Demystifying the Secrets of Film Emulation with Nico Fink

0:00:00 
The more I learned about film, the more I realized okay, you can never have a one-to-one emulation, because every scanner operator scans the film a bit different and hundreds of other variables. Back in the day, episodic stuff that was shot on film was just a quick telecine and looks completely different than a big budget feature film that was scanned and printed to film. So the same is true now. I guess, because of scene-referred workflows and HDR deliveries and even regrading and remastering old films for HDR, they also sometimes look completely different. 

0:00:38 
Welcome to Color Coffee, a podcast that's focused on the craft of color and the artists behind it. I'm your host, jason Bowdach, and each episode, we'll sit down with some of the most talented artists in the industry and have a casual chat from one artist to another. We'll share their stories, their insights, their tips and, of course, their beverage of choice. Whether you're a seasoned pro or just getting started, join us for some great color discussion. Sit back, grab your mug. You're listening to Color Coffee. Welcome to another episode of Color Coffee. I'm thrilled to have you here today, and our guest today is Nico Fink, the founder of Demystify Color and Unwind Film Lab. Welcome to the show, nico. Hi, nice to meet you. Very happy to be here. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. Well, let's jump on to the most important question of the show, which is what are you drinking today? 

0:01:40 
Currently, because I didn't drink it for a long time is Club Mate In English. It's basically wordplay, it's club made and it's coffee based, so I think it still fits the show name and absolutely it's actually Mate tea. 

0:01:56 
I don't know if it's the same in English, but yeah, yes it is oh yeah, nice Tea absolutely fits the show name, it's whatever your beverage of choice is. Are you a tea guy generally? 

0:02:08 
Yeah, I love matcha, but also coffee and basically all kinds of speciality coffee. I hand brew them and, yeah, the nerding doesn't end. After and before the grading suite and the film lab. 

0:02:24 
You know, I can imagine working with film and working with coffee. I can imagine this pretty similar trying to get the mixture perfect, trying to get everything just the right amount so you can get that little perfect end, which is well, either a perfect coffee or a perfect print is the ideal. So I can imagine them being similar. Are you a hot tea or a cold tea kind of guy? I notice you have some cold tea there, yeah definitely cold. 

0:02:49 
I also let my coffee cool down a bit. I hate hot beverages actually, oh interesting. 

0:02:57 
Well, we are in a very, very three-digit heat wave over here in California, so I'm joining you with my iced vanilla latte from Starbucks. Sorry for the coffee aficionados, I ran out of time this morning. That's on me, sorry for the time. Hey, it all happens. So, for those of you that are not aware, nico runs a really fantastic training website called demystify color and I'd like to hear a little bit about how you got into that, your background as a colorist and, ultimately, how you got into running an actual film lab. 

0:03:29 
Basically, I was first introduced to color grading 2014, so exactly 10 years ago by a really, really good colorist. His name is Ivan Filipovich. He's also a CSI member. Back then he worked at the Red Bull Media House in Salzburg. His name is Ivan Filipovic. He's also a CSI member. Back then he worked at the Red Bull Media House in Salzburg. He's also here in Austria and I did an internship actually in post-production, so more in the motion graphics, VFX kind of area. 

But they wanted me to see all of the workflow, from in-chest to editing motion graphics, color grading, sound design and all the way to the QC and deliveries. And, yeah, I went into the color suite and was totally hooked with the work of Ivan. Yeah, it was my first time seeing Resolve. I think it was version 12.3 or something like that, I don't know. After that I started to dive more into Resolve, which was super hard back in the days because there was only one YouTube channel from Daria the Goat's Eye View. Mixing Light was pretty much founded at the same time, I guess. But we're just the two things where you were able to learn color grading if you're not in a post house or a post company, like the mill or company three or whatever. So I started learning on my own, while still also doing some cameras work and editing work, and started to buy all the gear and it was way more expensive. Back then. Even Resolve was more expensive, which was already pretty cheap, because I think it was around a thousand bucks. 

0:05:11 
Yeah, a thousand bucks was still pretty cheap comparatively. I just got the number and a couple barely a little over two decades ago it was close to a million dollars for Resolve Room. 

0:05:21 
Yeah, it's insane. I think it was DaVinci 2K or something like that, right yeah. Then I started doing more and more color grading because there also weren't many colorists around. I think it was around end of 2017, beginning of 2018, where I went like full-time colorist, also self-employed on my own. 

0:05:42 
As just a reminder, where are you based also? 

0:05:44 
self-employed on my own. As just a reminder, where are you based? In Austria, vienna, okay, it was like March 2020, I think, where COVID and we had our had the first lockdown and I was thinking about doing tutorials like in, I think, 2019. And then it was always a back and forth. Should I really do this? I don't know, it's not, english is not my mother tongue and I wasn't really sure if I should do this. I don't know, it's not English, it's not my mother tongue and I wasn't really sure if I should do it. I don't know. 

0:06:08 
And a common entrepreneurial thought. I can guarantee. 

0:06:11 
Should. 

0:06:11 
I do this. Should I start this business? 

0:06:13 
Yeah, and then, yeah, with COVID, I just said, okay, let's try this. If it works out, it works out. If not, it's also fine, because I have the time anyways. And yeah, I started, it actually went pretty well. And from there onwards, I had demystify color, like the training platform, and I thought about what's not out there yet, because there was like mixing light already. And then I was thinking, okay, what's not on mixing light? Because I didn't want to copy any other platform or any other tutorials or whatsoever, and I was thinking about, okay, I'm just diving into film emulation, because I think it was 2017 or 2018. I never really understood, because I got some cheap lat pack with all these crazy numbers like 5219 and 5217 and so many numbers, and it was like I don't know, this all looks crap. I don't know how to use it. Because, yeah, color space transforms weren't I don't know if they were still around already in 2017, 2018. I don't know. 

0:07:20 
I think we were probably going through our display to scene refer transformation at that time during the industry it was probably becoming, because there was a time when we were the industry was really sort of locked into using display refer tools, yeah, and then there was a time when we were evolving into more scene referred color management based tools and I think that's probably around that time. 

0:07:40 
Yeah, yeah, and in actually, I think it was around 2019 where it really clicked how to use the 2383 emulation, that it doesn't look unsaturated and too contrasty and just like crap. And yeah, then I was basically hooked with film emulations because I thought, oh, what the fuck? I took so many hours grading that I basically get to the starting point of a 2383 lot. 

Then, with the learning platform, I decided, okay, let's do like a film profile journey, because I also looked at the it's not really a tutorial, but the talk from Steve Yedlin about how he does everything and I was like, okay, there's some code, I write it, I take screenshots and write it down. Then I was like, okay, there's some code, I write it, I take screenshots and write it down. Then I was like, okay, there are some lines missing. And actually, I think because of COVID, everybody had a lot of time and there was Tetra, which basically guys figured out the math. And yeah, I started the film profile journey and then it really took off because a lot of people were interested and I thought it's really cool to share. Along my way, I was basically learning and I'm still learning every day about film stuff and just sharing my thoughts and how to do film profiles. 

0:08:54 
Let's dive into that a little bit, because I think that's an incredibly interesting topic and one that most people don't have a ton of experience on. Myself, like a lot of people on the internet, was really blown away by Steve Yedlin's display prep demo, where he shared a lot of his own philosophy about processing data from the camera and how we do. A lot of our processing after the fact and I think that for me was quite revolutionary in the sense of the mechanism that we were using to capture light or photons on set is nothing more than that a capture mechanism. I want to know what your thoughts are about that and how you feel about that. And two, I want to know some of the steps that you are doing for actually profiling film like let's, let's jump into the weeds. 

