Filmizing is a generic and informal term referring to a process which makes videotape productions appear as if they were shot on film. This process is usually electronic, although filmizing can sometimes occur as an un-intentional by-product of some optical techniques such as telerecording.

As an electronic process used by producers, the principle change involved in filmizing is deinterlacing the footage to change its motion characteristics. The footage may also be graded to have more of a "filmic look". In America, this process is often referred to by the trademarked process called "FilmLook ", Magic Bullet or the more generic "Cine Look".

Filmized Productions

A lot of modern British TV productions use the filmizing process, as British television shows (unlike their American counterparts) frequently aren't afforded a budget that will run to shooting on actual 35mm. Productions that have been filmized include:

Red Dwarf VII

Red Dwarf Remastered

Casualty

The League of Gentlemen

The new series of Doctor Who

The Office

Limitations

Footage that has been shot with the knowledge that it will be subsequently electronically filmized is usually shot in a very different way, with film-style lighting and framing. Regardless, there have been several attempts to process ordinary videotape to look like film, usually with little success. Notable examples include Red Dwarf Remastered - digitally remastered versions of the first three series of Red Dwarf. As well as being filmized, the episodes had been cropped to widescreen and had all their special effects remade. It was released on VHS in the mid-1990s and was panned by critics and fans alike.

BBC hospital drama-soap Casualty also flirted briefly with the filmizing process in the mid-1990s, but it was quickly dropped after viewer complaints that the show "looked wrong".

Filmizing success stories include The League of Gentlemen and The Office, both of which can fool most people into believing they were shot on film.

The Future

Filmized videotape is likely to be superceded by HiDef progressive scan video within the next five years.