Filming a dance recital – Shoot in 60p, edit in 30p timeline?

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Budgieboots

Well-known member
Hello,

I am scheduled to be filming a dance recital in about a week.

I was wondering, because of the fast movement of the dancers, particularly their legs (it’s a variation of Irish Dance), is it advisable to film in 60p, than work in a 30p timeline?

The intention of filming in 60p is that I would like to have things play normally in the 30p, and then do a slow-motion effect with the extra frames allotted by the 60p when someone does something especially acrobatic. Is playing back 60p at 100% speed in a 30p timeline going to look strange?

I am not quite sure what the standard procedure is for dance events, but I suspected 24p would be too jittery for something like this.

I need to film the entire thing as an event recording, but the client would like “options” for putting together a promo later on from this footage, hence my curiosity about adding slow-motion.

Thank you.
 
It's a matter of taste, and you should do tests to see what you like. You don't need to have the actual dancers to see what the motion cadence behaves like. Just do it yourself, and then have a drink to go with the laugh fest as you watch footage of yourself doing a River Dance parody. ; )

It won't look like 24p, but that's not always a bad thing. If you want slo mo, then you need to shoot in 60p anyway. Playing 60p in 30p timeline is fine, but 60p with 1/120 for shutter speed is definitely a different look than 24p with 1/50 shutter speed.
 
I have multiple years experience shooting dance competitions. For the promo, slow motion is great. If the point of the video is to sell it to the dancers/parents, then absolutely no slow motion.

I personally hate the look of 60p, so I would conform it to 30p for sale, but keep the 60p master for the promo edit.
 
I would ask why you would make the final product in 30p? Odds are you are delivering to DVD and Blu-ray correct? Then a 60p timeline is your best approach as it is part of the Blu-ray spec and makes the best DVD conversion. 30p is in the cracks as far as a delivery format. I have always shot these types of events in 60p with a 1/60th shutter. You want smooth motion, not a staccato look for dancing. I am coming from a perspective of a parent that wants to buy the performance. For the promo maybe you can find enough shots where the camera is not panning so you can make it in 24p. Simple is best if you are selling to parents.

I use Edius so I can not speak to other NLEs but 60p slowed down on a 60p timeline still looks very good.
 
If its fast pace and you see yourself changing frame rates a lot...do yourself a favor and make sure you are setting your shutter to degrees.
 
30 is one of those things that I think people are still stuck on from the analog SD days. For pretty much ALL of my work, and the vast majority of my work is Network and Broadcast, it's 24(23.98)P or 60(59.94)P. I did do a shoot a few weeks ago in 1080/30, but it was a corporate client, and we all kind of looked at each other like, "why in the hell do they want this in 30?". My opinion, if you need to be able to have options later on, shoot 60P. You then have the options of the final product being in 60, converting to 24 for a film look and slo-mo from the 60 played back at 24(2.5x slo-mo). Forget 30P.
 
In this situation I recommend 60p. I've shot a number of recitals and 30P works well too, unless you want smooth slow motion or there's a whole lot of fast action.

Previously shooting in 720 60P, one year ago I gave 30P a try because I wanted 1080 and I only had one camera that could record 1080 60P. The others could only do 720 60P or 1080 30P. If all my cameras could do 1080 60P then I never would have tried 30P.
Nonetheless it worked fine. 30P exports fine to 480 SD and to 1080 60i for Blu-ray.
I would personally never shoot a dance event in 24P unless the client requested it.
 
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Hey Budgieboots, I film an Irish Dance recital every year. Feel free to PM me, I'm happy to share some samples and techniques.
 
Thanks for the tips and tricks everyone! I didn't realize that 60p was so versatile and something like Adobe Premiere Pro could correctly pull out frames to make it fit into 24fps or 30fps timelines. Much appreciated.
 
I wouldn't shoot 60fps if the intention was to go to a 24P timeline. It's the wrong cadence. 30P is fine, however, a standard 180 shutter angle at 60P is going to be a 90 degree shutter angle for 30P. Also keep in mind you will need more light for 60P.
 
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