Film Grain / Halation

Film grain / Halation

Watch as an animation →

In plain words

Add film texture with grain and a reddish glow around bright areas, and reduce the digital look.

When to use it

Cinematic ads, flashbacks, and when you want to hide the smoothness typical of AI.

Example videos

Film Texturing Step-by-Step – Make Any Digital Video Look Filmic in DaVinci Resolve — Explainer: See the order for building film texture, from the red glow around bright areas (halation) to grain.
Advanced Film Look Tutorial (Grain + Halation) — Explainer: How to add grain and red halation in any editing program.
How to Make Your AI Films Dangerously Realistic — AI: The part that adds film grain to AI video to reduce the smoothness.

In AI video, like this

Apply it at the last stage to every cut at the same strength. For grain, use noise=alls=8:allf=t; for halation, blur the bright areas with gblur, then blend=screen in a red tone. The big benefit is that it unifies the texture that differed from cut to cut.

One-click prompt

Finish every clip with the same film texture, a soft red glow around the brightest highlights plus fine grain, applied last, after color, sharpening, and denoising: ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -filter_complex "[0:v]split[a][b];[b]lutyuv=y='if(gt(val,200),val,0)',gblur=sigma=20,colorchannelmixer=rr=1:gg=0.3:bb=0.2[h];[a][h]blend=all_mode=screen:all_opacity=0.5,noise=alls=8:allf=t" -c:a copy out.mp4

See it in real films and ads

Happy Editing — Advanced Film Look Tutorial (Grain + Halation)

AI-made examples

Tao Prompts — How to Make Your AI Films Dangerously Realistic

Recommended for scenes like these

Morning Routine VlogObservational DocumentaryFashion LookbookWedding HighlightRomance: First MeetingDrama: BreakupWestern: Standoff Before the DrawWar: Trench ImmersionNoir: Interrogation in the ShadowsSports: The Decisive MomentHandheld Documentary RealismNeon Noir Night StreetsStar Wars — Opening Star Destroyer FlyoverBlade Runner — Hades Landscape OpeningE.T. the Extra-Terrestrial — Bicycle Across the MoonInterstellar — Spinning DockingMary Poppins — Jumping into the Chalk DrawingPsycho — Shower Scene Fast CuttingTaxi Driver — "You Talkin' to Me?" Mirror MonologueRocky — Training Montage Up the Museum StepsThe Good, the Bad and the Ugly — Three-Way Cemetery Standoff

Techniques that pair well

Insert ShotFrame Within a FrameMotivated LightingExtreme Wide Shot (EWS)Telephoto Compression
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