CLINT TILL

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Dehancer Film Emulation Product Review*

Clint Till

*Disclaimer: Dehancer provided a license to their Dehancer Pro plugin in exchange for a written review of the product. All opinions are my own.

INTRODUCTION

How to achieve the film look.

That topic is everywhere. Filmmakers and video producers, across a wide range of experience, budget, and technical levels, flock to resources that provide tips and tools on reaching that goal.

Why?

Well, I think it’s because we as video producers and filmmakers like the affordability, accessibility, and speed of digital, but we also want the aesthetic of film. That particular look might be hard to describe for the average viewer, but there’s a certain quality to film that you can feel, even if you aren’t fully aware of it; the texture, the dynamic range, the softness… whatever it is, there are plenty of people writing and talking about it online.

Me?

I’m no different. I like the look as well, and as an individual who’s made his career in the video production industry, I set a high standard for myself and the work I produce. And I’m always looking to improve. I consider myself a perpetual student, so I subscribe to several different YouTube channels and follow a lot of other filmmakers on social media. It’s by watching and reading what others have done that I can continue to level up both my technical and creative skills.

That’s where I first came across film emulation plugins. These tools take digital footage and, when applied, give it an analogue look, as if it were originally shot on film. This is quite the oversimplification, I know, and there is a lot of science that goes into developing these plugins. After all, giving your footage the film look is a lot more than just slapping a film grain PNG on your footage, adjusting the blending mode, and calling it a day.

There are many plugins on the market today:

  • Dehancer

  • Film Convert

  • FilmVision

  • Color.io

  • CinePrint35

  • DaVinci Resolve’s built-in film look creator

and more. There are also countless LUTs available to help you achieve a particular film look in your color grade, although you won’t have as much fine tuning control as you do with emulator plugins.

So there are many things to consider when trying to decide which product is right for your needs. I’ve been using Film Convert for my projects and I’ve been very pleased with the results. My latest short film, That’s My House, was graded using Film Convert.

Recently, a representative from Dehancer asked if I would be willing to test out their plugin and then write about it here on my blog. I was excited to do so, because I’m always interested in learning about new tools that I can use in either production or post-production. In exchange for the article, they were willing to offer me a free license. So, consider this a sponsored post, but all of the opinions are mine.

WELCOME TO DEHANCER

The Dehancer website is incredibly impressive, if a bit overwhelming at first glance. There is a lot of information available (more on that in a moment) and they have plugins for Premiere Pro/After Effects, Final Cut Pro, and DaVinci Resolve. They also offer photo plugins, a web-based tool, and even a mobile app that allows you to add film stocks and grades to your smartphone photos and videos (Keep in mind that the app requires a separate subscription). So, it’s important that you double check to ensure that you are purchasing the right plugin. There is also a Dehancer Lite that doesn’t include as many features. If you’re interested, this YouTube video explains the differences:

For the purposes of this article, I will be writing about Dehancer Pro for Premiere Pro.

DOWNLOADING AND INSTALLING THE PLUG-IN

Dehancer has plenty of documentation on their site, walking you through not only the installation process, but also the entire workflow from start to finish. It’s incredibly thorough and very well organized, so you’ll never be at a loss for what to do, or what the meaning of a specific feature is. However, in my experience, getting up and running with Dehancer took a bit longer than I expected.

After the installer finishes, a Profile Fetcher dialog box will appear indicating that Dehancer is checking for/downloading all necessary camera profiles and film stocks. Status bars indicate the progress for each category. However, when the Profile Fetcher first ran, nothing happened. I double and triple-checked my Internet connection, but the window seemed to be frozen. After a few minutes I manually closed the dialog box and launched Premiere, not 100% certain that the plugin had been installed correctly.

ACTIVATING DEHANCER

I was pleased to find that the plug-in had, in fact, installed correctly. I easily found it in my Effects panel just by typing “dehancer.” Or you can twirl down Video Effects>Film Emulation and you will find it there. Simply drag and drop it directly onto your clip or an adjustment layer.

At this point you will need to do two things: 1) activate the plugin, and 2) run the Profile Fetcher (in case it didn’t work for you when the plugin was first installed). And don’t worry. All of these instructions comes in a PDF file that’s included when you download Dehancer. It’s extremely helpful.

In your Effects Control window, scroll all the way to the bottom of the Dehancer parameters and you will see two buttons: 1) License Info, and 2) Check Profiles. Click on License Info and log in with your Dehancer credentials and then enter the activation key you received upon purchase. Boom. Your license is now activated. Until you take this step you will see a Dehancer watermark across your clip.

