The Role of Grain

The Role of Grain

Once the image passes through the lens and is recorded, it
takes on another characteristic: grain. Grain is essentially
high-frequency noise readily apparent in each channel of
most recorded footage, although progress in image gathering
technology has led to a gradual reduction of grain.
Grain can, however, be your friend, adding life to static
imagery and camoufl aging edge detail.

Grain management is an essential part of creating highquality
moving images; properly done, it is not simply
switched on or off, but requires careful per-channel adjustment.
There are two basic factors to consider:
. Size of the grain, per channel
. Amount of grain, or amount of contrast in the grain,
per channel
The emphasis here is that these factors typically vary from
channel to channel. Blue is almost universally the channel
likeliest to have the most noise; happily, the human eye is
less sensitive to blue than red or green.
How much grain is enough? As with color in Chapter 5, the
goal is typically to match what’s there already. If your shot
has a background plate with the proper amount of grain
in it, match foreground elements to that. A computergenerated
still or scene might have to be grain-matched to
surrounding shots.