War of the Worlds shot w/ DVX?

Ed Kishel

Ed Kishel

Veteran
Obviously not, but...

As I watched the film this weekend, I noticed how much strobing there was! Just look at the backgrounds, especially the scenes in Tom Cruises house after the aliens attack- when hes running around grabbing his kids.

This film has a lot of fast movement, and the strobing is quite evident IF you look for it. Just ignore the actors/objects that are stationary in the frame and look at the background as this 35mm panavision follows with the actors. In some parts it strobes like crazy! (a fast shutter perhaps?)

Afterwards I asked my friends if they noticed anything odd about the picture, did it look flickery or strobey I asked. They had no idea what I was talking about. Ah ha!

Seeing this is most evident when looking at a film projected in a theater, and it really drives the point home in Barry's book and the ASC manual. All 24 frame footage strobes, from 35mm, to 16mm to 24p on the DVX. Slow your pans down and distract the viewer from it while keeping an object or actor stationary within the frame.
 
Edweirdo said:
Afterwards I asked my friends if they noticed anything odd about the picture, did it look flickery or strobey I asked. They had no idea what I was talking about.
Click to expand...

The strobing phenomenon eludes me, too. I either can't see it, or don't see what's bad about it when I do see it. If you crank up the shutter speed (Spielberg's DP does this sometimes so I wouldn't be surprised if there was some of this going on....) that can make a difference, though, and sometimes get a little extreme.

What you're saying does make sense, though. The whole movie had a "video" feel to it (intentional, of course.) Extra-deep DOF, long takes, shakey-cam, bleach bypass for high contrast/blown highlights, etc. etc.
 
its shutter angles

its shutter angles

You can adjust the shutter angle in motion picture cameras to effect the smoothness of action. Normally on a 35mm camera shooting at 24fps the standard shutter angle is 180degrees. Opening or closing this affects the way that the action looks. Closing down to say 45degrees will give you a strobe like frenetic feel to the action. The best example of this is to watch the beach scenes at the beginning of Saving Private Ryan.

check this for a pretty thorough explanation:
http://www.answers.com/topic/shutter-angle
 
yeah i was gonna mention the private ryan opening. this was indeed done very intentionally. some dp's even shoot with strobe-lights synced to their frame-rate.
 
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