Best frame rate for interviews???

M

markyf

Well-known member
I'm shooting a quick little something for someone at work where I have to follow someone around as they interview people in a bar. I usually shoot 24p for aesthetics but I feel like this might look silly in 24p. But I've never thought of shooting anything outside of that.

For 'man on the street' type stuff, would I go 30p or 60i? I would shoot some tests myself but it's tomorrow and there's no time so I though I would throw it out there. How do 60i do in terms of light sensitivity? Any difference at all from 24p?
 
Shoot at the same frame rate that everything else is. Mixing frame rates in your projects, in pretty much any NLE you run, isn't a good thing. If your project is 23.98, and you shoot your interview at 30fps, 29.97, and drop it into your 23.98 sequence...it will make it 23.98.

Shoot at 23.98...we shoot all our interviews, even walking ones, at that rate and it looks fine. Just like shooting on film.
 
I know it looks fine... but does it look too film? I shot something a little while ago for the first time in 30p and after seeing, although not studying it intensely, I can't say it looked a whole lot different than 24p. But I want this to look a little more gritty and 'reality show' like, so I'm leaning towards 60i.
 
You are shooting 24fps...it will have the exact cadence of film. What do you mean TOO film?

The point is, if everything else is 24p, then shoot 24p. If you take your 30p or 60i ultra smooth footage and mix it, the frame rate mismatch might cause problems, or it might just render it out as 23.98 anyway, but look worse. You pretty much determined what frame rate you are shooting at...no going back now, unless you want to reshoot everything at 60i.

And it will look fine. ALL of the interviews we have shot in HD have been 23.98...every one. They look fine. You are too used to video documentaries.
 
Ok... But I never said I was mixing frame rates. I'm not sure where you got that. This is totally it's own thing. Just a favour for someone.

I guess what I'm getting at is I've never shot at 60i for anything at all but this might be one case where it might call for it. If everything always looked 'better' at 24fps, why would anyone ever shoot at 60i?

I guess what I'm referring to as 'too film' is really about naturalism. The look of film creates distance for me, it is set apart from reality, which is usually the look I want. But in this case, I want the feeling that the viewer is standing there next to the person I'm shooting.

Interesting conversation, though. I guess I didn't take the time to fully express what I mean but you had the patience to reply so thanks!
 
I guess that's what I'm getting at, though. Can 'reality' be a look? What do people think is the closest thing to what their eyes see? 24p? 30p? 60i?

I'm intrigued enough by this issue to one day hopefully shoot something in 1080/60p. Would that not have all the benefits of progressive with the ability to capture movement too. How far off is that for the independent filmmaker?
 
markyf said:
I guess that's what I'm getting at, though. Can 'reality' be a look? What do people think is the closest thing to what their eyes see? 24p? 30p? 60i?

I'm intrigued enough by this issue to one day hopefully shoot something in 1080/60p. Would that not have all the benefits of progressive with the ability to capture movement too. How far off is that for the independent filmmaker?
Click to expand...

The higher the frame rate the closer it will look/feel to human vision. By "reality" though, I meant, news, reality TV shows, many (most?) documentaries, etc.,. These things are almost always shot at 60i so the association between "real life" and the look of 60i exists just the association between the look of 24p and "fantasy" exists. If you want to trigger a kind of "hey, this is real life" subconscious response w/the audience I'd go w/60i over 24p.


-A
 
Ended up shooting 24p mostly because I need as much light as possibly and (possibly erroneously) reasoned that 1/24th shutter would give me more light than 1/60th (don't know if progressive possibly needs more light, though...). One thing I noticed, though, is that handheld and camera moves will make it look much more verite than the frame rate. But I truly am interested in what the eye is doing. Obviously, the eye perceives motion more in terms of 60 frames but I would say it sees colour and richness more like 24p, so I wonder if a truly great film could one day be made in 60p, combining the best of both worlds. It's a gamble, though... I think it would take a genius in composition only cause we're so conditioned for film to look one way (does that bother anyone else?)
 
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