How do you get that specific organic film look???? [Archive]

g3nov3s3

09-28-2008, 12:48 AM

Good lighting.

Good composition.

24fps with a 1/48th (180-degree) shutter.

Richly-contrasted color grading.

Adding grain also helps the "organic" part, IMO, but some people prefer the cleaner image.

Yeah....but please take a look at this images:
http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/5052/keytonlu8.jpg
http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/6060/coldheartch8.jpg
This images have that certain organic look....
One screenshot is from a HVX200 and the other from a Canon XH-A1.
However I've seen lots of footage from this cameras that looked like video.
The first image I don't think it was much color corrected however it's very nice and doesn't look like video at all!

The second screenshot is from a music video shot outside with very little control over lighting. But it still looks fine....
Does anyone know how did they achieved this?

Pietro Impagliazzo

09-28-2008, 01:05 AM

First you have to know what exactly you are looking at.

Diffusion?
Color grading?
FPS candece?
Lighting?
Camera movements?
Good actors with make-up and costumes?

It's like a garage band recorded with a computer mic and some awesome song produced in a high-end studio.

It's not just the three thousand dollar mic, it's the mic plus everything expensive in there, plus everyone experienced creating and handling the material.

Ken Willinger

09-28-2008, 06:43 AM

One screenshot is from a HVX200 and the other from a Canon XH-A1.
However I've seen lots of footage from this cameras that looked like video.
The first image I don't think it was much color corrected however it's very nice and doesn't look like video at all!

It looks to me because of the shallow DOF in both images that these cameras were not used clean. They have very small chipsets and in order to get them to look filmic, adapters have been used to allow the use of 35mm still lenses. Those adapters use a groundglass, some spinning, some vibrating, but either way that creates a kind of grain to the look of the video along with the shallow DOF thus giving you that "film" feel. Lighting and composition are also key but I think you are really seeing the depth that the adapter system allows in these small chip cameras.

Red will inherently have that using cine PL glass (or still lenses with a Canon or Nikon mount). But having the Red won't give you the lighting or composition skills.

David Mullen ASC

09-28-2008, 09:34 AM

There are dozens of factors that contribute to the "film look", depth of field being just one of them (and I point out that technically a deep-focus movie like "Citizen Kane" still looks like film and Super-8 is a film format with an inherently deep focus...)

Not to mention motion rendition, which you cannot see in a still frame. Frame rate and shutter speed are fairly important factors as well in matching a traditional film image.

My theory is that as digital cine cameras get better and better, 80% of the time, or more, it's hard to see a difference if the digital image is professionally shot, especially if you are using a camera with a 35mm-sized sensor.

Sure, film has more latitude but many times you either add contrast to film images or you control contrast while shooting digital. And sure, digital is grainless, but you can keep grain down while shooting 35mm using slower film stocks, etc.

When both formats are shot their best, they tend to look more and more like each other these days.

However... no one is perfect. We all make technical mistakes, or have accidents, equipment problems, etc. Or a shot is changed in post from its original intent, exposure, etc.

I believe that as we "push" any image around in post, the farthest from the "correct" way we shot it, or the more incorrectly we shot it, the more the inherent architecture of the system becomes apparent -- whether it is milky blacks and big grains in film or noise and pattern problems in digital.

It's just that we are used to the negative artifacts of badly shot film and still think it looks like a film image when they occur -- because it IS a film image no matter what. Whereas a film-like digital image that is pushed around in post or has some technical problem tends to misbehave in purely digital ways.

Of course, as I said, there are other factors, subtle ones, that typify some film and digital images. I often find that warm-lit faces render differently on film than digital compared to cold-lit faces, partly because when a face is in blue-ish light, it is already far from "normal" so we accept that it looks off, but a warm-lit face is still close enough to normal skintone rendition that our eyes become more critical if it seems "wrong" in some way, or just different. But this problem with warm faces even exists in film-shot material that goes through a D.I. -- sometimes it seems to come out a bit odd-looking.

One unique aspect to the film image that digital finds very hard to replicate is that fact that detail exists in different spots on successive frames due to the random nature of grain versus the fixed pattern of photosites on a sensor. This is one reason why aliasing isn't a problem with high frequency detail with film.

Ken Willinger

09-28-2008, 09:55 AM

Radoslav Karapetkov

09-28-2008, 10:00 AM

One unique aspect to the film image that digital finds very hard to replicate is that fact that detail exists in different spots on successive frames due to the random nature of grain versus the fixed pattern of photosites on a sensor. This is one reason why aliasing isn't a problem with high frequency detail with film.

I wonder if it's possible to make a camera with a sensor which makes micro-movements, in order to simulate this. But this probably sounds absurd. :)

Or a post-production software that uses some kind of algorithms to "randomize" the pixels of a digital image...

Stephen Williams

09-28-2008, 10:35 AM

I wonder if it's possible to make a camera with a sensor which makes micro-movements, in order to simulate this. But this probably sounds absurd. :)

Or a post-production software that uses some kind of algorithms to "randomize" the pixels of a digital image...

Hi,

For people who are really after the genuine organic film look, shooting on film will be the easiest souloution.

The recent demo of RED at IBC was most impressive however not everything looked like film.

Stephen

jpp

09-28-2008, 11:21 AM

I wonder if it's possible to make a camera with a sensor which makes micro-movements, in order to simulate this. But this probably sounds absurd. :)

Or a post-production software that uses some kind of algorithms to "randomize" the pixels of a digital image...

There are plug-ins which do just that, from adding randomly occurring grain to simulating projector weave. Virtually all film-look plug-in suites offer these features. You can even get hairs, scratches and faded emulsions, all realistically recreated.

Andrae Palmer

09-28-2008, 11:27 AM

Contrast... contrast... contrast. Shooting for contrast... grading for contrast.

Radoslav Karapetkov

09-28-2008, 11:50 AM

Hi,

For people who are really after the genuine organic film look, shooting on film will be the easiest souloution.

The recent demo of RED at IBC was most impressive however not everything looked like film.

Stephen

Thank you.

There are plug-ins which do just that, from adding randomly occurring grain to simulating projector weave. Virtually all film-look plug-in suites offer these features. You can even get hairs, scratches and faded emulsions, all realistically recreated.

Yes, I know, I've played around with an older version of Magic Bullet, but couldn't reach the desired look. [probably my lack of skill]

David Mullen ASC

09-28-2008, 02:19 PM

Contrast... contrast... contrast. Shooting for contrast... grading for contrast.

Except there have been low-contrast movies shot on film that still look like film... look at all that fog-filtered, smoked stuff from the 1970's... like "Murder on the Orient Express" or any number of other movies shot by Geoffrey Unsworth.

Plus if film negative has more dynamic range than digital, then why does adding contrast and thus decreasing dynamic range actually make a digital image look more like film?

I don't have answers for that, just that it is an interesting issue...

Half the techniques for adding a "film look" actually just involve disguising the digital look.

Truth is that with a history of cinema that includes color images ranging from "Singin' in the Rain" to "Seven", from Super-8 home movies to IMAX films, there is scarcely a single film "look".

Adding grain in post to a clean digital image isn't exactly the same thing as capturing an image frame by frame on different grains. You don't gain any benefits in terms of anti-aliasing, etc.

Ergin Ozturk

09-28-2008, 02:34 PM

both pictures taken from redrockmicro web sites. so it is not a clean hvx or any other hd camera. It means you can not get these pictures from any prosumer hd camera without 35mm adapters. they uses m2 redrockmicro 35 mm adapter (which i have one but i order RED also:))).

NateWeaver

09-28-2008, 02:45 PM

Truth is that with a history of cinema that includes color images ranging from "Singin' in the Rain" to "Seven", from Super-8 home movies to IMAX films, there is scarcely a single film "look".

Agreed. I would suggest that maybe a "film look" can be therefore defined (in this discussion) by what video usually has, and what film NEVER has.

-Use of sharpening or edge enhancement. Or if you insist on using it, do it in post where it can be controlled well.

-1/24th shutter

-That peculiar lifted black and gamma curve common to many video cameras. Modify gamma and or black point in any way in post, and you've likely taken care of a signature video give-away.

amrrahmy

09-28-2008, 03:27 PM

Contrast... contrast... contrast. Shooting for contrast... grading for contrast.

Plus if film negative has more dynamic range than digital, then why does adding contrast and thus decreasing dynamic range actually make a digital image look more like film?

facetmedia said shooting for contrast, not adding contrast.

if a movie doesn't have the film look(including features shot with film), it's because it was not done properly, it was never about the diff between film and digital artifacts.

