Texture once

One grain per film, applied once over all live shots, after the look. Every check on the picture happens before it goes on.

One brightness-following grain [proven]. Film grain reads most in thin, darker areas and changes with the image; flat digital noise lies evenly over everything and looks like video. Use a scanned grain plate in an overlay-type blend, or a grain plug-in that follows the image's brightness. Premiere's built-in Noise effect is a flat noise layer: don't use it for this. The grain is chosen once for the film (decided). A plug-in goes on the look's adjustment layer. A grain plate is a clip, not an effect, so it goes on its own track directly above that layer and below the overlays, laid over the same graded ranges, in Overlay or Soft Light blend mode.

Where it goes:

• once, at sequence level, over all live shots, after the look (the adjustment layer, or the plate's track just above it);

• never per shot;

• never on graphics, end cards or built packshots.

Its strength follows the capture (who or what is "filming" each scene; see Light and look → The capture in the look line): finer for a crewed cinema camera, heavier for an under-exposed documentary capture. Write the strength in plain words from the treatment's texture line (see Writing the treatment → The light and colour sheet), then set it by eye. Prompts carry no grain.

Hard stops are judged on the clean take, before grain [proven]. Hands and touch points, faces, lips, labels and Arabic text are checked at full size on the take as generated (see The quality bar → The hard stops). Grain never rescues a failed take: heavy texture can hide unstable geometry, and a failure hidden under grain is still a failure.

Check the grain on the delivered file too, at 100%, on the social file and the film for the client's page (14 MB or less), because compression smears or removes it. Grain also makes files bigger, so measure the page film's size again.

Write down the grain, its strength per capture, gate weave yes or no, and the glow or halation choice, with your other decisions for the film.

"On twos" (each drawing held for two frames) is another whole-film finishing layer, only for a hand-drawn stylised film (see Genres → Stylised films).

Sources

• The Holdovers, DP Eigil Bryld and colourist Joe Gawler (No Film School, Filmmaker Magazine) (grain that follows each frame's brightness, LiveGrain).

• Dune: Part One, Greig Fraser (American Cinematographer).

• Matt Osborne (LBB) and Mark Horrobin (LBB).

• Ruairi Robinson, The Blue Stone (shots) (Filmbox grain and halation in finishing).

• Dreamina's guide to a filmed look (grain once at sequence level, after continuity, and heavy texture hiding broken geometry).