How to get the Cinematic look?

Question

With most movies, you can tell at a glance, if it is (or supposed to be) a blockbuster or not, by how the image looks.Even some American TV-series look better (in my oppinion) than most european films.I don't want to adress any content here, it's just about the look and feel of the final image.Sometimes, when you can see some "raw" footage of the films (on the making of), it looks similar to final products of the others.Now I was wondering, what makes that distinctive difference, of the cinematic feel, to all the other films.I know that they have a higher budget and a lot more crew members, but what makes that distinctive difference? And what do these additional people do? so that you can tell the difference in the end.Is is the lighting, the camera, the lenses, the color grading at the end...or something completely different, I haven't thought of?I'm not interessted on how Motion Picture differantiates from News or Sports Photography, because they want to acchieve different things.I'm especialy interessted in the differences of european and american blockbusters (Excludeing England, because they are similar, by the quality of produced video as the Americans). (I know, that the budget is a big factor and that for example German films seldomly have a budget higher than 10 Millions, and that 200+ Million Dollar films are almost a standart in Hollywood (for Blockbusters).

Answer 1

It is all of that. Budget, equipment, experts at literally everything, with years of experience. But in the end, it comes down to the vision and execution of the producers and especially the director.