Shawn Nelson

09-28-2008, 03:37 PM

Film isn't "organic", it's chemical

pango

09-28-2008, 03:44 PM

I know that to make digital footage look like film you need to shoot it at 24p,you need a shallow depth of field,etc....
So, how exactly do you do that color correction to achieve a film look?

I just wonder why people are obsessed with this "tastealike" ideology. Video is not film, so what?!

Radoslav Karapetkov

09-28-2008, 06:01 PM

There is a trick that can imporve the digital cinema camera, if you put a wobble plate in front of the sensor and project uncompressed then the image details move from one sensor to two a second then to another and so on, you eye follows the image detail around and you see more detail than in a static image.

Film is always moving around, you cannot scan film and have the details stand still even when you use an optical printer movement like we do.

If you put this weave into the digital cinema it will be more like film.

But if you use compression, it will try to filter out the image weave and hold the details on one pixel, and so reduce the apparent resolution.

If you weave too fast the benefit is lost since you eyes cannot track the moving image, it just looks like motion blur, so there is a critical speed that the image should wobble around near pixels, something about an 8 frame cycle, with 24 frames per second... maybe?

---

The bigger issue is can the camera lens resolve a single pixel at 4K on a 6K sensor without producing aliasing artifacts, that is why you need the heavy OLPF. With a Bayer filter you should have 8K to 12K in order to get 4K after using a OLPF heavy enough to remove all aliasing and chroma moire artifacts, so it is not so much resolution that needs more pixels, but artifact reduction. You cannot get by without the OLPF when you use a sharp lens, or you will get too many artifacts, in other words, the lens used on a Bayer sensor SHOULD not be sharp enough to light up just one of the four pixels in each four pixel group, hence the resolution of the lens should be 1/3 the target pixel count, so to get 4K you use a 12K sensor...

As you see in the sample images above, the camera lens used does not come close to a single pixel resolution, the general rule is that a lens can focus on 1/1000 its focal length, so a 50mm lens makes a spot about 1/500 inch. And the daylight shot may have been stopped down to the point where diffraction limits the resolution to less than 2K? With super good lenses on film you should never stop down past f/11 and probably ONLY shoot at f/6.3 or so.

----

For archive use, it is good to scan the film at 6K pixels though, so that you know that you are holding as much as you can within reason...

Interesting and very informative post [from another thread]... thanks to the OP.

David Mullen ASC

09-28-2008, 06:12 PM

facetmedia said shooting for contrast, not adding contrast.

if a movie doesn't have the film look(including features shot with film), it's because it was not done properly, it was never about the diff between film and digital artifacts.

He said "grading for contrast", which suggests color-correcting for a snappier look.

"Never" is a big word, sometimes the difference is due to the inherent technical qualities of either process. For example, shooting with an interlaced-scan video camera produces a unique non-film-like effect. Shooting with the shutter turned off, another thing a film camera cannot do. These are technical characteristics or features of certain digital cameras that cannot be easily created by a film camera or by film stock.

And again, if it comes down to things being done "properly" then how does it solve the problem that no movie is shot perfectly, i.e. "properly"? Any system that relies on flawless execution to work "properly" is not really ready for mainstream production, where mistakes and flaws, some intentional, some not, are rather commonplace.

This was the point I was trying to make, that when film f--- up, it does it in film-like ways, whereas a digital system capable of delivering very film-like images will still f--- up in uniquely digital ways. And as long as movies are made by flawed human beings, they will have flaws in them.

And who defines what is the "proper" way to make a movie anyway? For some artists, using uniquely digital techniques like shutterless photography or noise, etc. are justified because they feel they are using the format / process to its ultimate capabilities rather than limiting themselves merely to what a film camera can achieve.

Ken Willinger

09-28-2008, 06:20 PM

I'm wondering if the OP is confusing the "organic" look of film with good film making, whether that be done with Film or Video. We can talk ad infinitum about the details of the stock or what's been done in post or what filter was used etc. but in the end does it look good? Has the DP achieved the look that was asked for? David Mullin is correct in that if you look through the history of filmmaking there is no one organic film look. There are hundreds of film looks. And in the last few years that has included digital. The lines are blurring. In the end it comes down to filmmaking, not the media used to make the film.

