problem…. I hate color correcting in editing and/or postpo programs, call me picky. So if I consider using this filter it will be only to prerender a movie that I will then take to DAVINCI/SPEEDGRADE/COLOR/MYSTIKA. If we are talking about RAW footage that means accepting a sacrifice, but then again, I’m so vaaaaaaaaagious that I’ll probably accept the sacrifice in order not to have to look at a vectorscope for a long time. Besides, in case of DSLR footage, adding grain before color correction will surely suit my secondaries.

As an additional consideration, after experimenting for a while with the exposure and temperature corrector, I would put my hand on the fire that it works in a linear space and at a fairly deep color depth, which is good for underexposed images with strong color drifts. For those of you working with Davinci this would be analogous to the MASTER control in 3-way LOG mode, the FCPX corrector works well under this paradigm.

Oh, I forgot, I want to add that I have a strong conviction that Instagram has definitely screwed up the vocabulary/correctness used in a color correction session and FILMCONVERT, in an interesting way, goes in that direction too, thank you very much….

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:

Sergio Márquez, from the rental company NÓMADA MEDIA, has been generous enough to lend me a license to write this review. Thanks for lending me the “Quitaverdes”, Sergio, I owe you several beers.

To the team of the short film “SIBONEY” for allowing me to use their footage for this article. If you want to see this excellent short film you have it uploaded in Vimeo in this link: