How Can I Recreate a Telecine-Style Look in a Scene-Referred Baselight Workflow?

[Soumitra Sarkar]

Hi everyone,

I’m a professional Baselight Colorist, and I would really appreciate some advice from experienced colorists who have worked extensively with both scene-referred and telecine-style/display-referred workflows.

Recently, I’ve been facing an interesting problem in my grading work.

I personally prefer working in a scene-referred workflow because, for me, it tends to preserve a beautiful sense of texture, depth, separation and dimensionality in the image. I feel that I have more control over the image and can create a modern, clean and cinematic result.

However, in the Kolkata market where I currently work, many clients and DoPs still prefer what I would describe as a traditional telecine-style image:

• softer overall texture
• flatter contrast
• less apparent micro-detail/sharpness
• smoother highlight and tonal transitions
• less “digital” crispness
• slightly more compressed/dense image texture
• a more traditional film/telecine feeling

Personally, I sometimes feel this look is somewhat “old school”, but that is not really the point of my question. It is a look that my clients want, and I want to be able to reproduce it properly.

My Problem

The strange thing is that I can often achieve the requested look quite easily when I work in a telecine-style workflow.

For example, I have sometimes graded the same project twice:

Workflow A – Telecine-style

I get the softer, flatter, smoother image that the DoP is looking for, and the DoP is very satisfied.

Workflow B – Scene-referred / T-Cam

I can achieve the colour, contrast and exposure that I want, but I struggle to reproduce that same texture and image character.

The result often remains too clean, too sharp, too dimensional or too “modern” compared with the telecine version.

This has happened on several projects, and honestly, sometimes I am not satisfied with my own result either.

I have tried various Baselight tools and approaches, including:

• Texture Equaliser
• Texture Highlight
• Texture Blend
• reducing apparent sharpness
• manipulating contrast
• highlight compression
• different tonal shaping approaches
• combinations of texture processing with the grade

But I still haven’t found a reliable method to reproduce the characteristic telecine-style softness/flatness while staying within my preferred scene-referred workflow.

What I Am Really Trying to Understand

I don’t simply want to “blur” the image.

I suspect the difference is much deeper than sharpness.

Perhaps the telecine-style appearance is coming from a combination of:

contrast response + colour separation + highlight behaviour + local contrast + MTF/acutance + grain/noise behaviour + display transform + tonal compression + colour processing.

So my question to experienced Baselight/FilmLight users is:

How would you approach recreating this type of telecine-style image inside a scene-referred workflow?

Specifically, I would love to understand:

1. What is actually responsible for the perceived softness of a telecine-style image?
2. Is the difference primarily caused by the tone mapping / display transform, or is there something fundamentally different happening to the image texture?
3. How would you build a scene-referred “telecine look” in Baselight?
4. Would you approach it through the scene-referred DRT/LMT, or would you create a separate look layer after the scene-referred transform?
5. How important are local contrast and micro-contrast compared with simply reducing sharpness?
6. Are there particular Baselight operators or combinations of operators that you have found useful for this?
7. How would you reproduce the smooth highlight roll-off and flatter density without destroying the dimensionality of the image?
8. Is it possible to create a reusable telecine-style look/LMT that can be applied consistently across different cameras and projects?

Another Important Point

I don’t want to simply tell my clients that the telecine-style look is “old” or “not future-proof.”

That doesn’t really solve the problem.

If the client or DoP wants that visual language, I should be able to create it properly as a colorist.

At the same time, I don’t want to abandon the advantages I get from a scene-referred workflow just to reproduce the look.

So I’m trying to find the best technical approach:

Scene-referred image pipeline → controlled transformation → telecine-style texture / tonal response

rather than:

Scene-referred workflow → abandon it → use telecine workflow

I would be very interested to hear how experienced colorists approach this.

If possible, I would especially appreciate practical Baselight node/layer-stack examples, operator combinations, LMT/DRT approaches, or references to workflows you have personally used.

I’m not looking for a simple “add blur” solution. I’m trying to understand what makes the telecine-style image look different at a fundamental image-processing level, and how we can reproduce that character while maintaining a modern scene-referred workflow.

Thanks in advance to everyone who takes the time to share their experience.