24p is on the way out!

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There is nothing desirable about film you can't achieve digitally, I'm sorry film die-hards. Your time has come and gone. It's time to retire if you want hold with that attitude, let the new crop of filmmakers come in and replace the dinosaurs. If you're a true professional you learn to adapt and learn it's about the process and the story not about using your precious 35mm cameras. You can get virtually the same dynamic range out of the RED as you can 35mm, and since it looks a lot better in most respects anyway, I don't see why you wouldn't. There are no workflow problems with the RED, that's just a favorite line for idiots to repeat who have no idea about the RED and haven't read up on it, used it, etc. Everyone who is familiar with the process has said it's very simple and straight-forward. It's certainly not as big of a pain in the butt as shooting with film.

It's not a matter of just the indie world, a lot if not most music videos are shot digitally now. The budgets aren't the same as they used to be, and for every $100,000 music video there are 10 that are in the $10,000 to $20,000 range where film is not an option and doesn't even enhance the product over an HVX200 because nobody sees this stuff on a big screen anyway. It's for TV and YouTube.

Film is completely dead for still photography and it has about 5 years left in the film industry. It would be completely dead here too except we have a lot of blowhards who are purists and resist change no matter how good that change may be or how much money it saves. Revenge of the Sith was shot on the F950 and that camera can't even compete with the RED or the Origin or the Viper, and it looks every bit as good as ANY film shot on 35mm. Wait, no, it looks much better actually.
 
J.R.,

It's not: the entire movie shot at 60fps.

The bulk of it will still be shot at 24 fps, but ramping up on moving shots [then the ramped-up sections displayed as normal-speed smooth pans].

60p seems like the extreme - for very fast, ambitious camera movements.

I'm talking about speeds like 28-30fps or 36 fps, depending on the speed of the movement.

The rest of it is still 24 fps. That's the point.
 
Just saw private Ryan and Band of Brothers.
Great examples how crapy sudden framerate changes look.

And no, they don´t support the story, they are only anoying.

Frank
 
Unless I'm mistaken, the original post about 24p being out has nothing to do with 35mm film. 24p is a video format for digital cameras, right? Ok, well, I have a certain fondness for 24 fps in film, but this fondness is a form of nostalgia; I don't understand the technology that well, despite the fact that there have been some pretty intelligent descriptions of the video and digital technologies in this thread.

And I'm really grateful for the explanations by Noiz, Postmaster and other experts here, because now I know that my 35mm camera is still going to serve me well and that I don't need to spend $100,000 on an F900, $75,000 on plugins to immitate film, $500,000 on computer equipment to generate digital programs for the digital theater, TV, Cable and "emerging technologies".

Over 90% of the theaters still project 35mm over the next several years (possibly longer) and I'm making movies now; I don't need to prepare for the technology of the future, because even if the new cameras are shooting 10,000 fps and putting out 10K images for projection, I can still re-telecine my 35mm up to 10K, 20K and beyond.

Film will always be more beautiful because it's organic. Don't you prefer organic? LOL
 
Ok, I'm without a doubt extremely well qualified to discuss this; my neighbor has a cousin that lives across the street from a fellow that has a picture of a character that looks a lot like Spielberg.

And with that out of the way, I can boldly sum this whole thread up:

The future will be different than today!

Now you can all move on....
 
filmman said:
Good stuff. I would've never found out all these facts about the "emerging technologies" if it weren't for Este's enthusiasm for higher frame rates :-)

I recently contacted a major chain to see what would be the cost of showing my new feature Felliniesque Players. I found out that only two of the 16 theaters in the complex were set up with digital projectors and that the waiting line was huge for them.

From my perspective as a filmmaker with all the 35mm production equipment necessary to produce 35mm movies, it makes little sense to shoot digital; except in cases where I want to experiment to a great extent. Such was the case with Felliniesque Players. I wanted to use unknown talent and create a movie based on my imagination, a movie that doesn't rely on a standard screenplay or a dramatic structure -- a dreamlike reality and a reality made up of dreams set to song and music.

