The Look of Jaws

Get answers to your questions about color grading, editing and finishing with DaVinci Resolve.
  • Author
  • Message
Offline

Chris Tempel

  • Posts: 163
  • Joined: Wed Nov 12, 2014 6:09 pm

The Look of Jaws

PostMon May 17, 2021 10:39 pm

A buddy challenged me to do "Jaws in a Montana Lake" and I'm basing it off a local lake monster legend. I've colored my own short films before, but they were never intended to mimic a look or film stock. I've done a lot of reading up on Bill Butler's process and know that he shot Jaws on Eastman 100T 5254. My research indicates strong colors, strong contrast, 8-9 stops, skin toward red, and almost pastel tones.

If you were trying to recreate the photochemical process and "look" digitally, how would you go about it? I'm trying to capture that vintage feel as much as possible.

I start shooting tomorrow on my URSA Mini 4K around morning golden hour. Canon 24-105mm, possibly my 50mm if I need more light. I have a few 5x7 foot bounces and reflectors for moving light around and the actors will be in a canoe on the lake.
Offline
User avatar

roger.magnusson

  • Posts: 3355
  • Joined: Wed Sep 23, 2015 4:58 pm

Re: The Look of Jaws

PostMon May 17, 2021 11:10 pm

If you have a Mac, Filmbox is quite good, they have a free version as well.

For me however, the look of Jaws is defined largely by the anamorphic lenses. It's also pretty soft like many movies of the era. Maybe use a Black Pro Mist/Hollywood Black Magic filter if you have one. There are also several scenes with a split diopter.
Offline
User avatar

Mike C Bonner

  • Posts: 116
  • Joined: Fri Dec 05, 2014 7:50 am
  • Location: Los Angeles, CA

Re: The Look of Jaws

PostTue May 18, 2021 2:26 am

Have the actors wear a lot of denim, then blast a bunch of HMIs in their faces.
Offline
User avatar

Marc Wielage

  • Posts: 10917
  • Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 2:46 am
  • Location: Hollywood, USA

Re: The Look of Jaws

PostTue May 18, 2021 7:16 am

roger.magnusson wrote:For me however, the look of Jaws is defined largely by the anamorphic lenses. It's also pretty soft like many movies of the era. Maybe use a Black Pro Mist/Hollywood Black Magic filter if you have one. There are also several scenes with a split diopter.

Very good advice from Roger here. I would definitely suggest an anamorphic lens look plus about a 1/8 or a 1/4 ProMist. They went pretty heavy on diffusion back in the 1970s.

I've had knock-down screaming arguments with people online who think it's easy to capture the look of film on a digital camera, but -- from my perspective -- it's actually pretty difficult. A lot of people think a $10 LUT or $140 for FilmConvert is going to do it, but the reality is a lot of the look of films in the 1970s boils down to art direction and specific lighting techniques.

Having said that: Filmbox is the best film emulation plug-in I've seen so far, and it has a lot of very tweaky parameters that can create interesting looks. The way they provide grain and contrast adjustment is very interesting, and there is a big difference between film negative and film prints. (I've done restoration work on more than 2000 films in the last 30 years, including Star Wars, Return of the Jedi, and Die Hard, to just name three.) There are a lot of elusive things about what we call "the film look."

Note that what's out on Blu-ray and 4K Blu-ray is a scanned 35mm negative of Jaws, which doesn't quite look like a projected print. But I think the scan is very good and the director did supervise and approve the work. The people at Universal DVS do terrific work.

Noted DP Steve Yedlin has some interesting theories on what distinguishes film from digital, including halation, grain, and contrast levels:

http://www.yedlin.net/OnColorScience/
marc wielage, csi • VP/color & workflow • chroma | hollywood
Offline

Rick van den Berg

  • Posts: 1382
  • Joined: Tue Jun 02, 2015 7:47 am
  • Location: Netherlands

Re: The Look of Jaws

PostTue May 18, 2021 7:28 am

Is filmbox some kind of LUT with extra controls? I'm mostly on windows..
Offline
User avatar

Frank Glencairn

  • Posts: 1801
  • Joined: Wed Aug 22, 2012 7:07 am
  • Location: Germany

Re: The Look of Jaws

PostTue May 18, 2021 7:43 am

Rick van den Berg wrote: I'm mostly on windows..


