What is grain and what are the benefits?

[CAB]

Needed for beer. Needed for single malts.

[miokti]

I can't imagine Schindler's List or Saving Private Ryan without grain... the grain that Spielberg left in these movies added to the overall ambiance and emotion. It's the same for the prologue of Casino Royale. The black and white scenes in the beginning of the movie were intentionally done grainy for the overall effect of flash-back. The rest of the movie is prestine with hardly any grain at all. Horror movies are often very grainy, because less visibility often hightens anxiety. Grain is a tool directors use... in fact, one of the reasons why directors hesitated for so long to use digital cameras when making films was because digital cameras didn't capture scenes are warmly as the grainy film cameras. Without grain, movies will look like home videos. It took a while for digital cameras to have a grainy effect... then they took off.

[Whytewash]

Originally Posted by miokti

I can't imagine Schindler's List or Saving Private Ryan without grain... the grain that Spielberg left in these movies added to the overall ambiance and emotion. It's the same for the prologue of Casino Royale. The black and white scenes in the beginning of the movie were intentionally done grainy for the overall effect of flash-back. The rest of the movie is prestine with hardly any grain at all. Horror movies are often very grainy, because less visibility often hightens anxiety. Grain is a tool directors use... in fact, one of the reasons why directors hesitated for so long to use digital cameras when making films was because digital cameras didn't capture scenes are warmly as the grainy film cameras. Without grain, movies will look like home videos. It took a while for digital cameras to have a grainy effect... then they took off.

grain, in my eyes, adds so much style to a film. There are times when Im disappointed with the PQ of a film but grain doesnt bug me NEAR like it used to. I would be pissed if every film looked like apocolypto, POTC, or casino royale.

there is a difference between beautiful PQ and grain. Just because a movie has grain doesnt mean the PQ is bad

[Gavin Von Karls]

To overly simplify things... Grain is tiny crystals or silver on the film that record an image when it is exposed to light. The size of the grain is dependent on the speed of the film stock and whether the cinematographer over or underexposed the negative.

For instance the 300 was shot on iso 500 speed film and Larry Fong underexposed in most scenes by 2 stops. This left an immense amount of grain on the image. But the payoff is he was able to shoot amazing slow motion sequences without a huge amount of light. It's not always budget related since Transformers was mostly shot on 500 speed stock. But the faster the film speed the larger the crystals and the more grain you will see. Also many cinematographers underexpose the film and then push it to correct exposure in the lab to bump up the contrast and give the film a harsh look... for example Mathew Libatique did this with The Fountain, this causes more grain. While in Requiem for a Dream he overexposed most of the scenes and pulled the film giving the image a softer look.

Now on the other hand in a film like Pirates cinematographer Darius Wolski chose to shoot the daylight scenes on iso 50 speed film stock which has smaller crystals and therefore much less grain... in fact it's hardly noticeable except in a theater.

All film has some grain whether you notice it or not if you blew the image up large enough you will see grain. I love it and think it adds to the experience. It's not usually something the Director decides to throw in for effect... this does happen every now and then, like in the Grindhouse pictures, but overall this is very rare.

I hope this helps!

And in case you're wondering I shoot film for a living...

[Blaumann]

Originally Posted by Gavin Von Karls

To overly simplify things... Grain is tiny crystals or silver on the film that record an image when it is exposed to light. The size of the grain is dependent on the speed of the film stock and whether the cinematographer over or underexposed the negative.

For instance the 300 was shot on iso 500 speed film and Larry Fong underexposed in most scenes by 2 stops. This left an immense amount of grain on the image. But the payoff is he was able to shoot amazing slow motion sequences without a huge amount of light. It's not always budget related since Transformers was mostly shot on 500 speed stock. But the faster the film speed the larger the crystals and the more grain you will see. Also many cinematographers underexpose the film and then push it to correct exposure in the lab to bump up the contrast and give the film a harsh look... for example Mathew Libatique did this with The Fountain, this causes more grain. While in Requiem for a Dream he overexposed most of the scenes and pulled the film giving the image a softer look.

Now on the other hand in a film like Pirates cinematographer Darius Wolski chose to shoot the daylight scenes on iso 50 speed film stock which has smaller crystals and therefore much less grain... in fact it's hardly noticeable except in a theater.