To my amazement I ended up with a movie that I consider the best I've made in decades. It could be that I've also gone nuts, but I don't want to discuss that, in case the moderators close down this thread. LOL
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Perhaps you can start another thread for it and post some clips or even the entire film?

Sounds really cool!
 
Postmaster said:
Just saw private Ryan and Band of Brothers.
Great examples how crapy sudden framerate changes look.

And no, they don´t support the story, they are only anoying.

Frank
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Hey Frank.

Can you give me the minute and second marks where these changes occur? I would like to check it out too.

I actually likes Private Ryan but was annoyed by the judder.
 
karapetkov said:
J.R.,

It's not: the entire movie shot at 60fps.

The bulk of it will still be shot at 24 fps, but ramping up on moving shots [then the ramped-up sections displayed as normal-speed smooth pans].

60p seems like the extreme - for very fast, ambitious camera movements.

I'm talking about speeds like 28-30fps or 36 fps, depending on the speed of the movement.

The rest of it is still 24 fps. That's the point.
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I like your way of thinking.
 
Oh, that I agree with you, Este. The use of film will diminish; it already has. I mean, there are few filmmakers that now can shoot film. Some don't even know what it looks like, especially how to operate the cameras.

And the whole art form has changed. The 35mm film rules are mostly out the window. It started a long time ago, since the 60s really. Of course, 35mm filmmaking is still around. I think 99% of the theatrical feature films still use the industry standards of filmmaking, also known as Hollywood Films. Just about all foreign films have always been shot according to Hollywood.

Today, there is still a small group of digital producers who still shoot according to those rules, and from all I've heard the film schools all teach the Hollywood rules of filmmaking.

Personally, I'm fascinated by the innovations of the new movie makers. I really am. I'm trying to emulate them myself, and this is why I'm so excited about my new feature film Felliniesque Players. I could've never shot it with a 35mm camera. I was shot at night with available light most of the time; it's just impossible to do with celluloid.

And the rules of digital movie making? Well, there are no rules yet, but they are being developed, I'm sure. In fact, you are the first person who is attempting to establish a new rule -- sort of -- always shoot at a higher rate as long as there is a projector that will project it. Am I completely off? Well, it's sort of what I think you're trying to say when you say that 24p is on the way out!

Way out, man, way out. And there is nothing wrong with that :-)
 
Postmaster said:
Just saw private Ryan and Band of Brothers.
Great examples how crapy sudden framerate changes look.

And no, they don´t support the story, they are only anoying.

Frank
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I didn't know that there's something like that in Ryan, where are these points?

Remember that what we're talking about here is ramping up the projection\display too, not only shooting at higher speeds.

AFAIK, Ryan is 100 % 24fps with no ramping up [for display]. At least that's what my media player is telling me. :)

ESTEBEVERDE said:
I like your way of thinking.
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We're yet to see something like this: A projection with variable framerate.

There's a chance that it will look like sh*t. :)
 
“SPR” has those high speed shutter shots all throughout the battle scenes. I don’t think those scenes would work without them. It helped to give the feeling of anxiety… That was a great artistic choice IMO. A lot of folks are now trying to emulate that. If you get the chance to watch it again (including Band of Brothers) take a note on how “you” feel during those scenes… you might find your heart rate increased and your eyes feel like they are wide open rapidly moving around to see what happens next. It basically draws you into the scene emotionally.
 
A-ha, you're talking about the high-shutter-speed shots. Yep, there are plenty of them in Ryan. And they work perfectly, IMHO. Wartime action visuals...

But we're talking about higher framerate shots. 48 frames-per-second, etc.
 
Ian-T said:
“SPR” has those high speed shutter shots all throughout the battle scenes. I don’t think those scenes would work without them. It helped to give the feeling of anxiety… That was a great artistic choice IMO. A lot of folks are now trying to emulate that. If you get the chance to watch it again (including Band of Brothers) take a note on how “you” feel during those scenes… you might find your heart rate increased and your eyes feel like they are wide open rapidly moving around to see what happens next. It basically draws you into the scene emotionally.
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They were also done to give the feel of combat films. An interesting side light is that there is combat footage shot all through WWII and some in WWI, some in color. Really amazing stuff.

