my parents dont see the difference between dslr video and camcorder video

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deleuze3

Well-known member
Hi,
i showed footage of out of focus dslr video and camcorder to my parents and they dont seem to see the differences with a regular camcorder. For them, its about the same.

And the difference between 24p and 30p is even more difficult to see.

Is it a question of getting used to dslr and learn to appreciate the quality just like people who acquire the taste of oysters ? (after a certain time they like it)
 
Non-filmmakers rarely notice the things that might drive many of us a little crazy.

i.e. blown-highlights, noisy shadows, bad color matching, focus ahead or behind the subject, breaking the 180 rule, etc...
 
TheDingo said:
Non-filmmakers rarely notice the things that might drive many of us a little crazy.
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THIS

A few years back, I almost left out of a video three short clips that were strongly overexposed. In the end, I corrected them as I could, and left them there, just because the girl in them was a friend and I didn't want to leave her out of the video. Someone made a gif set of those three shots and they went viral: millions of shares, vs 100k views for my video... most of them from people looking for the source of the gif set. People loved the bits I almost left out because they weren't good enough for me, and didn't care much for everything else I had made :)
 
A brilliant bit of irony coming from a forum named after the DVX100.
When used correctly, I've seen quite a bit of gems pumped out of a camcorder. Plenty of television programming that are in still in circulation today too.
 
Did you not ever buy a new set of speakers for your stereo system, and your girlfriend did not notice the difference, though you saved up for the upgrade for years? Same thing basically!
 
Upgrades are incremental. A consumer may not notice quality the difference between a DSLR and a camcorder, but if you compare the camcorder footage to footage from a 100 million dollar movie, they'll most likely notice the difference in quality. The idea is to continually seek to improve your quality, typically in incremental steps, such that when it all comes together, your quality improvement of now (or the future) vs the past is more noticeable.

With that said, not all DSLRs have better image quality than all camcorders. And "out of focus" by which I assume you mean shallow depth of field is a look, and not necessarily a better look for everything, such that the deeper depth of field of a camcorder is a better look for some types of shots.
 
deleuze3 said:
And the difference between 24p and 30p is even more difficult to see.
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Even I can't tell 24p from 30p. Do you mean 24p and 30i? (Or is it called 60i?) Anyway, the difference between old-school video, which was 60 interlaced fields per second, and 24 fps film is obvious. The difference between progressive frame rates that are just a few frames-per-second apart is of course hard to see.

Anyway, I would like to offer some counterexamples:

Most laymen can identify that soap operas look different. They just can't pinpoint why. Most people dislike it though.

In film school, I shot a short on 16mm and showed it to my friends, and they remarked on how nice the university looked. Some days or weeks later, we saw a commercial for the university on TV, shot on video, and they remarked how cheap it looked.

I went on a trip to Spain and shot still pictures with an old SLR, a 50mm prime, and no flash, onto 35mm film. Someone else on the trip remarked how much more natural my photos looked than the typical snapshots (mainly because of the sharp lens and natural light, I think).

A few years later, with the same set-up, I snapped pics while a guest at a friend's wedding. After I posted them on Facebook, I got emotional compliments from a few friends, only one of which was a professional videographer, and the couple themselves told me that they wish they had just hired me.

A couple of months ago a friend on Facebook posted, "How do you get rid of the 'soap opera effect' on new TVs . . . ?"

These were the replies:

"Oh, i can't stand that!" -- friend 1
"I know! Sometimes I prefer to watch tv on our smaller television than on the big one for that exact reason!" -- friend 2
Advice on how to fix it -- friend 3
Advice on how to fix it -- friend 4
Advice on how to fix it -- friend 5
"Thanks all . . . Will have to play with it to try to find those settings. We finally upgraded our tv, but I like my oldie but goodie small TV better!" -- original poster
"I hate the new tv technology. We had to buy a new one but I really just wanted our old one back and they don't sell them anymore :-(" -- friend 6


A great deal of footage these days also is horribly graded, including Hollywood movies and network TV. Despite being shot on multithousand-dollar cameras, it has the same character as old-school video, the only differences being shallow focus and 24 fps. The skin is bright orange. The mids are low contrast. The highlights, though not clipping instantly, still clip way too fast.
 
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I think all the 'cinematic' stuff we do just incrementally adds to the story.

People do notice but they don't know why.

Of course they will still be more engaged by a good story (and even YT vloggers tell good stories otherwise millions would not watch) than a bad story told 'cinematically'

There was a tweet or blog about Deakins not having any Oscars.. I think it is because his work is 'invisible' because it just carries the story so most (non film) people don't notice or praise his work.
 
combatentropy said:
A couple of months ago a friend on Facebook posted, "How do you get rid of the 'soap opera effect' on new TVs . . . ?"

These were the replies:

"Oh, i can't stand that!" -- friend 1
"I know! Sometimes I prefer to watch tv on our smaller television than on the big one for that exact reason!" -- friend 2
Advice on how to fix it -- friend 3
Advice on how to fix it -- friend 4
Advice on how to fix it -- friend 5
"Thanks all . . . Will have to play with it to try to find those settings. We finally upgraded our tv, but I like my oldie but goodie small TV better!" -- original poster
"I hate the new tv technology. We had to buy a new one but I really just wanted our old one back and they don't sell them anymore :-(" -- friend 6


A great deal of footage these days also is horribly graded, including Hollywood movies and network TV. Despite being shot on multithousand-dollar cameras, it has the same character as old-school video, the only differences being shallow focus and 24 fps. The skin is bright orange. The mids are low contrast. The highlights, though not clipping instantly, still clip way too fast.
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Sorry for the sidetrack...