David Mullen ASC

09-28-2008, 06:26 PM

I guess I'm just asking for some recognition that there are some differences, whether they "ultimately" matter or not in the big picture (no pun intended)...

as a lover of old and obsolete image technologies like 3-strip Technicolor, Kodachrome, etc. where I cherish those differences, I believe that to some extent, we have to accept that digital images have unique textures to themselves, good or bad. Obviously there is always room for improvement in all imaging technologies, film or digital, but I ultimately believe that it's a bit silly asking one technology to completely mimic another, it's like a clever art forgery. A copy of a Rembrandt is not a Rembrandt, so why not be original? Why not accept that digital cameras are subtly -- or not so subtly -- changing the look of movies, rather than persist with this notion that there are no real differences or that it doesn't matter what you shoot on.

We are supposed to be ARTISTS, we are supposed to care about the details of what brush we choose, what colors we pick, what textures we emphasize, so our tools are important to us. We care so that audiences don't have to care.

Tico Llaurador

09-28-2008, 06:29 PM

We care so that audiences don't have to care.

David, in your opinion, do audiences care?

Ken Willinger

09-28-2008, 07:04 PM

I guess I'm just asking for some recognition that there are some differences, whether they "ultimately" matter or not in the big picture (no pun intended)...
Why not accept that digital cameras are subtly -- or not so subtly -- changing the look of movies, rather than persist with this notion that there are no real differences or that it doesn't matter what you shoot on.

We are supposed to be ARTISTS, we are supposed to care about the details of what brush we choose, what colors we pick, what textures we emphasize, so our tools are important to us.

This is exactly why there are so many filmmakers now using and experimenting in digital cinema. This is why Red is becoming more readily accepted (along with Genesis etc.). This is the same reason why films like "One From The Heart" were made using groundbreaking technology for the time or even "Chuck and Buck" using a camera like the Sony PD150.

Filmmakers should push the limits of the technology available. I try to sell my Red to every producer and director I work with. I want to move forward. At the same time I love what's been done before me and try to use those influences in what I may do in my next project. Yes I recognize that there are some differences and without them how boring would it all be?

amrrahmy

09-28-2008, 07:23 PM

some viewers(and that's alot) actually care about the quality of the movie(not the picture quality), the actual piece of art that they want to see.but studios and producers cant see why fewer people are seeing there movies.

having mistakes or parts of the production not up to par, is different than having complete f***-ups.
some cinematography problems wont stop (for ex 12 angry men) from being a masterpiece.

Dj Joofa

09-28-2008, 08:25 PM

I believe that to some extent, we have to accept that digital images have unique textures to themselves, good or bad.

Glad that you mentioned "texture". In addition to several oft-cited notions of film vs. digital (viz., frame rate, DOF, lighting, DR, etc.) a fact that is normally overlooked is the texture and importantly the "sharpness" attribute of digital texture (cf.- the usual mantra of film image is "soft" where as digital is "harsh"). However, unfortunately, a common approach to convert the harsh digital texture into soft film texture is to use a (low pass) filter to make the image uniformly soft.

Such, an approach does not take into account that on a camera negative the first layer is typically blue, and after a "yellow" filter, red and green layers. That is, the sharpest image on the film layer is formed on the blue layer, where actually it needs to be the least sharp considering the response of human vision to blue type colors. No wonder that many (all?) print films use a green layer on the top instead of blue as the image does not need those sharpness attributes anymore as in the camera negative.

A proper model of such selective sharpness attribute will result in making the digital texture have the same look and feel as the film texture. It should be doable.

David Mullen ASC

09-28-2008, 09:29 PM

I don't think viewers are all that universal or monolithic in how they perceive a movie -- afterall, I'm an audience member too and I was noticing the cinematographic aspects of movies even as a teenager, before I had any education on the subject. I remember wondering why the lights were glowing in "Superman" and "Close Encounters" when I saw those movies around the time I was 15, and later finding out about the Fog filters and Low Con filters being used on the camera lens. I went out and bought a Fog #2, the same one Geoffrey Unsworth used for "Superman", for my Super-8 camera.

I suspect that even for viewers who aren't, or who don't end up becoming, cinematographers, some notice such details more than others, just as some are more in tune with the use of music or editing or costume design or the nuances of acting. One doesn't have to be a professional in the field to have an aesthetic sensibility.

As much as we all like to say that story, story, story is what matters most, we shouldn't forget that cinema watching can also be an aesthetically pleasing experience, that we can enjoy the visual and aural experience on an immediate and visceral level and sometimes we see movies almost entirely just for that experience, to luxuriate in the images and sounds.

amrrahmy

09-28-2008, 09:48 PM

well, if:
story was very good(that includes the story to the script point)
direction was ok but nothing special
cinematography was ok but nothing special
u'll end up with a very good movie, were if:
story wasn't that gr8
direction was ok but not special,
and cinematography as good as the direction would let it,
the movie would be acceptable at best(and that's a stretch).

and am talking about the core story and the dialogue before the cinematography tries to shape it into a movie. if it wasn't good enough then it shouldn't have become a movie.

David Mullen ASC

09-28-2008, 10:16 PM

There isn't one type of movie. Some experimental art movies, for example, may not have a strong narrative element. Saying that story comes first is fine for mainstream cinema, but that doesn't encompass all forms of cinema. There are lots of variations.

One person may love a Terrance Malick movie, while another viewer may think they have weak stories and not enjoy them. We all seek different things from the movies. And we even define what a good story is differently. For one person, that may mean a strong plot while for another, it may mean certain thematic material is covered, while another wants traditional genre structure, while another wants anything but that.

We can generally agree that a good story is important but many of us would disagree as to what a good story was.

There are some episodic films that are loosely plotted, such as Altman's "Nashville", that would not fall under some people's definition of a "good story" -- and it is certainly a case where that film would have been radically different if some other director had made it.

If story really trumped all other elements, then anyone could direct "Hamlet" and make a decent movie out of it, but obviously one could make a very bad version of "Hamlet". Story is important in narrative cinema, but so is storytelling, and good acting, cinematography, editing, production design, etc. are part of the act of storytelling.

But in general I tend to dislike these simplistic notions of what constitutes a good movie because there is too much variation out there in movies and in taste. Some movies are primarily acting experiences, some others are ones involving a complex and intellectually satisfying plot structure, some are lyrical and visual frolics, etc. The person who loves a John Cassavettes movie isn't necessarily a fan of "American in Paris" or "2001" -- or maybe they are. There is probably some viewer out there who enjoys watching Dryer's "Joan of Arc" one afternoon and then an Adam Sandler movie in the evening.

amrrahmy

09-28-2008, 10:38 PM

the hamlet example was excellent, but who can make a script that has hamlet as the core idea, if a cinematographer and a writer can pull it off, no matter how bad the direction is, it would still be a very good movie, it cant stand alone without cinematography, but it would be gr8 with half-good direction, the balance can be made with an awesome story.
and that's were allot of directors are considered gr8 because of other elements than there work, i can state some big names but allot of people will eat me here, but movies used to be gr8 when there were gr8 writers and gr8 editors, not because of direction.and today we r missing cinematography all together in movies.
i wont state movies that u might think are gr8, but the difference between good and bad stories can be obvious, if not to studios or producers, then at least to artists.

edit:

we r also missing direction among other things.

Radoslav Karapetkov

09-28-2008, 11:54 PM

M-hm, there are as many ways and POVs as there are people on Earth. Maybe even more. :)

g3nov3s3

09-29-2008, 02:17 AM

Pietro Impagliazzo

09-29-2008, 02:41 AM

Film isn't "organic", it's chemical

Thank god! :)

Look.....I've seen even RED footage that still looked like video, and I've seen HV20 footage that looked like film.
There must be some magic when you color correct the footage.
What exactly do you modify??????
I've played with some digital footage and I've decreased the saturation and increased the contrast to get a "bleach bypass" look. This combined with a warming or cooling filter can look pretty much like film to an untrained eye.
However I've seen footage that looked very natural without any of this tricks.
How exactly do you get footage that looks like this?????
Ignore the 35mm adapter thing. I am more interested in geting those "organic" skin tones(this screenshot is also from a HVX200).
http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/5194/movietubedg8.jpg

Wow man, you're oversimplyfing it.

First, each camera will require one type of adjustment.
Specially digital "prosumer" cameras that often apply digital sharpening.

And if the sensor is CCD or CMOS and how much resolution it actually has are determinant factors.

Apply the same grading to a PD-150 video and to a RED TIFF, and note the differences between the two.

