Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Excessive film grain

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Posted by John Hegel (Member # 628) on 04-15-2010, 08:12 PM:

I'm having problems with excessive film grain showing up on screen.

We just got done running Green Zone and it looked as if we were projecting a weak broadcast analog signal. Since the first of the year Avatar has been our only print that has been perfect in my opinion. Is it the labs fault, or something I'm doing wrong?

Equipment:

Ballantyne Pro 35

Strong Super Lume-X

Posted by Alan Gouger (Member # 543) on 04-15-2010, 08:26 PM:

Seeing grain tells me you are in focus and have plenty of light.
I would suggest you may have to much light but if Avatar looked good then I would put the blame on film stock.
What is your screen size & what lamp are you running.

Posted by Matt Johnston (Member # 5457) on 04-15-2010, 08:39 PM:

Grain has to do with the ISO that the feature was filmed at.

Basically the grain is what reacts with the light. Large grain will be during dark scenes.

All 2 or 3 prints of Green Zone at our location were this way FWIW.

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 04-15-2010, 09:03 PM:

grain size is often an "artistic choice" made by the dop during tiing and pre production and is part of the "package"

Posted by Bruce Hansen (Member # 281) on 04-15-2010, 09:20 PM:

I worked on H2, and that was shot on super 16 for that "grainy look"

Posted by John Hegel (Member # 628) on 04-16-2010, 12:35 AM:

The screen is 30' with 2000 watts of light.

Posted by Jonathan Smith (Member # 5609) on 04-16-2010, 09:39 AM:

It is amazing to me that people equate "grain" with "noise."

In my opinion, digital noise looks far far far far worse. The two can hide each other though. . .

I remember "X-Files" gave even analog standard-def. TV compression trouble when they started shooting it all on the now-defunct Vision 800T film stock (it's even worse now with the excessive digital compression they use).

Grain did the softness of "Date Night" good though, and hid the "digital jaggies" pretty well.

I knew it was digital because of all the blown highlights, but the grain softened the harshness of digital down.

Of course, now that nearly 100% of movies are finished digitally via a 2K digital intermediate (2,000 LINES not watts), digital noise is a part of all movies. Again, the copying process helps to hide JPEG jaggies and pixelation after 3 generations of copying though.