Second, run the Profile Fetcher. This time I had no issues. All profiles and film stocks were downloaded almost immediately. I’m not sure what the problem was during the first attempt, but I was pleased to see everything working as it should.

Next, restart your NLE.

I closed Premiere and relaunched. My footage was on the timeline and my Dehancer effect was applied. So far, so good. I went to the first selection, “Input” and opened the dropdown menu where I selected the camera I used when first capturing the footage. Except nothing happened. I couldn’t select the right camera. I tried again, but Dehancer just defaulted to the original setting. I tried other cameras on the list, but the result was the same.

If you also encounter this problem, here’s what worked for me: I deleted the Dehancer effect from my clip, then restarted Premiere a second time. I then reapplied the effect and was able to get started using Dehancer.

So, I was off to a bit of a bumpy start, but hopefully by reading my experiences you can get going a lot faster.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

When I first twirled down the Dehancer effect in my controls panel, I couldn’t believe the list of different parameters I could adjust. And twirling down each of those parameters revealed more subsets of controls for an unbelievable amount of fine-tuning. I have to be honest, when I first looked at everything that comes with Dehancer, I thought “It would take forever to grade every shot in even the shortest of videos, given everything that’s available.” My knee jerk reaction was to conclude that Dehancer is more for colorists who have a lot more time to dedicate to the grading process, whereas the YouTuber or those facing tight deadlines would be better off using something else. But in spending time using Dehancer, I don’t believe that to be the case. However I will say: be prepared. There’s a bit of a learning curve here, especially if you haven’t used any film emulators previously.

But this is where I will again shout out the wonderful learn/support resources available over on the Dehancer website. They have articles, tips, and videos to explain almost every single setting parameter within the effect, what each of them does, and some best practices.

WORKING WITH DEHANCER

In my normal workflow I do a base color correction with Lumetri and then use Film Convert for the grade, but for the purposes of my test, I wanted to see if I could accomplish both using Dehancer only. I used a few shots from my short film That’s My House (shot on a Panasonic Varicam) and a clip taken on a beach with the Sony FS7 Mark II (Note that you will get the best results from plugins like Dehancer when you are using Log footage as your starting point).

I noticed that the Panasonic Varicam is not listed in the Dehancer input camera dropdown. On their website, Dehancer says that if a specific camera isn’t available, use the Profile Fetcher to check for updates. If that doesn’t work, you are always free to select another camera source, or simply start with the default Rec709. I opted for one of the Panasonic V-Log camera profiles.

After selecting the source camera, the image looked extremely contrasty, but this was just the starting point.

I opened the film stock dropdown menu and was impressed by how many film stocks Dehancer gives you with the Pro version of its plug-in. There are a lot more options than what comes with Film Convert. And if you need to know more about these film stocks, how they look, how they affect your footage, etc. head back over to the Dehancer website. There you will find detailed articles on some (not all) of the available film stocks in their library.

It would be great if, in a future update, Dehancer would organize its list of film stocks into categories to help users differentiate between color negative and postive stocks, motion picture films and photography films, black & white and color, etc. Users who don’t come from a film background won’t know at first glance how each stock will affect their footage. It would also be a plus if Dehancer would allow users to favorite specific stocks for quick access in the future. Those kinds of features really appeal to my organizational nature and love of efficient workflows.

I selected Kodak Vision3 50D for my particular clip and the result really improved the shot and immediately got me closer to the look I was going for. There may be instances when you’re perfectly happy with your footage after only selecting your camera source and adding the film stock, but I knew I wanted to tweak my shot even more. For starters, I knew I wanted the shot to be a tad warmer, a little more vibrant, with less contrast and film grain. I found the default grain settings in Dehancer to be a lot heavier than in Film Convert and a 35mm 50 ISO grain was right for my shot. But even if you aren’t happy with the grain presets, there are a variety of custom tools that allow you to adjust the grain to your liking. Here is the final result.

Now, I could take you through each and every step of the Dehancer grading process, diving into minute detail about all the adjustments you can make to each parameter, but that would make for one very long product review. Suffice it to say, there are enough tools built in to Dehancer to create an incredible variety of film looks without the need for other color grading plugins. You can easily correct and grade your footage all within Dehancer. Yes, Dehancer is pricier than similar products, but you might end up breaking even (or even saving money with Dehancer) if you bought several different plugins a la carte to get all the features you can get with Dehancer Pro.

