[ancientworldnow]

I'm a film colorist and have done the film print out method plenty of times.

You don't need to print to film to dither and reduce banding, it's trivial to add grain to achieve the same (either digitally or via film grain scans which are overlayed).

The film outs are just a different method of getting a film tone, curve, and grain - though honestly I've done some where people were unable to identify which was the digital master and which was the post film out version. Much of the time it's just an ego boost for the director and dp and a competent colorist can easily recreate it. That said, it's fun to do and means less work on my end so I don't discourage it.