what the correct fps for stop motion, early 1900s film, and super 8 mm???

N

Nicholas Natteau

Veteran
I'm planning to do a stop motion film and mix it with simulated turn of the century (1900s) type film, as well as super 8mm 1960s type film camera motion.

Can anyone advise me on the proper film speeds for those subjects???

First regarding stop motion. I've heard it said that you can shoot 24fps using two identical frames per shot in order not to have to shoot so many frames. But isn't it exactly the same if I shoot at 12fps rather than shoot 24fps with 2 identical frames per shot?

For 1900s (or WWI era films) was the standard film speed 16fps or 18fps???

And is it true that super 8mm film in the 60s and 70s was shot at 18fps? I read this somewhere but thought this forum the best place to find out for sure.

Thanks very much in advance.
 
Nicholas Natteau said:
First regarding stop motion. I've heard it said that you can shoot 24fps using two identical frames per shot in order not to have to shoot so many frames. But isn't it exactly the same if I shoot at 12fps rather than shoot 24fps with 2 identical frames per shot?
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Yes. You'll simply repeat frames in post.


For 1900s (or WWI era films) was the standard film speed 16fps or 18fps???

And is it true that super 8mm film in the 60s and 70s was shot at 18fps? I read this somewhere but thought this forum the best place to find out for sure.
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There wasn't any specific standard. It may be different from film to film. Many, perhaps most, cameras had frame rate choices. And the earliest films, hand-cranked, could be just about anything.
 
For stop motion, shooting "Two-fer", or two frames per shoot is common, but would not be as smooth as one frame per shoot, but for most motion it should be fine. Early films, that were hand cranked (Up through most of the 1920s) varied from 12 to about 20 frames per second, with an average around 16fps. The Super 8mm standard is 18fps. It is not until sound came in in the 1970s that 24 fps was used much at all.
 
Hi David. Thank you as well. So it's as I thought then. 18fps for super 8mm, and 16fps for early 1900s.

I thought that the transition to 24fps standard happened a lot sooner than the 1970s though. Hasn't 24fps been the universal film standard since "All Quiet on the Western Front" (1930). Weren't "Gone with the Wind" and "The Wizard of Oz" shot at 24fps?

Thanks for your feedback.
 
David was referring to the super 8 format specifically. Super 8 cameras normally ran at 18 fps and often didn't have a 24 fps option until the single-system mag stripe sound models came out around 1973 or so. Even then, it wasn't used all that much except by those with more "professional" aspirations for the format. Larger format films like the Hollywood classics you mentioned standardized on 24 fps back at the beginning of the talkie era around 1930.

I remember feeling like a real rebel when I started shooting all my super 8 movies at 24 fps in the summer of 1973.

- Greg
 
Nicholas Natteau said:
Hi David. Thank you as well. So it's as I thought then. 18fps for super 8mm, and 16fps for early 1900s.

I thought that the transition to 24fps standard happened a lot sooner than the 1970s though. Hasn't 24fps been the universal film standard since "All Quiet on the Western Front" (1930). Weren't "Gone with the Wind" and "The Wizard of Oz" shot at 24fps?

Thanks for your feedback.
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Yes, 24fps was set as the standard at the on-set of sound in the late 1920s. I think that this was chosen as the slowest speed for acceptable audio fidelity.

As a side note, 16mm was introduced in 1923, as a consumer format, and its standard frame rate was 16fps. Regular 8mm film, introduced in 1932 also used 16fps as its standard.
 
Oh sorry David, I misread your statement.

I take it then that all newsreels shot during World War I were most likely shot at 16fps, correct? Would that explain why those same newsreels when sped up in the 1930s to meet the new 24fps standard caused that faster type (Charlie Chaplin style) film motion?
 
Nicholas Natteau said:
Oh sorry David, I misread your statement.

I take it then that all newsreels shot during World War I were most likely shot at 16fps, correct? Would that explain why those same newsreels when sped up in the 1930s to meet the new 24fps standard caused that faster type (Charlie Chaplin style) film motion?
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Yes, that is correct. With digital tools, it is easier now to get close to "Normal" motion with old hand cranked films, but it is still not perfect. I have seen this done with WWI era footage on the History Channel and in PBS documentaries and the like. The motion is better, but sometimes it is still "Off".
 
The old silent films were shot at 16 FPS, and there were 16 frames per foot of 35mm movie film. So 1 foot of 35mm silent film = 1 second. For sound films, with a sound track on the side of the film, 24 fps was introduced so that there would be enough audio bandwidth for good-sounding audio. 16mm and the old regular 8mm kept the 16 fps standard for silent films. When Kodak introduced Super8 (somewhere around 1960?) they upped the silent speed to 18 fps, because they noticed that many amateurs were using the "silent" frame rate of 16 for their 8mm and 16mm films with a magnetic stripe on the side. The 18 fps made audio and visual a little bit better.