I found the Red Giant Film Plugin(available for Win) surprisingly good, especially since you can choose negative and print stock (also really good grain) - way better than Film Convert IMHO.



Add some halation and you are 90% there.

It's not 100% (since this is almost impossible IMHO) but totally in "close enough" territory.

Talking about halation - you may consider a 10% CineBloom filter while shooting, way more natural and organic, than just some artificial glow in post. Also it takes away most of that digital edge.

https://www.shopmoment.com/cinebloom-diffusion-filters
http://frankglencairn.wordpress.com/

I told you so :-)
Offline
User avatar

Uli Plank

  • Posts: 21298
  • Joined: Fri Feb 08, 2013 2:48 am
  • Location: Germany and Indonesia

Re: The Look of Jaws

PostTue May 18, 2021 8:28 am

I found FilmConvert Nitrate much better than the older one, you could even say “finally usable”. It stays in the log domain and you can control the grain by luminance. Both essential for such a task.
Halation is really hard to mimic in post, that’s right. But I think I’ve seen describing a pretty good approach for DR, try to search for it.
No, an iGPU is not enough, and you can't use HEVC 10 bit 4:2:2 in the free version.

Studio 18.6.5, MacOS 13.6.5
MacBook M1 Pro, 16 GPU cores, 32 GB RAM and iPhone 15 Pro
Speed Editor, UltraStudio Monitor 3G, iMac 2017, eGPU
Offline
User avatar

Marc Wielage

  • Posts: 10917
  • Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 2:46 am
  • Location: Hollywood, USA

Re: The Look of Jaws

PostTue May 18, 2021 9:03 am

Rick van den Berg wrote:Is filmbox some kind of LUT with extra controls? I'm mostly on windows..

At the moment, it's Mac-only and it's an OFX plug-in.
marc wielage, csi • VP/color & workflow • chroma | hollywood
Offline

Rick van den Berg

  • Posts: 1382
  • Joined: Tue Jun 02, 2015 7:47 am
  • Location: Netherlands

Re: The Look of Jaws

PostTue May 18, 2021 9:32 am

Alright, but under the hood, does it do more than a lut/correction+grain? Is it magic?

most "film" luts i tried so far weren't really making things better. I think also i tried filmconvert a few years ago.
Offline
User avatar

Uli Plank

  • Posts: 21298
  • Joined: Fri Feb 08, 2013 2:48 am
  • Location: Germany and Indonesia

Re: The Look of Jaws

PostTue May 18, 2021 11:07 am

Give it another try in the Nitrate version.
No, an iGPU is not enough, and you can't use HEVC 10 bit 4:2:2 in the free version.

Studio 18.6.5, MacOS 13.6.5
MacBook M1 Pro, 16 GPU cores, 32 GB RAM and iPhone 15 Pro
Speed Editor, UltraStudio Monitor 3G, iMac 2017, eGPU
Offline

Chris Tempel

  • Posts: 163
  • Joined: Wed Nov 12, 2014 6:09 pm

Re: The Look of Jaws

PostTue May 18, 2021 7:31 pm

Thanks for all the responses. The shoot this morning went well, and I really tried to take care not to blow out anything to help avoid the digital look. I do have FilmConvert Nitrate, I'll check out Filmbox too. It is looking to be quite difficult to replicate the photochemical process with digital, so I may have to go for the feeling of Jaws, rather than the look. I'm not a fan of the long takes or the split focus, but I did try to incorporate the focal length changes on a cut, which I saw a lot of in my last viewing of the film.

Once I get into the grade, I might try using just the RGB Mixer instead of the three ways as an experiment. On a side note, filming actors in a canoe was more difficult than I thought it would be. We didn't have another boat, so I ended up being knee deep in water and using slightly different parts of one direction as two different backgrounds.
Offline
User avatar

Marc Wielage

  • Posts: 10917
  • Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 2:46 am
  • Location: Hollywood, USA

Re: The Look of Jaws

PostWed May 19, 2021 2:44 am

Rick van den Berg wrote:Alright, but under the hood, does it do more than a lut/correction+grain? Is it magic?

