FilmLight Looks

HDR Video Shooters will primarily be interested in the Core Looks, which are divided into three different collections: the C100, C200 and C300. The C100 group is comprised of film emulations based on measurements of real film stocks or film processes. All of the C100 profiles produce a rich color palette with deeply saturated colors, while avoiding overly bright, saturated video-ish colors. The C200 group are analytical looks – not based on film stocks – that are more modern approaches for pleasing color reproduction. The C300 group are the chameleon looks that mimic the appearance of other color pipelines. For example, if a project was initiated in ACES but for delivery you wanted to use TCAM, you can get a match to ACES. 

One of the advantages of the Core Looks is that they are scene-referred, that is, they are applied in a scene-referred space and remain in a scene-referred space. Some are applied as log-to-log, while others are formula based; but what they all have in common is that they will give a clean output to HDR displays. What this clean, scene-referred characteristic means is that they can be employed for HDR projects without fear of artifacts – images can be pushed or pulled without fear of damaging the signal. And like a true film stock, the Core Looks gradually desaturate toward the highlights. The C100 Looks are unique in that they mimic real film processes while being extremely robust, capable of delivering up to 10,000 nits of display output, because they were made with a custom process that begins with the core of a film print emulation after which it is extrapolated into the wide gamut color space and into the high dynamic range, resulting in very accurate, super robust and future-proof core looks. And like the very best film emulation LUTs and plugins we’ve tested, they don’t appear to radically alter the contrast and tonality of the initial grade, clamp highlights at 240 nits or introduce weird color artifacts, forcing us to begin the grade all over again from scratch. It’s also a nice touch that FilmLight labels the display-referred legacy looks as ‘non-HDR’, avoiding any ambiguity that could result in unexpected outcomes.