I remember an advanced amateur filmmaker complaining because, when he sent his 16mm sound projector in for repair, they "corrected" the silent speed of his projector to 18 fps. Now when he projects his old 16 fps sound movies, the narrator's voice sounds just a bit too high pitched.

-- Ken

P.S. -- OK, it looks like I was wrong about the year Super8 was introduced. I should have said 1965.
 
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Nicholas Natteau said:
...regarding stop motion. I've heard it said that you can shoot 24fps using two identical frames per shot in order not to have to shoot so many frames. But isn't it exactly the same if I shoot at 12fps rather than shoot 24fps with 2 identical frames per shot?
Click to expand...

Yes, but the advantage of 24fps is that you can easily swap between 'ones' and 'twos' depending on how much onscreen action is needed at that particular moment - Aardman mention this in their Cracking Animation book.
 
Ken Hull said:
The old silent films were shot at 16 FPS, and there were 16 frames per foot of 35mm movie film. So 1 foot of 35mm silent film = 1 second. For sound films, with a sound track on the side of the film, 24 fps was introduced so that there would be enough audio bandwidth for good-sounding audio. 16mm and the old regular 8mm kept the 16 fps standard for sound films. When Kodak introduced Super8 (somewhere around 1960?) they upped the silent speed to 18 fps, because they noticed that many amateurs were using the "silent" frame rate of 16 for their 8mm and 16mm films with a magnetic stripe on the side. The 18 fps made audio and visual a little bit better.
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Kodak introduced the Super 8 format in 1965. 18 fps had been commonly used in 8mm filmmaking for some years before that; it is the one-and-only speed on my parents' 1955 model Bell & Howell movie camera, for example.

- Greg
 
Thanks again everybody. Wow Ken, that's amazing. I had no idea 8mm transitioned from 16 to 18fps.

Back in the early 70s, my father once had a super 8 Kodak that he shot home movies with. There's something quite nostalgic and charming about seeing those old home movies of your childhood with no sound. For that reason I loved Spielberg's movie "super 8". There's a very interesting featurette about how super 8mm inspired so many film makers back in the 1960s, including Spielberg himself whose film making passion began when he started shooting with his father's super 8.

Worth watching here: http://vimeo.com/36052990

It doesn't sound like much but I see how 2 fps faster would make a difference in audio pitch.
 
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clang said:
Yes, but the advantage of 24fps is that you can easily swap between 'ones' and 'twos' depending on how much onscreen action is needed at that particular moment - Aardman mention this in their Cracking Animation book.
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Hi Clang. I'm using Dragon Stop Motion and one of the great features of Dragon is that you can choose either 12fps or 24fps as a playback speed. You also have the option to record 2, 3, 4, or how many number of frames you wish for each shot. So is it necessary to shoot 2 frames per shot if you can play back at 12fps? I mean isn't it exactly the same? 12fps or 2shot frames at 24fps?
 
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By choosing a playback speed of 24 fps and recording 1, 2, 3 or whatever frames at once depending on the on-screen action at that point, you get the productivity benefits of 'twos' (and 'threes' etc) for the bits that don't require quick movement, but can still record 'ones' for the bits that do require quick movement. E.g. a figure staring at a tree will have little movement and will probably look fine recorded with 'twos' or even 'threes', but a shot of a car zooming past would look jerky unless recorded as 'ones'.
 
Greg Smith said:
Kodak introduced the Super 8 format in 1965. 18 fps had been commonly used in 8mm filmmaking for some years before that; it is the one-and-only speed on my parents' 1955 model Bell & Howell movie camera, for example.

- Greg
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That is interesting. I know that the earliest 16mm and 8mm consumer fps standard was 16fps and I know that 18fps was the Super 8mm standard upon its release in 1965, but there really could have been a revision in the 8mm standard during the '40s or '50s. I just pulled out my Bolex 16mm Reflex camera, made in the early to mid 1960s, and it has frames per second settings of 12, 16, 18, 24, 32, 48 and 64. I did note that the 18fps setting was in red lettering. This leads me to think that 18fps could have become the standard silent fps setting at the time that this camera was made. Ha, Ha, Ha!!! I bet whatever organized amateur filmmaking community there was around when the fps change took place was sure that this was a conspiracy by Kodak to get them to use more film!!
 
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