RESULTS

Here are three other shots I graded with Dehancer during my test:

IMPRESSIONS

I was so pleased with the results after using Dehancer that I found myself wanting to go back and re-grade my entire short film from start to finish. Yes, the learning curve can be a tad steep at the beginning and progress may be slow, but I can assure you that the more you work with it, the faster the process. I found that, by the end of my testing, I had really grown accustomed to the workflow and could correct and grade a shot fairly quickly. To that end, it will really help if you invest the time in pre-production collecting reference shots you like. Compile these into a mood board so you know exactly what look you want to achieve. Then you can dial in the Dehancer settings and get to the final look without a lot of guess work along the way that can slow you down. Resources like Shotdeck, Shot On What, and Film Grab are great for finding cinematic reference images.

Here are some things I really like about Dehancer:

  • Film Stocks - Not only are there a lot to choose from, but they all look incredibly good when first applied to the clip. This might not sound like a big deal, but if you’ve worked with Lumetri and have tried one of their built-in creative looks, you know that, by default, those looks are way too heavy and almost unnatural in their appearance. The same can be said of certain third-party LUTs. Even with some of the stocks on Film Convert, I found myself either thinking that the look was way too heavy, or too light. Dehancer really hits that Goldilocks zone of being “just right” when a film stock is first applied. The footage looks very natural and not at all manufactured.

  • Highlight control - Using the Film Compression tool you can adjust the point at which highlights start to clip and bring those shot details back. It flattens out the image slightly, but ensures that all of your highlights stay within range.

  • Push/Pull - Similar to how actual film stock responds when slightly over exposed or under exposed, Dehancer includes a Push/Pull slider. When adjusted on a color negative stock, the color tone responds accordingly.

  • Vignette - Anyone who works in Premiere knows how limiting the Lumetri vignette effect is. I like how Dehancer gives you more control over the placement of the vignette. This may lessen the need to duplicate layers on a timeline and create custom feathered masks for specialized vignetting.

  • Monitor - The ability to toggle a false color view within Dehancer is a fantastic feature. It will certainly help you ensure that no part of your shot is over or under exposed. This will help you maintain consistency with your exposure levels.

And then it’s the little things that Dehancer has thought of when building their plugin that impresses me:

  • Gate Weave - mimics the organic movement of the film stock through the camera gate, so your footage has a slight bounce to it (And like every other effect, this one too can be adjusted to fit your taste).

  • Film Breath - this feature gives your footage slight changes in exposure and color to mimic irregularities in film stock emulsion from frame to frame.

PLAYBACK ISSUES

The one performance issue that I see most people talking about when it comes to Dehancer is on playback. I was working with 4K footage and 1080p footage during my test. I have a MacBook Pro with the M1 Pro chip and 32GB of RAM. I had no playback issues when using Dehancer with 1080p footage. My 4K footage played without any freezes or crashes, but there was a definite stuttering. Down sampling my playback to 1/2 quality instantly solved the issue. Film Convert, by contrast, played back smoothly at full res. I’d be interested to hear from others who have used Dehancer with 6K or 8K footage.

My advice here is to ensure that your system exceeds the requirements spelled out by Dehancer on their website. I would also use proxies and lower your playback quality. Also keep in mind that these playback issues are impacted by which effects you’ve enabled, and their quantity. Film grain is the main culprit here, as it is such a process-intensive feature (and Dehancer acknowledges this). This is an issue to keep in mind before buying/using Dehancer, but in my opinion it shouldn’t be a deal-breaker if you have the right system specs.

CONCLUSION

So, about the film look. Can you achieve it with Dehancer? Remember this: tools like Dehancer aren’t a magic cure for just any piece of footage. You still need to understand the craft of directing and cinematography. There is a lot more to achieving the film look than applying a LUT or film emulation. Learn how to light a scene, stage talent, block the camera, compose the shot, and expose properly. You know the saying, “Garbage in, garbage out.” If you start off using footage that isn’t properly composed, lit, or exposed, you won’t be pleased with the results of any film emulation plugin you may use.

With that said, Dehancer is an amazing product with an incredible amount of tools available for really fine-tuning your color grade. If you’re willing to pay the price for the Pro version, I think it’s totally worth it, considering all of its features and the wide variety of camera sources, film stocks, and custom settings. If the price is a barrier, but you still want a solid film emulation tool that can give you similar results, you’ll be fine with plugins like Film Convert. Or try Dehancer Lite.

While Dehancer can be resource-intensive, the results are often worth the effort. If you're a serious video editor or colorist looking for a top-notch film emulation tool, Dehancer Pro is definitely worth considering.