All film has some grain whether you notice it or not if you blew the image up large enough you will see grain. I love it and think it adds to the experience. It's not usually something the Director decides to throw in for effect... this does happen every now and then, like in the Grindhouse pictures, but overall this is very rare.

I hope this helps!

And in case you're wondering I shoot film for a living...

Thanks for this post, very informative.

[york weir]

I watched March of the Penguins over the weekend and certain shots had grain and others didn't. To say it's intentional, I think in many cases is just a cop-out.

[Blu n Gold]

Originally Posted by york weir

I watched March of the Penguins over the weekend and certain shots had grain and others didn't. To say it's intentional, I think in many cases is just a cop-out.

In that situation certain shots were not shot with an HD camera. Samething happens in Planet Earth.

[RUR]

Originally Posted by york weir

I watched March of the Penguins over the weekend and certain shots had grain and others didn't. To say it's intentional, I think in many cases is just a cop-out.

Lots of discussion regarding why MOTP looks the way it does here: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...f+the+penguins

Originally Posted by Josh Z

The movie was shot in 16mm in the middle of the Antarctic winter using mostly telephoto lenses. Yes, it's soft and grainy. It's not ever going to look better than that.

People are once again confusing film grain with video noise. They're not the same thing.

The underwater scenes were shot on SD video using tiny cameras. You can see them being used in the documentary in the supplement section.
What were you people expecting?

Not necessarily intentional, but more likely a result of the cameras used, film and overall lighting conditions. Could there also be adverse effects due to the authoring/transfer processes? Opinions seem to vary based on personal recollections of the film.

[york weir]

Originally Posted by RUR

Lots of discussion regarding why MOTP looks the way it does here: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...f+the+penguins



Not necessarily intentional, but more likely a result of the cameras used, film and overall lighting conditions. Could there also be adverse effects due to the authoring/transfer processes? Opinions seem to vary based on personal recollections of the film.

I figured it was a limitation of the equipment or the environment. That's why I said it's a cop-out to say it's always intentional.

[Yeha-Noha]

I have a cure for you. Watch Aronofsky's low budget yet superb film, Pi, shot in dark, grainy, often blurred and overexposed black and white, and you probably won't ever again notice any grain in other movies. Seriously, the grain was certainly an intentional special FX. This film must be in Blu-ray to show the grain at its best and the way it was intended to be seen. And if you think grain is bad, better reconsider. Aronofsky won an award at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival, but not just for the grainy FX of course.

[Gavin Von Karls]

I have a cure for you. Watch Aronofsky's low budget yet superb film, Pi, shot in dark, grainy, often blurred and overexposed black and white, and you probably won't ever again notice any grain in other movies. Seriously, the grain was certainly an intentional special FX. This film must be in Blu-ray to show the grain at its best and the way it was intended to be seen. And if you think grain is bad, better reconsider. Aronofsky won an award at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival, but not just for the grainy FX of course.

This is actually a prime example of the film grain not being a special effect. Although it was used in such an artistic way it's hard to know if it was intentional or not (I believe it was).

For PI Aronofsky and Libatique deciced to shoot on shortends. Shortends have much more grain than most any other film stock do to age and exposure to heat. The benefit was they were able to shoot a feature length film on a very tight budget due to the fact they were buying leftovers from previous films.

A shortend is what you have when a director shoots a scene say for 9 minutes which would equal about a 800 feet of 35mm film. Then the director decides to go for another setup/take. Now they know that the scene will require nine more minutes in the can but all that's left is 200 feet of film. So instead of shooting it they recan the film and sell it to a company like Reel Good. This way the studio makes profit.

The shortends are sold for an unbelievably low price, I've bought a 1000ft for around as low as 100 dollars. Most 10min 35mm film cans new from kodak are anywhere from 450-500... at least when I was buying them.

But I'm getting off track... Grain is the issue here and the amount of grain on a shortend is relative to the age of the stock and how long it's been sitting at regular room temp. Most companies that resell the stock don't refrigerate them. Most stock needs to be kept pretty cool in order to remain fresh.

Anyways PI is a good movie but the grain here is an imperfection in the stock and not a special effect.