0:09:38 
a little bit. First of all, I think it's very hard to disagree with DP who, who shot so many great films and is an ASC member. So you can't really disagree, I guess, with people if you don't have, or at least if you don't have, more credits than him or done something in quotes better. But I definitely agree with him and it's amazing to have people like him put out stuff like that, Because before Steve I think there was only one short article who or at least to my knowledge, who had, again in quotes, the same philosophy and workflows like Steve, who is Toby Tompkins from Cheat, or now it's Harbor actually. Yeah, I just got bought by Harbor. Actually, I got into this because of this article from Dobie and then I also found the Steve Yedlin thing and I think it's kind of similar what they did. It's probably not the same, but yeah, that's how I started this. So I can't disagree with anything both of them are saying, because my work is actually based on theirs, if you want to say so. 

I think with some people disagree with this method because of just shooting charts again in quotes, because they think you can't capture enough or it's biased or whatever reasons. 

Of course there could be better methods, but then again it would be so much harder to do, at least as far as my knowledge goes. 

So I'm totally fine with shooting charts and profiling them, because even though people disagree with this method, I myself, for me, get great profiles out of it and I use them every day when doing grading work and all the dps and directors that are coming in and seeing this stuff also really like the profiles and I even do shooting lots for them because they want to have it on set already. So I think there's always a sort of technical standpoint and you can really nerd out on this one what could be better and how to get some more percentage out or right in quotes or whatever. But in the end of the day I still think, even though that's all very scientific or at least if you're colorist you want to have a nice looking image and if that works and you don't get any heart defects or breaking or whatever, then that's fine, Because at the end of the day you have to deliver a nice looking image and sometimes you don't need to have this last few percentages of, because you always can grade underneath the lot. 

0:12:15 
So yeah, I think I guess clearly to classify what the opposite argument would be. 

I like to call it nostalgia based choice. A very common mentality that I tend to hear is that the choice of the capture mechanism is based off nostalgia-based feelings. So it's things like I want to shoot on film because I like the way that it feels, or I like the way that it renders a certain color or curve or something, or I want to shoot with an Alexa because I like the way that the roll off is, when these are actually components of the image processing pipeline or things that can be added to the image processing pipeline, and baking them down to simple nostalgia and something that is a preference is not defining it deeply enough so that you can actually figure out what is technically causing that, and it's just sort of throwing it off and saying that you can actually figure out what is technically causing that and it's just sort of throwing it off and saying you know what? I don't even know what's causing this and I'm going to go with the old method because I don't want to dig deep enough to find out why it's doing that. 

0:13:15 
Definitely. I think it's also related to a very nice comment that I keep on reading on the internet from Mark Wheelage. A lot of people always keep asking about film and film look and he always replies film doesn't have one look. I think this adds onto this what you said very well, because film can look a million different times depending how you light it, depending how you shoot it, if you underexpose it, if you overexpose it, depending how you shoot it, if you underexpose it, if you overexpose it, how your set design, is, what lenses you're using. 

I think there are so many variables that define a look, or it's not even I just shoot Alexa, or I just shoot film, or I use a film emulation of this and this stock. With the film emulation you still want to have a look that you like, not really a one-to-one emulation, or at least that's where I ended up, because back in the days I wanted to have a one-to-one emulation and the more I learned about film, the more I realized okay, you can never have a one-to-one emulation because everything is a bit depending, because every scanner looks a bit different. Every scanner operator scans the film maybe a bit different, and hundreds operator scans the film maybe a bit different and hundreds of other variables, and also how you light it and what, whatever. 

0:14:31 
So I hope this answered the question and doesn't raise even more um questions it does and it actually leads me into sort of my next conversation, uh piece, which I think is a big sort of point in modern film emulation, which is it doesn't always need to match the stock perfectly. And in fact I think a lot of people get confused when they see films that are shot on actual celluloid film, that don't look like the films we used to see, that went through a film, an optical process, essentially because they have been digitally graded. 

0:15:06 
That's definitely also a good point, because it always depends on what you're referring to, because back in the day some stuff gets shot on film but wasn't scanned but telecined. This also looks completely different than episodic stuff that was shot on film back in the days it was just a quick telecine and looks completely different than a big budget feature film that was scanned and printed. The same is true now, I guess, with scene referred workflows and HDR deliveries and even regrading and remastering old films for HDR. They also sometimes look completely different, even though it's even the same camera negative. 

