Creating A Film Look

 

Shallow Depth of Field
As far as the wide angle, no. A wide angle up close is one way to try to create an out of focus background. The other way which give the appearance of an out-of-focus background is zoom in as much as possible, moving the camera back as necessary.
Simulating a 35mm Motion Picture Clarity Signature

I have experimented with various techniques for simulating motion picture motion clarity, and I believe this is the simpliest and most effective way of doing it. Shoot your footage as 60i (normal video) and capture it into your computer. I will do this process in Adobe After Effects; however, I am aware that Apple's Final Cut Pro and probably Adobe Premiere are also capable of doing this.
Imitation film look technique

This may have come up before and if it has just point me to the post...

I read about this simple technique on a Final Cut Pro site and now use it
with Premiere 6.02... but it should work with any other NLE out there.

1) Place clip on track 1A

2) Copy and paste same clip on track 2 (first transparency track) and delete it's duplicate audio track.

3) Select deinterlace for 1A track clip

4) Select 30% opacity (you can play with this setting... the higher you go the less the effect will be) for 2 track clip

5) Preview or render out

You are introducing a 30% lap dissolve of the two-field video track back into the de-interlaced video.

It will render very quickly which is a big advantage and is a rather neat looking effect, I think.

BTW: You can add your color/gamma corrections to the clip on the 1A track.

BTW #2: You can play with introducing a 1 frame offset in the transparency track. In Premiere, you would advance the top clip to the right 1 frame. You may wish to go up on the opacity to around 50% (move the red line up to about the mid point) if you do this or the effect may be too heavy.
Depth of field is one of the biggest problems with video for those who want it to look like film (like myself).

The closer to telephoto you are with the zoom, the shallower the depth of field.

The closer you are to your subject, the shallower the depth of field.

The higher the f-stop (highest is 1.6), the shallower the depth of field.

I've gotten the best results with zoom. I was able to get the depth of field down to about 4-inches at full zoom. But when are you really going to be that far away from your subject?

Best solution: use the custom preset to take the gain, sharpness, and setup (aka black) level down significantly lower (adjust as you please).

Then light the scene well (at least 3-point lighting: key, fill, and back). Buy 200-300watt replacements for anything you want to shoot under "normal" conditions indoors. Get as far away from your subject and zoom in. Use a tripod.

Import your clip into Adobe After Effects projects.
Right-click the video clip and select Interpret Footage > Main.
Once you get into this menu, you will see a "Seperate Fields" option in the middle of the menu. Select it, and then select "Lower Field First" and check "Motion Detect" (best quality only).
Import another of the exact same clip.
Repeat the above process, but choose "Upper Field First."
Drag your first clip (lower field) into the composition, and set its quality to "best."
Now drag the second clip (upper field) into the composition on top of the first clip.
Set the upper field clip's opacity to 50%. This gives us a close approximation to the motion blur that would be captured at 1/40th of a second, and therefore closer to the motion clarity of motion picture footage.

Left: 1/60th Shutter Speed Right: 1/48th Shutter Speed (faked)
Note the motion blur difference on the hand and arm.

Create a new composition.
Drag your first composition into your new second one. Set its mode to "Best."
Now go to Effect > Time > Posterize Time. The default should be set to 24 frames per second. This effect locks a layer to a specific frame rate. It will play back and look like 24 frames per second, even though you can export this composition as 29.97 fps.
Render out this composition and watch the end result.
Import you footage into Adobe After Effects, or whatever compositing program you happen to use. The first step is to do a Levels call on the footage, to punch up the midtones and make them more visible.
1. Choose Effect > Adjust > Levels. Set the Gamma to 1.2 to increase the visibility of the midtones. Be wary of this step, as you don’t want to over do it.
Now, this next part needs some explaining. Digital video camcorders by default have their CCDs set to a flat gamma curve. What this means is that there is a gradual fading from white, to midtone, to black. This makes the image look rather flat. On the other hand, 35mm motion picture Film and HD Cinema cameras use a slight S-curve as a gamma curve. This makes blacks deeper, and highlights more soft. This also makes the midtones have more saturated colors and a pleasant contrast. This is one of the most crutical steps in making video look like film.
How do we do this, you might ask? Well, quite simply, we are going to use After Effect’s Curves function to apply a Gamma S-curve to our video footage. At this point, I will not go into great detail on how curves work, because to be quite honest, I really don’t understand them myself. However, I know how to use them enough to achieve our next step.
2. Choose Effect > Adjust > Curves. You will now see a diagram showing a flat diagonal curve. This is the Camma curve of our video footage. What we will do now is add two control points to our flat gamma curve, in order to give it an S shape. The red circles below indicate where you should place your two control points.