Filmbox Looks Review: Pro-Level Film Emulation for Less Than You’d Think
When it comes to film emulation, the filmmaking community is lucky in the sense that there aren’t many bad options. That said, I want to take a minute to tell you why Filmbox (specifically, Filmbox Looks) has rapidly become my favorite, and utterly transformed my color grading process.
I used Dehancer to grade most of my footage for years. It’s a great tool, but Dehancer has been metaphorically collecting dust in my plugin library for about six months now.
Ever since I installed Filmbox (affiliate link), to be precise.
What Filmbox Looks Improved in My Workflow
Ease of use and speed. Exactly what it says on the tin.
Don’t get hung up thinking of Filmbox Looks as a watered-down version of Filmbox Pro. It’s not less capable when paired with clean, well-exposed footage.
After testing it extensively, I think it’s better understood as the tool that was designed to give you just the right balance between flexibility and simplicity to obtain professional results very quickly.
Filmbox's Pro version is an extremely capable tool, and professional colorists have used it on projects like
Everything Everywhere All At Once
A Real Pain
Theater Camp
Saturday Night Live
Beef
1923
Rooster
Fantastic Four: First Steps
But I'm going to focus primarily on Filmbox Looks here, because that's the plugin that's really improved my day-to-day color grading workflow
I've been finishing all of my footage in Filmbox Looks for the better part of a year now, including the talking head footage and everything else in the video above. Honestly, if you've watched anything on my channel this year, it was either entirely or predominantly graded with Filmbox Looks.
I haven't missed sifting through pages of sliders I hardly ever touch. At all.
If I ever want to fix something specific that Looks doesn't give me control over, I can just toss another node into DaVinci and make a targeted correction. Like qualifying and compressing skin tones, for instance.
How Does Filmbox Looks Work?
Filmbox Looks is simple. You tell the plugin what kind of footage it's working with (FLOG, SLOG, etc.), choose a look based on different film emulations, and adjust basics like exposure and white balance.
Once you have look you want, you can add, refine, or remove effects like grain, halation, dust, etc.
From what Video Village has explained to me, these looks are essentially presets built in Filmbox Pro that were engineeered to be flexible and easy to work with.
I love that you can select a look category (like clean & commercial, 8mm, 16mm, or 35mm emulation, black & white, etc.) and then flip through different looks, quickly sampling how each one looks on your footage.
There's everything from super subtle profiles that would look great on a dialed back, corporate project, to shaky, grainy 8mm film emulation, or even looks inspired by iconic films.
It's allowed me to slash the time I spend color grading, and somehow also manage to give me the best looking footage I’ve ever put out.
Filmbox Looks vs. Filmbox Pro
I didn't have access to Filmbox Pro (affiliate link) until I partnered with Video Village, but I've now spent a couple of months getting to know it a little better.
I'll be honest, there are people better equipped than me to cover everything Filmbox Pro can do. But what I can say is that it's a wonderland of color grading tools and effects. I always feel like a kid wandering through an amusement park unattended when I’m working in there.
Take JUST the settings for grain (below).
Want to change grain density independently in the shadows, midtones, or highlights? Done. Want to emulate one film stock's color profile but borrow another stock's grain structure? Check.
There's also an entire module just for split toning.
Finding a color combo (before dialing back the intensity)
One feature I've been loving in particular: instead of a single vibrance slider, Pro gives you richness, vibrance, and color density, plus a push/pull simulation slider on top of standard contrast. That section alone is probably what I appreciate most about Pro over Looks.
My favorite feature after a couple of months with Pro: if there's something I'm not fully happy with using Looks on a specific segment, I can send my look-in-progress into Filmbox Pro with the click of a button for more precise tweaks without adding complexity to the color grading process on every single clip.
Filmbox Pricing: Is Filmbox Looks Worth It for Small Creators?
For smaller creators on a budget, Filmbox Looks is a strong value.
There’s a free trial, but at the time of writing (October 2026), Filmbox Looks starts at $29 every three months, or just $199 for a perpetual license.
But Video Village also has a really cool credit system. Say you’d like to test the plugin for a quarter or two. You can then apply that cost toward a perpetual license later on.
Or if you decide to upgrade to Pro one day, you can credit what you spent on Looks toward THAT perpetual license.
In a world of… other kinds of software and subscription pricing models, I honestly think this one’s worth acknowledging.
If you do want to try Filmbox yourself, I've got a discount code that’ll save you a bit of cash too (NICKGUNN), or you can grab it here using my affiliate link.
Thanks as always for reading, and leave a comment if you’ve got any questions I didn’t cover here.
Want to see Filmbox Looks on a real project?This video (shot on Fujifilm X-H2S) was graded with it start to finish.
Curious how this compares to my photography color workflow?I broke down how I use Lightroom color profiles in an earlier post.
Oh, and you can grab my color profiles here.
Thanks for reading!
Questions? Hate comments? Feel free to weigh in below or get in touch on socials.