0:15:49 
My thoughts now is, technically, if you want to be a purist, film prints should only be SDR, like they should be in that 100-nit container, and I mean technically even less than that. They should be in there like only to 48 nits. That's what the film print is. But if we want to be true's what the film print is, but if we want to be true to what our modern technology is allowing we have HDR, we have a much wider gamut, we have a much higher dynamic range If we want to really take advantage of that, we have to move away from the actual film print into a more modern sort of mentality. 

And for me that's where we can take that mindset of what you were talking about, where we can take the data that we get from that film print and and sort of merge it with sort of a modern curve to fit modern displays. We don't have to be a one-to-one film print emulation and I think people get stuck on that where they'll apply a one-to-one emulation and go, you know it doesn't look that great or it looks mute or it looks dull, when in fact is the actual best looking. Emulation is going to be something that's a little bit more modern, that has the DNA of that film print, be something that's a little bit more modern, that has the DNA of that film print but may have a little bit more of a modern curve to fit, like I said, the modern display. Or maybe he only has 50% of that DNA from the film print. 

0:17:08 
Yeah, definitely. I think this also boils down to in the end you want to have a nice looking image. If a DP wants to shoot actually on film maybe and just use a 2383 film print and create it for a theatrical release only, then that's totally fine. Why not Even today? Or maybe even in 10 years, I don't know why not. If this is the vision of the direct and the DP, totally fine for me. Then, on the other hand, if's an hdr show and they want to shoot on I don't know alexa, or when is, or whatever, they're saying okay, we want some sort of film. Look, we don't want to shoot on film and we want to be flexible for our hdr deliveries. We don't know yet where it's going, because they didn't know when shooting if it will be released in theater or maybe a streaming service buys it later on or whatever. We want to be flexible, then it's also fine what you said. 

Then we can do film profiles. We can apply them if they're profiled for a scene, referred workflow in 50%. Or we can even mix colors of an Ektachrome emulation and the curve of a 23 emulation and maybe some I don't know shadow detail from a 500T emulation together, if it looks good and it works and nothing breaks, then that's fine too. All is fine. Of course, it's not a one-to-one film emulation and it can't be a one-to-one film emulation. But then again, what is a one-to-one film emulation? As I said earlier, there are so many variables and so many different things to consider. Also, you still can shoot on film and deliver HDR. That's also totally possible. I think. In the end of days, there are lots of tools available and lots of different choices you can do, and all of them are fine as long as the client is happy and the DP and the director is happy and basically everybody's happy. 

0:19:10 
It must be a real joy to work with you because you're really sort of easy in terms of the opinion. So I'm going to ask you a personal question what is your favorite film stock your personal preference, Funny enough. 

0:19:23 
I just did some crazy thing that I basically is inspired for from Euphoria. So there is a short article, I think it's on the Kodak website from Tom Poole, the colorist from Company 3. And it's Marcel Reff, I think. I hope I pronounced it correctly who shot it. I think it was season one Don't quote me on that when they shot on Season two shot film. 

Ah, yeah, sorry. Then it was season two probably, where they shot on Ektachrome, which is basically a reversal film. So if you develop it in E6, it's the process then you get on your film strip a positive image instead of a negative. But you can gross process this stock in ECN2, which is the standard chemistry for all the stocks we usually know, like 250D and 500T and so on, and then you still get the negative, and the negative looks super, super magenta. I actually have one hanging back in there. 

0:20:32 
Oh, those are film strips that are hanging back there. Yeah, in here, very cool, We'll get to that in a little bit. 

0:20:37 
Yeah, sure, and there's actually also a scanner. Basically, if you scan it because it's vice versa, then you get the really, really greenish image. The negative is magenta. If you scan it, you're positive, yeah, you get a very, very greenish looking image. If you basically in quotes it's super oversimplified cancel out the greenish tint, you get super, super nice looking colors and very nice images. And I did this some days ago for a befriended TP and this looks super, super nice and it's actually my favorite film stock. In combination with this process, I actually bought a Sintel scanner and I scanned it with the Sintel scanner and created some unique color science. That's actually looking so amazing and I'm really in love currently with that workflow and stock and process. 

