Has anyone ever heard the term 'Crankdown'?

T

tmulk

New member
I am curious to see if anyone has ever heard this term 'Crankdown, or Crank Down' before. I am pretty sure it isn't a real term, I just had to do some research and see if other professionals had heard this term before. Thank you.
 
well what would over crank mean? It isn't the term that was used (several times might I add, so there's no way i misinterpreted it), but what would over crank mean. This is referring to shooting with an HVX200.
 
"Over cranking" means shooting at a higher frame rate to get slow motion when playing back. The term goes back to the early days of film production when motion picture cameras were hand cranked. The HVX allows you to "Over crank", in 720 P mode, to get slow motion.
 
Thats what I thought, to shoot in a higher framerate. The term came from my boss, who routinely mis-uses terms to sound like he knows what he is talking about. He wants us to 'crankdown' to match footage shot by a production company who was using a red-rock lens adapter so we could 'match the film look'. The footage was shot in 720 30p. We are shooting outdoors during the day with a stock HVX200. We are a local TV station so we have virtually no budget and no high end equipment.
 
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ahhhh... its making more sense now. to give your boss some credit. he may actually be making some sense here...

what hes probably meaning is to crank down the fstop (i.e. open up the aperture) which will deliver a shallower depth of field. and he is right. that will happen. though very likely nowhere near the depth achieved with the redrock+35mm lenses...
 
It sounds like your boss may be asking you to shoot in 24p, which is considered by many to give video a more 'film-like' look.
When he says 'crankdown' he's probably just asking you to 'crank' - 'down' the number of frames from 30 to 24.
FWIW...I think 24p has become one of those industry buzz words which ends up being used in situations when its really uncalled for just to say its shot in 24p.
cheers!
 
Every time I shoot 24p I get a terrible strobe, so bad that I have to reshoot the footage because every single time the client complains. We are also a SD station still, so shooting in HD will just make the footage letterbox, and we have been told to stay away from letterbox/postage stamp.
 
The strobbing you are experiencing may be due to not removing pulldown upon ingest into your NLE. The other explanation may be panning too fast. There are specific pan speeds when shooting in 24p based on angle/distance of the pan as it relates to time/seconds.

Jim
 
Every time I shoot 24p I get a terrible strobe, so bad that I have to reshoot the footage because every single time the client complains
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yeah, you cant go about 24 frame work the same way you do 30. its a slightly different animal and a common mistake. a mistake i made early on as well.

it would probably benefit you to bone up on the whole 24p world if you plan to use it as a production option.
 
wgzn said:
ahhhh... its making more sense now. to give your boss some credit. he may actually be making some sense here...

what hes probably meaning is to crank down the fstop (i.e. open up the aperture) which will deliver a shallower depth of field. and he is right. that will happen. though very likely nowhere near the depth achieved with the redrock+35mm lenses...
Click to expand...

Yeah, that may be what he is going for. I did that for a long time shooting 30fps SD. For a more "Filmic" look, I would shoot at a wider aperture, with a longer lens, to try to shallow up the DOF. I would also shoot at longer shutter speeds, down at 1/30th/sec, or a little longer, depending on the camera. Add in judicious desaturation and de-interlacing in post and that was the "Film look" formula before 24p and lens adaptors.
 
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