And grading is a lot more than saturation and contrast. If you wanna get into it look at this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Art-Technique-Digital-Color-Correction/dp/0240809904/ref=si3_rdr_bb_product

Andrae Palmer

09-29-2008, 03:22 AM

Look.....I've seen even RED footage that still looked like video, and I've seen HV20 footage that looked like film.
There must be some magic when you color correct the footage.
What exactly do you modify??????
I've played with some digital footage and I've decreased the saturation and increased the contrast to get a "bleach bypass" look. This combined with a warming or cooling filter can look pretty much like film to an untrained eye.
However I've seen footage that looked very natural without any of this tricks.
How exactly do you get footage that looks like this?????
Ignore the 35mm adapter thing. I am more interested in geting those "organic" skin tones(this screenshot is also from a HVX200).
http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/5194/movietubedg8.jpg

In my experiments proper exposure is key. I come from an HVX200 background and just a few months back i was exposing just via the look on the LCD. Now I'm exposing primarily with the histogram... I know where my blacks and whites should be on the histogram due to experiments in REDCine. Perhaps this guy exposed in a different manner typical of HVX200 users... light meter, waveform, etc. But what I see is grading, good contrast, pressed blacks, proper color temperature balance, dof.

Stephen Williams

09-29-2008, 09:32 AM

David, in your opinion, do audiences care?

Hi,

I am not David but I know an advertising agency that concluded with Direct sales ads, the response was greatest if shooting on 35mm and least shooting Beta SP.. Commercials were shot using 35mm, 16mm, HD Cam, DigiBeta & Beta SP, surprisingly the sucess was also in that order.

Stephen

James T Mather

10-01-2008, 01:13 AM

the hamlet example was excellent, but who can make a script that has hamlet as the core idea, if a cinematographer and a writer can pull it off, no matter how bad the direction is, it would still be a very good movie

er...not necessarily

http://www.trailerseite.de/archiv/trailer-1990/8760-hamlet-film.html

www.empireonline.com/reviews/reviewcomplete.asp?FID=133405 (http://www.empireonline.com/reviews/reviewcomplete.asp?FID=133405)

amrrahmy

10-01-2008, 12:32 PM

u call that a good script?!!!!

James T Mather

10-01-2008, 03:30 PM

It was Hamlet written by William Shakespeare - no dialogue or scenes were changed, only the directing took a unique slant - I was just citing your example.

It just seems like bad directing can screw up any script - even Hamlet.

amrrahmy

10-02-2008, 01:35 AM

screen adaptation Michael Almereyda

James T Mather

10-02-2008, 02:05 AM

He was the director.

g3nov3s3

10-02-2008, 02:51 AM

Please don't hijack my thread....
So....does anyone know how to get the look from the last screenshot I posted?

James T Mather

10-02-2008, 03:48 AM

It seems to me what you are generally responding to is the skin tones, as all the pictures you have posted have little in common visually aside from the fact that the people in the shots have sallow skin. It has very little to do with what I would characterise as "film look" over video look (in fact the fist shot of the Asian girl looks, to me, to be digital - or at least processed through a digital system. Looks too "clean" for film IMVHO - it might well be film but it has a NeatVideo quality about it)

Bottom line? Cast people with skin tones like that (Latino, Asian, Italian). No Irish. Unless they happen to be Colin Farrell. You might also look at Skin tone enhancer filters and sometimes polarisers can do nice things to smooth out skin but must be carefully monitored for consistency as they will change according to the angle of prevailing light. They also have a pretty heavy penalty as regards light loss.

EDIT : As an acid test of the top theory take a look at Linda Hamilton's skin tone in Terminator 2 and see does it pass your "film look" test. (shes very pale) - I'll wager that it doesn't.

....To get the film look aside from that keep a low depth of field, don't crank up the sensor ISO (gain), stop your highlights blowing out (pick your shots accordingly - don't for example frame someone against a blown out overcast sky), leave the shutter at 1/48 or 1/50, don't have people wearing white clothes or stage action against white walls, consider adding some grain in post (very, very little - 2% - it should be undetectable in a still image but might add subtle "swim" to the image). And learn how to light - on the faces in your pictures generally seem to have a high keylight with diffusion (even the exterior by the way the buildings act as flags). That's it.

EDIT : also I find digital systems tend to "jump" on shiny skin. In a studio actors tend to sweat more as there is usually very little ventilation and lots of lights burning (and they're under pressure) - perspiration comes out under the makeup and you get a subtle kick from the lights which digital "feels" more than film (due to the latitude - they "pop" slightly more and should be watched out for). Summary: the makeup person should be right on top of shine (not to say they shouldn't normally but on digital I find I have to really keep an extra eye on it and check it before every take).

Hope that helps.