0:21:26 
That's fantastic. Yeah, we'll definitely attach that image to the show notes. I'm sure people listening would love to take a look at that and see how it came out of the bath. That sounds very, very cool. 

0:21:39 
Yeah, that's actually really amazing and I'm so happy that they shared what they did on Euphoria that I actually managed to replicate it. Of course, I don't know exactly what they did and I don't have the same color science as Company 3, obviously, but I'm still super happy with the results and the color science I developed on my own for this well, if you're listening. 

0:22:01 
Tom and marcel, thank you so much for that article. 

0:22:03 
I definitely know what article you're talking about and it was very fascinating, yeah, but I was not able to take it to the level that you did, and I'm very interested in hearing more about it now, on that topic, tell us more about unwind yeah, actually also because I dived, as I said earlier, really into film emulations and demystify color. Yeah, I'm doing like film emulations for the past four years and at some point I decided to shoot some color charts on an alexa, on a red, and I think the first ones were 50d and 500t, and I developed it and sent it to the lab. And unfortunately, here in europe we're not so blessed with you guys in the us. We don't have photo cam in here and we also don't have like the kodak film lab like in new york. Here in europe it's also super hard to send it to Kodak nowadays because they have one in London, but because of the Brexit, it's also with customs and everything. It's super tricky. 

Anyways, I wasn't so happy with the scans that I got back and also with the support of the lab for doing this. Then I decided, yeah, I don't know, I did this with two different labs and anyhow it doesn't look too good and there were always some problems and it's also super expensive. And then I was like, okay, fuck, if I want to shoot 10 or 15 different film stocks, it costs me a fortune and I'm not able to afford this. So what I did? When I actually got back some workable and nice scans. There was from Focus Film Lab, based in Sweden, and they scanned on a Scannity. They were super nice. 

And then I also got some other nice looking scans and great help from Cinegrail in Berlin. They're also nice guys. These were on an ARRI scanner. And then I was like, okay, these are looking great and they're working and looking as expected. And now I was like, okay, I'm going to sell this on Demystify because then I can, with the money I get in, afford to do more film shooting and more profiling stuff. And it's not cheap, yeah, it's not cheap. Yeah, it's not cheap, and I wanted to get it out as cheap as possible for everyone. 

0:24:20 
So it also helps people who don't have access to film labs and buying film and shooting film like in india, like me I mean I'm I'll openly admit I might be based in los angeles and I might be near photo cam, but getting together a full shoot is full shoot, with charts. First off, the charts are expensive and to getting the full exposure plus five and negative five is not easy. So getting these charts on all these different, both digital and negative, is yes, because negative is not an easy process, nor cheap. And then getting a DP that knows what he's doing, so even if you can possibly get all the materials in, and then getting a dp that knows what he's doing, so even if you can possibly get all the materials in one place, getting a a, getting the talent to get this done correctly, is a whole different task yeah, and in some countries what I wanted to say, like in india, you can't even buy film in in some areas or so, so it's crazy. 

So you're doing a huge benefit, and I I mean for, for those that are not aware, a lot of the Pixel Tools products are developed and profiled using Demystify's charts. 

0:25:23 
Yeah, I'm very happy to hear it. It's a huge honor. 

0:25:26 
Thanks. It's truly my pleasure. And for those that are looking to develop new color tools and don't necessarily have access to shoot your own film, go over to Demystify's site and check out their charts. It's a great way to get started if you don't have the ability or the resources to shoot your own film. 

0:25:42 
Thanks so much for a shout out Very appreciated. 

0:25:45 
Truly my pleasure. Great products deserve great recommendations, thanks, thanks. 

0:25:50 
No, it's still a long answer to your question, but then at some point I was okay I have collected some short ends from also very long discontinued Fujifilms and stuff like that and I was like okay, they're really really short, some are just 10 meters. 

0:26:08 
For those that are not familiar, haven't worked with film what is a short? 

0:26:11 
end. 