Anyway I believe what your talking about is a stylistic choice and basically you don't agree with Spielbergs choice.
Another aside he edits on film, audio post wasn't even supposed to work to video - but that was practically impossible so it did till the mix.

To give Estie his due, as I understand it, those effects are not at all what he's talking about. His vision is that for moves like pans cameras would speed up to minimize movement artifacts and that projectors would also mimic this speedup on playback. The viewer would not see it as slomo but as if it were a straight pan but with out the smear and or stutter that slower frame rates produce on fast pans.

His and my differences on opinion are mostly with the practicality of this in a post work flow. He thinks it's easy and the future and I don't think it's possible or desirable. He also thinks 24 FPS is a handicap that folks will abandon ASAP, and I tend to think it's likely to be hear for a long haul.
 
ESTEBEVERDE said:
Your damn funny I'll give you that my friend! :grin:


Still Love You all the same! :beer:
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Not to open the whole can of worms again but VBR MP3's have been around for quite awhile and they still are not reliably compatible. So I don't think the math is as easy as you think.

Later you person of mystery...
 
if 24p is not the optimum aesthetic rate

- then why did indies shooting on video start shooting pal because it was closer to 24p? They could have shot 60 or 30.

- why was the indie video world revolutionized when the DVX came out with true 24p?

- why would they even bother engineering such a cam? Because they knew we wanted our video to look like 24p for narrative work, not 30 or 60.

I saw this guy's gazillion dollar plasma that has an "automatic motion" feature which reinterprets your DVDs to 120 frames per second. It made everything look like sports. When people were crossing the set and the camera was panning with them all of the strobing in the background was gone. It looked really weird. Super clear. Not pleasing. Not like film. Not organic.

Why weren't we saying: "just give us cinelike gamma, 30 and 60 look better than 24"? Because they don't.

So you say 24fps was arbitrarily chosen as the lowest frame rate that would sync with sound. OK. Fine. But we like it. Maybe if 60 fps was the lowest frame rate that could sync to sound we'd have all learned to love that. But just because we can do something now doesn't mean our tastes are going to change.

There are a lot more fabrics and fashion choices available since the 50's. Most people still wear bluejeans most of the time though.
 
Jack Daniel Stanley said:
So you say 24fps was arbitrarily chosen as the lowest frame rate that would sync with sound. OK. Fine. But we like it. Maybe if 60 fps was the lowest frame rate that could sync to sound we'd have all learned to love that. But just because we can do something now doesn't mean our tastes are going to change.

There are a lot more fabrics and fashion choices available since the 50's. Most people still wear bluejeans most of the time though.
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I think your getting your posters confused. I'm the one that pointed out 24fps was because of sound and I'm arguing it will be around for a long time.
It's entirely poss that people like 24 FPS because they associate it with "film", people associate B&W with documentaries so B&W automatically gives a film a bit more "truthiness". So maybe sometime in the future when nobody can remember a film not totally filled with CGI where everything looks like a video game people won't like 24 FPS? Maybe, hard to say. People said we would all be watching artificial reality films by now also. Tastes do change but not all that fast, usually. And remember early CD's sounded like crap but still killed LP's and MP3's sound worse than cassette's but are killing CD's, so quality and commerce are not nec. connected.
On the other hand the film business is a behemoth that takes forever to change direction. Remember STEREO was not the rule till the late 80's and computers didn't dominate post till the late 90's. On the flip side MAG and analog dubbers pretty much disappeared between 98 and 2000 after being a standard since the late 40's. The other flip side is 35mm films all carry mono compatible optical tracks that (other than noise reduction) can be played back on some of the earliest sound projectors. It all depends on the $, and there is $$$$$$$$$ involved.
 
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