Best way to achieve that 29.97 video look?

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davidnssbm

Active member
I know it may seem like a silly question, but there are so many options on the HPX I was wondering if anyone has has particularly good results with any variation in frame rate, record mode, shutter, etc.

I'm doing sort of a meta-fiction type film about a camera crew making a movie and I want to cut to the camera crew's video footage and have it look 29.97 while the narrative film is 24p

Thanks,

David
 
davidnssbm said:
I know it may seem like a silly question, but there are so many options on the HPX I was wondering if anyone has has particularly good results with any variation in frame rate, record mode, shutter, etc.

I'm doing sort of a meta-fiction type film about a camera crew making a movie and I want to cut to the camera crew's video footage and have it look 29.97 while the narrative film is 24p
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Mostly lightning and contrast, I guess. The last time I was re-watching Groundhog Day I payed attention to how they did video look and it stroke me that it totally looked like TV though it was actually 24fps (here is one more blow to the statement that 24p is all you need to achieve film look). It was high contrast, with somewhat bleak colors, the colors were with different palette, more "daylight" pink/bluish. And, course, the TV frame was 4:3, but you cannot play this 4:3 card now when widescreen is ubiquitous. For an old-style TV you can add visible TV lines, but again cannot use this effect for a modern HD TV. Maybe you can slow down shutter speed a bit to make it more fluid? But then it will be more smeary.
 
The single most thing, that makes video look videoish is the interlaced fields. As most of you know "typical" video signal contains 30 frames split into 60 fields. This means that the footage looks very smooth, like reality-smooth. There are less points-in-time, that are left out, meaning: If the car takes 1 second to pass from left to right through the frame, you will have 60 different spots, where the car is at. That's why too footage looks "video-smooth". Well if you shoot 24P, you will only get 24 different points where the car's at. Sooo.....how can we shoot in 24P (cause this is your distribution format), and still make the scene look "video-smooth"...well...shoot with 360 degree shutter. The action will look ugly-video-smooth but will be 100% 24P compatible. The reason is, that now the shutter is open all the time, no points in time are left out, thus creating a look which is supersmooth. The catch is, that the footage is smeary and motion-blurry. But it works.

(With the HVX200 or HPX170 you need to set it to FILM CAM mode to be able to set DEGREES-shutter.)

Someone above suggested, that you shoot in NTSC, but then you will have problems, if you want to distribute the movie in 24P, because you would want to convert the NTSC footage to 24P, thus deinterlacing the video-footage.

This trick has shocked me a couple of times in movies. The Mel Gibson movie of the Aztec or Inca guys (can't remember), had some running scenes, where I suddenly jumped up, because I could have sworen that this 24 fps cinema suddenly seemed like interlaced video-footage, it was too smooth...and mind you damn ugly too.

BTW. Of course add to this effects some oversharpening and the usual curve-adjustments.
 
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We spend 5k on cameras to get "that film look™" and then can't figure out how the get the thing we were trying to avoid. :D

It's really not that hard. 60i, shoot at high noon, don't touch a single setting on your camera (use all automatic settings) and run around with it in your hand.

Or just go to a thrift store and buy whatever's sitting on the shelf from 1985 for 20 bucks. ;)
 
The problem I see is that you'll loose a lot of the 60i look when rendering the final film at 24P.

I was recently watching Aliens and listening to the commentary track, and Cameron says that it was difficult for a lot of people to distinguish the video footage from the film footage (both were shot at 25 fps), so they added noise to the video, and occasionally forced the frame to roll.
 
Well, another key is to exaggerate the appearance of interlaced lines. Put on a post filter that darkens every other row of pixels and it'll look a lot more like a video screen.
 
davidnssbm said:
I know it may seem like a silly question, but there are so many options on the HPX I was wondering if anyone has has particularly good results with any variation in frame rate, record mode, shutter, etc.

I'm doing sort of a meta-fiction type film about a camera crew making a movie and I want to cut to the camera crew's video footage and have it look 29.97 while the narrative film is 24p

Thanks,

David
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Best thing, as others have said, is to shoot 60i -- or 60p if you were planning to shoot 720.

To preserve the video look, you could put in FX like noise or fake interlace lines or whatever else, but if you do that and export out the whole thing as 24p, you'll lose what really makes it look "live," which is the motion cadence of 60 pictures per second.

If you really want to preserve that, what I'd do is shoot 59.94 for those parts. Then, edit your 24p stuff as 24p and then export it as 24-over-60 (with 2:3, not 2:3:3:2, pulldown, if it gives you the choice)*, and then edit it with the 59.94 footage on a 59.94 timeline. Then, export the whole thing as 59.94.

Thus, your 24p footage will still retain its 24p look, and the 59.94 stuff will still have all the "live" feel.

The only problem is that in order to keep that look, you'll have to stay in 59.94, so no 24p DVD or no transfer to 24 fps film. If that's OK, it's the better way to go to achieve the look you want.







*If your NLE allows you to nest the 24p sequence into a 59.94 sequence, this may be preferable to rendering/exporting.
 
But he is distributing his movie in 24P, so all of your solutions which involve shooting in 60i don't work. His only solution is to shoot in 24P with 360 degree shutter. He will get his videolook while still being in 24P space.
 
Well, if he needs to do that, then it won't work, as I said -- but he didn't say he was doing 24 fps distribution. If it's for DVD, he's OK, and it's the best way to achieve the effect. :)
 
it doesnt matter, here in about a year with all the 240hz (and similar) TVs they are selling now - EVERYTHING is going to look like video anyway...

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Shoot the original ffotage in 60i then shoot the playback off a monitor.

Oh yeah, I don't remember anyone saying that all you need to get film look is 24p. It's the first thing you need. Gamma curves, latitude, contrast ratios et al can be all over over the place when you actually shoot film and it'll still look like film. Trying to match all of those to film without 24p is useless.
 
hey everyone. thanks for the input. this film was for a 2 minute 72 hour film festival for Microsoft's Windows 7. I didn't have time to do much on the set or in post, but what did I did do was desaturate it to juxtapose with the more colorful 24fps shots, and add a viewfinder graphic aswell.

check it out @

http://www.davidnussbaum.com/windows7.html
 
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