The short end is basically you have 122 meters, so 400 feet, of film in a roll and you load it in a magazine in your camera and it goes through the camera and then you shoot on 24 frames per second so you can do the math on how many minutes you get out. 

I don't know it on top of my head, sorry, but basically you're blowing through a make really quick and then at some point with like commercials or even feature film productions if they're only, I don't know, 20 meters left or 30 meters left, they don't want to risk to run out of film and because of that they are just loading a new 122 or 400 feet roll in and they don't care about the 20 meters left. And the funny thing is some people are selling it. Most of them, unfortunately, just throw it to the, to the trash. But some are selling it and I bought this. That's not a very, very long answer already to your question how I started actually the film lab. Because I was okay. I can use this short dance and re-spool them by hand in like small canisters to shoot on stills cameras with it, because 36 exposures on a stills camera is roughly 1 meter 60. 

0:27:35 
Essentially a whole roll, essentially a roll of still film. 

0:27:38 
Yeah, yeah, one roll of still film is like 1 meter 60. So you can do the math with the short end from like 20 or 30 meter, which isn't worth anything. When shooting a feature film, you can still get a lot of stills rolls out, a couple of rolls out of it. That's very smart. Yeah, that's what I did and how I was able to test the films, because if they're expired for a very long time, then you need to overexpose them. So the basic rule of thumb is, per 10 years of expiration, you overexpose it for one stop. 

And then I tried this on the still camera and yeah, yeah, that's how I moved forward. And with all these tests, I was okay, if I bring this to every time to a film lab, it's so expensive and that's the reason why I started to develop it on my own and then also scan it on my own. And at some point I was like, okay, if I do all of this already, I can start the film lab anyways. Then brands were coming in, developing and scanning and basically also new customers that I don't know because people posted it on Instagram and stuff like that. And then I realized, okay, it's super cool to actually do not only film emulations and talk about them online, but actually work with film and get into the craft actually and I love doing stuff away from the computer. That's a super nice thing to have. I'm doing some grading, some demystify tutorials and also running a lab to have a balance out the screen time. 

0:29:11 
I honestly I'm feeling a little jealous because so much of what I do is on the computer. I'm like like I need something that zens me down, like, yeah, it's such a, it's such a great hobby. Do you do all of the uh, the chemical processing the baths at home? 

0:29:27 
yeah, um, now, basically I have, like I'm in my grading suite here and I remodeled it a bit so, um, that the grading needs less space and that's the reason why I fit one scanner in here, the other one right behind here. Then I had like a storage room with I don't know 30 square meters and I remodeled this one for all the film machines and film drying and stuff like that. 

0:29:56 
That's fantastic. I'd love to see do you have a darkroom? 

0:29:59 
No, it's actually loaded into canisters, okay, and I can do them in dark bag and then process them Dark bags. 

0:30:08 
Okay, yeah, see, look at me, I thought you needed. I would have figured you had a darkroom, but see, you don't even need it. You do it all completely blind in the bag. 

0:30:26 
Yeah, definitely. You just stick your hands in and that's it. How do you reload the still cartridge without exposing it? Basically, I 3D printed one a film loader. I can actually share the link with everyone who's interested online on Thingiverse or stuff like that. I can look it up. 

0:30:37 
I'm sure there'll be people that are interested. 

0:30:39 
Yeah, definitely, definitely all need that link and I 3D printed this one and the 400 feet roll goes in there and you just have a spool or like an empty canister in and stick it to the film with the tape and then you crank it for I don don't know 32 times and you have a loaded stills. That's fantastic and with a 400 feet roll you get around 72 stills canisters with 36 exposures out that is amazing. 

0:31:13 
Jumping gears just slightly, with you working on all that stuff. What can we expect to see out of you next? 

0:31:20 
I don't know Now. I'm just doing stills development and scanning, but I want to get into doing 8mm and at some point hopefully 16mm too. But I don't know yet how to pull this off because it's super hard to get a small and affordable tabletop kind of machine. Hopefully this works out for the future because there isn't any lab in my country who is doing eight or 60 millimeter development and scanning. 