[Yeha-Noha]

Originally Posted by Gavin Von Karls

This is actually a prime example of the film grain not being a special effect. Although it was used in such an artistic way it's hard to know if it was intentional or not (I believe it was).

For PI Aronofsky and Libatique deciced to shoot on shortends. Shortends have much more grain than most any other film stock do to age and exposure to heat. The benefit was they were able to shoot a feature length film on a very tight budget due to the fact they were buying leftovers from previous films.

Anyways PI is a good movie but the grain here is an imperfection in the stock and not a special effect.

I'm sure Aronofosky knew that the film shortends would be grainy if you are correct in asserting that he used shortends. I don't know what he used for film or where he got it from and could have just as well been fast grainy Tri X film for all I know. Whether it be imperfection, artifact, or special FX, he put the grain and other imperfections to good use.

Whatever... I liked the effect of grainy black and white, and the excessive use of contrast to increase the effect. I think it was intentional and artistic.

It was a film of contrasts: order vs chaos, sanity vs paranoid schizophrenia, good vs evil, light vs darkness, science vs pseudoscience etc. Grainy black and white was the ideal medium in which to present these contrasts with the grain representing the static or background noise, randomness.

[Gavin Von Karls]

I just edited my original post as there was a small typo:

The smaller the crystals the slower the iso.

The bigger the crystals the faster the iso.

Thanks to Deciazulado for pointing out the typo.

I am pretty excited to see Kodak releasing the new Vision3 500 speed stock which can be underexposed by up to 4 stops of light with very little effect on grain.

[Whytewash]

Originally Posted by Gavin Von Karls

To overly simplify things... Grain is tiny crystals or silver on the film that record an image when it is exposed to light. The size of the grain is dependent on the speed of the film stock and whether the cinematographer over or underexposed the negative.

For instance the 300 was shot on iso 500 speed film and Larry Fong underexposed in most scenes by 2 stops. This left an immense amount of grain on the image. But the payoff is he was able to shoot amazing slow motion sequences without a huge amount of light. It's not always budget related since Transformers was mostly shot on 500 speed stock. But the faster the film speed the larger the crystals and the more grain you will see. Also many cinematographers underexpose the film and then push it to correct exposure in the lab to bump up the contrast and give the film a harsh look... for example Mathew Libatique did this with The Fountain, this causes more grain. While in Requiem for a Dream he overexposed most of the scenes and pulled the film giving the image a softer look.

Now on the other hand in a film like Pirates cinematographer Darius Wolski chose to shoot the daylight scenes on iso 50 speed film stock which has smaller crystals and therefore much less grain... in fact it's hardly noticeable except in a theater.

All film has some grain whether you notice it or not if you blew the image up large enough you will see grain. I love it and think it adds to the experience. It's not usually something the Director decides to throw in for effect... this does happen every now and then, like in the Grindhouse pictures, but overall this is very rare.

I hope this helps!

And in case you're wondering I shoot film for a living...

that is probably the most detailed description this site has ever had! I must say, good work, Im gonna have to favorite this thread or something...

or better yet, mods can we sticky that?

[u_nick]

I think of it this way:

Asking why a certain film (lets say 300) has grain is like asking why the Mona Lisa has dark hair.

Why not blond? Maybe some people would have preferred blond?

Simply: The creator's intent was to have it.

[Kristin Simard]

Originally Posted by CAB

Needed for beer. Needed for single malts.

Let's not go against the grain here

[STARSCREAM]

I too dislike grain....but.....if it is the intent or can't be helped then I can't really get too pissed about it. I do prefer the nice clean no grain look though.

[Marcusarilius]

Originally Posted by STARSCREAM

I too dislike grain....but.....if it is the intent or can't be helped then I can't really get too pissed about it. I do prefer the nice clean no grain look though.

DVD has this problem licked. Almost. I was watching The Brotherhood of the Wolf a couple days back and guess what I saw only extremely toned down due to the DVD PQ....?

[rebfandan]

Originally Posted by CAB

Needed for beer. Needed for single malts.

Ha HAH! You are the Blu-Ray master, my friend. BEER AND BD!!

[Deciazulado]

Originally Posted by rebfandan

Ha HAH! You are the Blu-Ray master, my friend. BEER AND BD!!

and blu corn chips?