Most consumers are ignorant and lazy when it comes to their TV's. They just plug them in and that's it. Maybe you'll have the occasional person who actually changes it from the default VIVID setting that most are set to out of the box, because their eyes start to hurt watching it in their darker than store showroom home. The whole 120hz, 240hz, etc. refresh rate on TV's is probably one of the worst things TV manufacturers have ever done. You can't walk into a Best Buy, or sit down at any restaurant/bar that has TV's and NOT see 24 frame content on the screen that doesn't look like "video", because most modern sets have this setting turned ON by default.

And I agree with the "grading". 24p is not a magic bullet. I see so much studio stuff that has just either been shot at 24 or 30 frames or they did a convert in post that looks abysmal, because it's all lit for a studio show and the cameras are set-up for "video". There is a huge mega-church here that broadcasts their service on TV and out to their remote locations and it's the same thing... it would actually look MUCH better IF they would shoot it/air it in 60P, because thats what the lighting and camera set-ups lend themselves too. Honestly, they could probably get away with leaving the lighting as is, just set the cameras up to give them a "film" look.
 
morgan_moore said:
...

People do notice but they don't know why.
...
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I've heard this for years and I tend to agree. This is what we do for a living, we can spot and recognize these types of things and know what is going on. Kind of like you may have an ailment and go to the doctor. You know something isn't right, but you don't know what, but he may know immediately after talking to you for just a minute about it.
 
Run&Gun said:
... Most consumers are ignorant and lazy when it comes to their TV's. They just plug them in and that's it.
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As someone who used to sell big screens (and to many big shot Hollywood celebrities too), that's basically it.

A quick Lloyd Bridges story. This was back in 1990. He was trying to replace an old 20" console with the 26" table top. The width was no problem but the height didn't fit into a wall unit where the old set was. So, Lloyd asked if he could just chop off the top few inches of the 26" set. I think I answered, "Not without starting a fire".

Lloyd was a sweet old man but not much different than his character in the "Airplane". But that's the extent of knowledge most folks have in electronics. Then there's a small percentage of nerds who take a month to decide whether to buy a Krell or a Threshold.
 
Well normal people don't care about the same thing that geeks do. They don't go to the movies to judge out of focus areas. They go to the movies to be entertained.

The other issue going on here is.... 12 different people can watch the same video clip and see 12 different things. I learned this many years ago doing a commercial VO with a double phone patch and 5 people on the other end listening. We ran a take and the engineer said, well what do you think? 1: perfect wouldn't change a thing. 2: started off well but then lost energy at the end. 3: no the open was weak but the ending was great. 4: no the beginning and end need a punch in but the middle can stay. 5: didn't like the read. Everyone heard something different!
 
David W. Jones said:
Well normal people don't care about the same thing that geeks do. They don't go to the movies to judge out of focus areas.
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But with the wrong stuff in focus they dont fully get pulled through the story.. so they do appreciate the OOF areas only in that they are not distracting them..
 
David W. Jones said:
... The other issue going on here is.... 12 different people can watch the same video clip and see 12 different things. I learned this many years ago doing a commercial VO with a double phone patch and 5 people on the other end listening. We ran a take and the engineer said, well what do you think? 1: perfect wouldn't change a thing. 2: started off well but then lost energy at the end. 3: no the open was weak but the ending was great. 4: no the beginning and end need a punch in but the middle can stay. 5: didn't like the read. Everyone heard something different!
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This reminds me of my screenplay evaluations. One person says, "Character A is awesome, Character B is weak". The second reviewer says just the opposite. Then the third likes the character banter/dialog, while the fourth says that it's not so good.
 
The answer to the "is it gear or technique" question is...

BOTH.

When you watch a Hollywood movie, you're watching professional-level equipment being operated by professionals.

Use the best equipment you can get your hands on, and learn as much as you can. Great lighting will make footage from ANY camera look remarkably more movie-like. Don't get obsessed with technology (people watch movies for stories), but lets not pretend good equipment doesn't help either.
 
Run&Gun said:
I've heard this for years and I tend to agree. This is what we do for a living, we can spot and recognize these types of things and know what is going on. Kind of like you may have an ailment and go to the doctor. You know something isn't right, but you don't know what, but he may know immediately after talking to you for just a minute about it.
Click to expand...

It is the same in audio. I have a friend that is a big producer with perfect pitch and he'll stop and tune an instrument even a drum machine a tiny bit. He says that no one will notice but people will like the version that is tuned properly more but not know why. (I'm talking very subtle tuning)
 
"It is the same in audio.". Well, it's true with everything. Including food. I am one of those who can't make out a thing about food whereas my wife can't stand even a small variation in any ingredient. "It looks fine. Why are you wasting so much time?" she tells me and "it tastes fine . . ." I tell her.
 
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