0:31:48 
So yeah, yeah, and I see a lot of people starting to move back towards film, not only for actual shooting, but just for the experience of shooting film, which I think is a really important craft to maintain. 

0:32:01 
I think also the process is really nice with, also if you just have a stills camera and shooting film. If you're a TB, I think you will learn a lot about how to expose and how to shoot on film when you want to prep for shooting on a 60 millimeter or 35 millimeter motion picture camera at some point. I think the process is nice even though you're not a db, because you don't get the image out immediately. So I really like this. 

If you have a role for I don't know half a year in the camera because you don't shoot so much, and then you get back your stills and then you have nice memories of a vacation or whatever with a really great image, then I think that's really magical if you get back the scans and and look at the images that you take half a year earlier. 

And also I think you're more conscious when shooting film because you know you just have 36 exposures and they are still more expensive than shooting with a digital camera, so you don't pull the trigger down all the time and for me at least it's. You get better images out because you're more focused and you think more about what you actually want to photograph and how you set your exposures and your iris and everything. So, yeah, I think it's a super nice process. Even though we have digital cameras and also, I think, with film, you still get so nice looking images out that it's super hard to actually do one-to-one emulations of them. So every time I create a shot on film project, I think the texture and sometimes even weirdness you get out of film is looking so cool that it's super hard to replicate with any film emulation available. 

0:33:43 
I think you hit something that we probably didn't spend enough time here. Talking about film emulation, a lot of people jump immediately to the hue and the colors and the density of the reds and the yellows, which, yes, that is film emulation and it's a very important part of film emulation, but the texture of film, I think, is what gives it away a lot more. 

0:34:03 
And. 

0:34:03 
I'm mildly obsessed with the texture of film, the way that you say that there's something about the softness and the sharpness at the exact same time, and it's that subtle texture that I'm trying to emulate in my grade. I do feel that as sharp as digital is, it's too sharp and we're getting better with a lot of our tools to bring that film texture. But I do feel while we've gotten really good with hue and color, we're not as close with the texture. And I think your comment about being able to look at a film still and there being a certain texture to it it's funny because we talked about the Steve Yedlin display prep demo and how we see everything as a data capture device, yet we talk about texture like it's a nebulous thing and it's not magic. It's just that we are not able to, step by step, create that texture on digital at that moment, and so we're talking about it in a way that it's nostalgia for us. 

0:35:01 
The funny thing is when I started the film lab and scanning my developing and scanning my own film and looking so much at actually film shots and very, very different film shots like unexposed one, overexposed one, perfectly exposed one, bright images, dark images, moody lit stuff, whatever you name it. What's really funny, I think, is that halation is so funny to see because I think it's super, super overused on digital images. We have amazing tools out there to emulate halation. I think Filmbox is super nice for just the halation emulation Looks very, very nice. There's also a nice DC Dell out there. I think it's on Jitterpot, Clue Banjo, I don't know how to pronounce it. 

0:35:52 
There's a couple out there. Yeah, I agree with you, it's really overused when it actually is very subtle in real life. 

0:35:58 
Even so, if you're using these tools, which are probably the best out there, at least in my opinion, it's still most of the time stronger than what you would see on actual 35 millimeter film. And that's one funny thing, because then there are people out there who are putting out like using film box, basically on 300% strength. Again, it's fine if the client is happy and if that's what you want to do, totally fine. Once again, I don't want to judge anyone, but it's kind of funny. If you see a lot of film and see a lot of digital emulations, you know that it wouldn't look like that on actual shot film. Another thing that's super funny is I created a short film a few months ago where there was shot on 35mm and a red. 

Everybody always says film is not as sharp as digital, for example, but the funny thing, I think it's just different what's sharp and what's not, because the skin is super smooth and soft with film and looks so nice. I think it's super, super hard to replicate on digital. No matter which camera you shoot, even on an Alexa, then again, the eyes or the eyelashes and stuff like that are super sharp and it looks amazing and I was trying to do zoomed in shot of the very same person to try to replicate this on the red shot, and it was impossible. Either the red shot was way too sharp or way too soft all over, and this sharpness I think it's the MTF curve. I'm not too sure if it's the MTF curve, but I think so, at least for the tools I have, and I know and for my knowledge it was super, super hard. 

