Faking old optically printed 16mm titles in Resolve?

Hi,

I'm working on a 16mm music video that was scanned with a Blackmagic Cintel; I'm editing in Resolve 16.

I was hoping to have some burned-in subtitles but the built-in style makes for a very distracting visual mismatch (the clip is supposed to look vaguely old). I was hoping to simulate the old optically printed title look. Has anyone attempted this? If so I would much appreciate any tips.

So far my only idea is shooting a few 35mm film stills for each title with Ilford HP5 (which is fairly grainy); and then I'd key out the background and make a simple animation of a few exposures so the grain moves more naturally. Does this seem like something that might work?

I'm working on a 16mm music video that was scanned with a Blackmagic Cintel; I'm editing in Resolve 16. I was hoping to have some burned-in subtitles but the built-in style makes for a very distracting visual mismatch (the clip is supposed to look vaguely old). I was hoping to simulate the old optically printed title look. Has anyone attempted this? If so I would much appreciate any tips.

Some "film look" plug-ins you can try:

ResolveFX Film Damage (adding dirt & scratches)
ResolveFX Camera Shake (adding a degree of film weave and jitter)

both included with Resolve Studio. I'll tell you upfront that "less is more" -- go for subtle, and don't go crazy with the jitter and weave. Real film is not quite that bad.

Dehancer is a 3rd-party program that purports to creating some film looks. I work with real film every day, and while there are aspects of Dehancer that I don't think are 100% accurate, I think some of the looks are really convincing. FilmConvert is more popular, but I don't think it's nearly as good as Dehancer. I think the synthetic grain in Dehancer and FilmConvert Nitrate are comparable.

https://www.dehancer.com/
https://www.filmconvert.com/nitrate

Video Village is working on a similar filmlook OFX plug-in called Filmbox, and it looks very promising. Their filtration system called "Scatter" is terrific -- some of the best filter glow/glare simulations I've ever seen.

https://videovillage.co/filmbox/

BTW if you want film "clutter" and damage, here's some more resources:

http://www.crumplepop.com/
http://filmlooks.com/
http://www.filmwash.com/shop/
https://www.fxphd.com/store/stock/scrat ... ge-bundle/
http://indieessentials.com
https://lensdistortions.com/
http://www.rgrain.com/
https://www.smashworkshop.com/film-overlays
https://vamify.com/collections/vintage-8mm-overlays

Do you have any examples of that 'old optically printed look'?

If you're looking at 16 mm, I don't think they did any optical work in 16mm because of the lack of registration (there's always a weave) so that's where I'd start, making a very slight random movement of the title at the center position, of course the default titles are really sharp, so some blurring will be in order, the film grain tool in Fusion will give you lots of control of what kind of grain you want to add (and you're going to need quite a lot to match the original 16mm most of the time) and probably some sort of chromatic aberration to simulate the tiny misalignments you'd get from an optical printer.

Though not done in Resolve this video of mine might give you some ideas.
The original colour HD footage has added blur, weave, stutter, varying density, and scratches. The title was similarly treated separately. The audio was also treated using EQ to approximate an Academy Curve, with added optical noise.

Ah, the old days of winding the film back in my Bolex to super my white paper cutout titles.

Do you have any examples of that 'old optically printed look'?

If you're looking at 16 mm, I don't think they did any optical work in 16mm because of the lack of registration (there's always a weave).

opticals were done in 16mm, one of my cleints has a 16mm optical printer he used to create a this look in his recent film (not yet released tho)

his answer was to do the whole thing, find a printer, shoot the plates on 16mm, scan the resualts to 4k DPX

gate weave is pretty camera dependant some like the SR/XTR/416 are pretty decent, others like the ACL/CP16/Bolex, not so much

Do you have any examples of that 'old optically printed look'?

What I had in mind was the look of the subtitles on a 16mm print of feature film (it's possible that the titles in these were done on 35mm then reduced); I've seen dozens in real life but I'm having a hard time finding an example on Youtube or Vimeo.

Except for the dye fading, this educational film has the look I mean (if you could imagine the titles as subtitles):

(Edit: I don't have the permission to post a URL but the YouTube video is called "1974, HOW FILM LABS PROCESS 16MM FILM, A film by Donald Clark" and its code is "39qz0bvxxDk"; it's a fun bit of ephemera).

Thanks everyone for the thoughtful replies, this gives me a quite a number of things to try.

I found this example on YT.

Film with Burnt in Subtitles.jpg

So for fun I had a go in Resolve using approximately the same typeface which is Courier. Is this the sort of thing you are looking for?

Thank you very much Charles. That is quite close to what I was thinking.