I think they have a free version of Filmbox you can try for 7 days and decide if it works for you. All the manuals are up there and you can read their design philosophy and their approach for film emulation. It's actually pretty clever. My take is, "well, it's still not exactly film... but you can get a good look out of it and their handling of added grain is actually pretty good." I particularly like that they're emulating Kodak 5219, which I think is the best 35mm negative stock ever made -- and that's what just about every major non-digital color feature of the last 25 years was shot on.

Just to give equal time, Dado Valentic is doing some interesting things with his Look Creator and GrainLab plug-ins, but be aware they're not cheap. Again, you can download trial versions to get an idea of how they work and whether they're useful for your projects:

https://colourlab.ai/look-designer/

Uli Plank wrote:Give it another try in the Nitrate version.

There are good things about Nitrate, and I've owned every version of Film Convert going back to the day they started. I don't like their approach and their "starting points" for grades, but I have to say their grain is actually pretty good. I just don't like the looks beyond that. Very much a personal choice, so this isn't absolutely right or wrong. And again, I'm a paying customer, so they got their money from me.
marc wielage, csi • VP/color & workflow • chroma | hollywood
Offline

Rick van den Berg

  • Posts: 1382
  • Joined: Tue Jun 02, 2015 7:47 am
  • Location: Netherlands

Re: The Look of Jaws

PostThu May 20, 2021 7:09 am

colourlab looks interesting, gonna give it a try. Thanks for the suggestion.
Offline

Henchman

  • Posts: 593
  • Joined: Fri Sep 21, 2018 12:43 am
  • Location: Los Angeles
  • Real Name: Mark Hensley

Re: The Look of Jaws

PostThu Dec 23, 2021 6:42 pm

I've been using the filmbox light subscription.. And I'm really liking it.
I shoot with an Arri Lut, and select Arri Log as the camera in Filmbox.

I find I get to a good starting point much faster than I did with nitrate.

I'm doing a bit if a Neo noir project right now.
And for an amateur, I'm liking what I'm getting.

Sam_1.89.2.jpg
Sam_1.89.2.jpg (517.98 KiB) Viewed 1547 times
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0972296/
Offline

Ellory Yu

  • Posts: 3944
  • Joined: Wed Jul 30, 2014 5:25 pm

Re: The Look of Jaws

PostThu Dec 23, 2021 6:51 pm

Henchman wrote:
Sam_1.89.2.jpg

Looking good Mark.
URSA Mini Pro 4.6K G2, Blackmagic Design Pocket Cinema Camera 6K, Panasonic GH5
PC Workstation Core I7 64Gb, 2 x AMD R9 390X 8Gb, Blackmagic Design DeckLink 4K Mini Monitor, Windows 10 Pro 64-bit, Resolve Studio 18, BM Micro Panel & Speed Editor
Offline

Henchman

  • Posts: 593
  • Joined: Fri Sep 21, 2018 12:43 am
  • Location: Los Angeles
  • Real Name: Mark Hensley

Re: The Look of Jaws

PostSun Jan 02, 2022 8:17 pm

Ellory Yu wrote:
Henchman wrote:
Sam_1.89.2.jpg

Looking good Mark.

Thanks
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0972296/
Offline
User avatar

Uli Plank

  • Posts: 21298
  • Joined: Fri Feb 08, 2013 2:48 am
  • Location: Germany and Indonesia

Re: The Look of Jaws

PostMon Jan 03, 2022 12:07 am

Marc Wielage wrote:Just to give equal time, Dado Valentic is doing some interesting things with his Look Creator and GrainLab plug-ins, but be aware they're not cheap.


A lifetime license is pretty expensive, but you can license it for a month at 24 bucks. Once you got your desired look, you can export very high quality LUTs (cube 65) and use them forever.
No, an iGPU is not enough, and you can't use HEVC 10 bit 4:2:2 in the free version.

Studio 18.6.5, MacOS 13.6.5
MacBook M1 Pro, 16 GPU cores, 32 GB RAM and iPhone 15 Pro
Speed Editor, UltraStudio Monitor 3G, iMac 2017, eGPU

Return to DaVinci Resolve

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Google [Bot], panos_mts and 123 guests