Actually, for me it was impossible to replicate this how 35 millimeter looks, especially in combination with the grain. I don't know if I did. The red footage was always either too mushy in combination with the MTF emulation and the grain emulation, or way too sharp. I wasn't able to dial it in that way and that's what I refer to as magical on film, because it's. The texture is so amazing. I probably there are people out there on company three or whatever who can actually do this and have better tools and better knowledge than me, but for me it's impossible at this point of time to really get that same texture on digital footage. 

0:38:20 
I think we're getting better. I know exactly what you're talking about, though. I call it the frequency separation of film. It's just the way it comes out of the box is just ideal, and if we could find the right amount of each frequency to either bring up or bring down, then we could get there. But until we find that, obviously it doesn't look quite as good. 

Yeah, but again, I think it's funny because we talk in one part of the podcast about being a data capture device and then on the other side of the device we're talking a little bit nebulous about. We can't get it to look like it, and I sort of just want to emphasize the fact that we're talking in this way because we haven't found the other side of the equation yet. So the words that we're using make it sound like we're talking about secret sauce or sort of black mirrors, but it's because we don't have the A plus B equals C. We're missing the B. We have the C, obviously through film, and we have the A, which is the original digital source, and we're still trying to solve for B right now. 

0:39:16 
No, definitely. I don't want to gatekeep in any way. Actually, I'm sharing everything that I know on the MISTI website. 

0:39:23 
And I think that's the coolest point is that this profession is constantly about learning and we're always talking to each other and saying, hey, here's what I found. Or, by the way, when I was developing film, here's something that I noticed and that's part of the profession is we get to talk to each other and learn from each other. I've learned a tremendous amount about film talking in this episode to you, and if anybody else wanted to learn more about you and Demystify, color and Unwind, where could we find you? 

0:39:51 
online. Actually, it's demystify-colorcom. That's the learning platform. There's also, like the it's demystify-colorcom. That's the learning platform. There's also, like the, it's called Film Profile Journey on there where I'm talking all about the film, also on the shop. I'm basically sharing every film stock that I'm shooting in the shop. If everything goes well I don't want to promise too much I'm even able to get EXR stock that Mitch profiled for Joker. Of course it's very long expired so I don't know if it will look the same in any way. But yeah, what I'm planning for the future. Hopefully I get some short ends from this stock and then I can profile this one too, and maybe it turns out amazing. Let's hope so. 

0:40:35 
And about what? About Unwind? Where can we find more about Unwind? 

0:40:38 
Unwind is unwindfilmsat. That's basically my, and it's also the same handle on Instagram, by the way, where I'm set or share everything about the Film Lab, and there's also something planned for the future where I want to educate more about film like push processing, pull processing, the different scanners available, and so on. So if you want to learn more about all of that, you can subscribe on Hanwine Films on Instagram, and I hope I can start this journey soon to share more about film there, and not just my lab, but things that you can also apply, like what's the difference when shooting a 500T with a 85B filter, for example, in daylight or not, and stuff like that. 

0:41:23 
Well, I will certainly be joining you on your journey and I hope to learn more about film. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate you taking your time to share your journey about film, about demystified color, and you're being a colorist, so thank you so much for coming on the show. It really has been a pleasure. 

0:41:41 
Yeah, thanks so much for having me and inviting me on the show. Real honor to be next to such big names that you had already on the show and also talking to you. 

0:41:50 
It really has been such a fun conversation as, as you can tell, I'm a huge film nerd as well, so it really has been such a pleasure and until the next episode, I'm Jason Bowdach. Have a great one and happy grading, and that's a wrap. Be sure to follow us on Instagram, youtube and your podcast app of choice Search for @Color andCoffee or At @ColorandCoffeePodcast, and join the conversation. If you're using Spotify or Apple Podcasts, please leave a review. Huge thanks to FSI and PixelTools for sponsoring the show. Until the next episode.