I was shooting in the Mojave desert last week (when I should have been at the Vegas party-but that's another story) doing film like stuff with a lot of success, but I did it in the camera with wide apertures, the right progressive shutter options and gammas, high saturation settings and some under-exposure, and by and waiting for soft early and late light. If you start with high contrast video looking video with blown-out skies (you said you were in bright light) I really don't believe Vegas can do much for you. Glenn has some preset film-look color curves you can research, but my experience is you must do this in the camera - or at least start there.
Michael

you don't need to apply film-look curves in camera (actually I don't think any of the prosumer stuff out there will let you do it), though you can tweak the camera to give you more dynamic range and less knee (i.e. set the knee circuit to low or something; I haven't messed around with this much myself though).

2- I think my curves presets can be found at

[url=http://glennchan.info/Proofs/forums/sony%20back/curves-and-secondary-presets2.veg]

Glenn is da man on this.

Setting your Gamma correctly in the camera is only one step in getting a film look. I have a lot of respect for Glenn and his knowledge but I know from much work making film like Video he puts too much importance on his "curves" as just one step in the whole film-look thing.

Firstly, anything you can do in the camera is better done there than in post, so correct setting of focus sharpness and color intensity in the camera is a good place to start; you can still use color curves in Vegas to tweak. Secondly, Glenn's long preached philosophy of "pushing exposure" does exactly the opposite of what you need for film look; it stretches the histogram and produces areas of blowout or super whites. It is quite possible to slightly underexpose for good luminance graduation without introducing any noise into the blacks if you do it with care. Thirdly, a BIG part of a good film look is the right combination of focal length and aperture and camera to subject distance; Vegas can do nothing here. And your choice of 30p, 25p or interlaced can only be best done in the camera.

I used to run my FX1 at default and use color curves (including Glenn's presets) to try to get a film look in Vegas. Since I got to know my FX1 better and have developed good practices regarding perspective and DOF, and have tweaked my camera setting from default to those I have described elsewhere, I have got a far, far superior film look straight from the camera than Vegas could never give "average" video. In fact, I have gone from adjusting in Vegas 95% of my clips down to about 10%.

If you are interested in following how I came to my film look settings then search for my post regarding "Brokeback Mountain" where I loaded sections of this movie (which has wonderful outdoor nature shots) to the Vegas time-line and then used my camera and Vegas settings to imitate the look and the histograms. For copyright reasons the film was deleted after I made my comparisons. If you are serious about a film look I strongly recommend you load to the Vegas time-line a section of Video whose look you want, and use how it looks on YOUR monitor and the histograms it shows, as a guide in editing your own footage.
Michael

but the curves is, as far as I can tell, the best "after the fact" option.

I've noticed that even a minor change in clor balance or desaturation helps to mimic certain kinds of film looks.

Thx again

Yes, if your video is already shot, Color Curves (the famous "S" curve), the Secondary Color Corrector and the delivery format are your main options. Of course, in addition you can cut those takes that are least suited to the film look and use the ones that are. Look at your DOF and your luminance graduation and limits in the histogram to select your best material to start with. Hopefully you will find footage with the top and bottom nicely pushed to the center so you do not need to drop that top axis and raise the bottom one as in Glenn's curves, but can just help the gamma with the "S" curve. I never use 24p because my camera does not take it but you could also use Vegas to render to 24p to help your look. Let us know what you think of your results when done.
Michael