Currently there is a trend of young youtubers like gawx which utilize a style like wes anderson or Jean-Pierre Jeunet with a vintage look. I know that this look can't be recreated with the sony film simulation due to grain and halation. I tried playing around with your
Portra 800 settings but don't seem to find the right spot. What would you recommend tweaking?
Thanks man, appreciate your in-depth answer!
Depends on what you mean Vintage look. Vintage is a very vague word holding many meanings, for everybody something else.
I would not compare Wes Anderson with Jean-Pierre Jeunet or with Gawx, because in my eyes, each has a different style and color. I also would not label Wes Anderson nor Gawx vintage, because with both, but especially with Wes Anderson, the style is very bright and colorful. Same with gawx, his videos have vibrant colors, a style which I cannot recollect seeing in any old 'vintage' movies. I will say his colors are deep, film like, but personally would not call them vintage.
Also, when you say recreate wes anderson look, you need to specify which movie exactly, because not all movies look the same and they don't have the same color grade. Same with Gawx or Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Colors can differ from one scene to another. Only saying to recreate the look of these 3 filmmakers is quite vague.
So what do you mean by vintage? Deep colors? Yellow-amber skin tones like presented in the screenshot above?
More screenshot as reference would definitely help.
But if you mean something like this:
Then you have multiple ways to obtain this.
Use the in-camera tools (Kelvin + Color Filter) to push warmth into the image, or make use of external lights to push more amber orange into the scene.
Use the Color Depth to get deep film like colors, or color grade. Or do both. I always color grade my footage, even when using film simulations, because for me it's fun. And because in the end, color grading makes a huge difference for minimal effort.
I think Portra 800 film simulation is a great start for wes anderston style, but not for gawx. I also recommend trying Kodak Vision 200T film simulation, which was made after his Asteroid City movie, and it comes very close. With both you might want to increase the contrast in post to create more dimension in your scene because they are very flat.
Gawx makes use of lights and color grading to get his color, so I recommend taking the same approach. Color grading software simply has more complex tools than any camera, be it Fuji, Ricoh, Sony or Nikon. You will be able to create more interesting looks than in-camera, because you are manually grading. So tweak the in-camera settings to get as close as you can in camera, then continue color grading.