How to make video look like film

 How to make video look like film 

Colour correction 

First, get all the shots in a scene to look the same. If the white balance was wrong, the color tone may have to be adjusted. Otherwise, fine-tune the exposure on each individual shot. Now, develop a look for the scene. Nest the entire scene into one clip and experiment with filters to see what looks good. This stage is another license to get creative. It doesn’t have to look exactly how it was shot. For example, add some green to give the scene a sickly, institutional look.  

Desaturation 

This is an optional step, you can either de-saturate or over-saturate each shot depending on the tone of the film. De-saturating the shot makes the film, in most cases, look more realistic, yet over-saturation of a shot distorts the colours, making the shot more surreal and so depending on the film, a choice should be made to fit the feel of the film.

Crush blacks

For whatever reason, video cameras don’t record the dark areas as black as they should (a contrast problem). Nest the scene and make the blacks blacker. This is done in the color corrector by reducing the lows or with a filter called “Levels” by increasing the black input. Experiment with settings until happy.

Blur the highlights

This is a trait of some films. The very bright areas of the frame are blurry and almost bleed into the areas directly surrounding them. Duplicate the nested scene and put it on an upper video layer, perfectly aligned with the original. Add a small Gaussian blur (2-5), reduce the opacity to 3-10%, and change the composite mode to Screen.

Add grain

Most video editors have a “noise generator” of sorts. Generate some noise that is colored and randomly changing (under it’s settings). Put this in the timeline above the scene. Reduce opacity and experiment with composite mode (multiply might be good for this). Keep the opacity low–a little goes a long way.

Widescreen

Dramatic media, whether on TV or in a movie theater, is often presented in widescreen. This is another thing that helps convince an audience that your movie is more than just a home video. On video, add those annoying black bars on the top and bottom of the screen by putting a black color slug on an upper video layer and add an inverted 4-point garbage matte filter. This is better than applying the "widescreen" filter because this way you can adjust headroom on the clips. If you plan on doing this, shoot accordingly–try taping black bars onto the on set video monitor.

De-interlace (optional)

 The above 6 suggestions dealt with the look of film. This attempts to make the motion more cinematic. Video is 60 interlaced fields. Film is 24 frames per second. We can take video to 30 frames progressive (sort of). Most video editing software has a de-interlace filter. Unfortunately, it cuts the vertical resolution in half. Here’s how you can maintain more of the resolution. Duplicate a nested scene onto an upper video layer perfectly aligned with the original. On the lower layer, apply the “de-interlace” filter with even fields. On the upper layer, apply the “de-interlace” filter with odd fields and reduce the opacity to 50%. If you notice jagged edges, you may consider reducing the opacity to 30-50%. If you shot with the camera in 'movie mode' this step is not needed.