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The Myth of the Cinematic Look
It is not what you think, it is not even what YouTube tutorials preach.
If you’re starting out as a video creator or indie filmmaker, chances are you want your projects to look like the ones you admire on the big screen. Or maybe you’re inspired by the likes of Gregory Crewdson and want to give your still photos the feel of a movie. So you go online and type “cinematic look tutorial” into a search engine, hoping for an easy fix.
Yet the more you look into it, the more elusive it seems. The teal-and-orange palette, the smoky background, wide-open apertures for shallow depth of field — these are the usual suspects. But are they really what cinema looks like?
As it turns out, not quite. The very definition of “cinematic” is slippery, constantly changing over time. Let’s see how, and why.
So, let’s do it. Let’s type “cinematic look” into YouTube or Google and see what comes up. The results are a mess, but a few recurring themes stand out:
