I feel less and less like I can consistently pick out well-shot HD from 35mm on the small screen as more DP's get the hang of the medium...

Agreed. I was just seeing how far I could push it. . .

Now that it's quoted, it's too late for me to fix, but I must apologize to the universe and my high school English teachers for the sentence "I feel less and less like I can consistently pick out well-shot HD ..." That one's a red-line.

Here are some non-24p creations.
I use the word creations so as not to upset the 24p afficionados. To them I guess they are possibly not films as they posses a 30p reality look,

....though I would admit when I saw Julie Andrews come running over a hill top with a bunch of kids back in the mid 60s I thought wow, that looks real :) 'in caps'



Oklahoma (1955)
Around the World in 80 Days (1956), United Artists
South Pacific (1958), 20th Century Fox
Porgy and Bess (1959), MGM
Can Can (1960), 20th Century Fox
The Alamo (1960), United Artists
Cleopatra (1963), 20th Century Fox
The Sound of Music (1965), 20th Century Fox
The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965), 20th Century Fox
Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965), 20th Century Fox
Doctor Dolittle (1967), 20th Century Fox
Star (1968), 20th Century Fox
Hello Dolly (1969), 20th Century Fox
Airport (1970), Universal Pictures
Baraka (1992)

I can hardly wait for the HD DVD version of Baraka.

To me, 24p with all the depth of focus in the world is much more film-like than 60i with shallow focus (which I think looks odd, frankly).


Amen. I am guessing you mean "as created through the use of 35mm adapters". I experimented with them and couldn't shake that weird look they get. Fortunately, I remembered my last viewing of Kurosawa's Ran and it made me realize a great background is at least as good as shallow DOF. Of course, it took Kurosawa 10 years to make. But I have the advantage of NO schedule to worry about. So... using the old axiom "Quick, Good, Cheap... pick two" I will just take 'Good' and 'Quick'... Heh.

Here are some non-24p creations.
I use the word creations so as not to upset the 24p afficionados. To them I guess they are possibly not films as they posses a 30p reality look,

....though I would admit when I saw Julie Andrews come running over a hill top with a bunch of kids back in the mid 60s I thought wow, that looks real :) 'in caps'



Oklahoma (1955)
Around the World in 80 Days (1956), United Artists
South Pacific (1958), 20th Century Fox
Porgy and Bess (1959), MGM
Can Can (1960), 20th Century Fox
The Alamo (1960), United Artists
Cleopatra (1963), 20th Century Fox
The Sound of Music (1965), 20th Century Fox
The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965), 20th Century Fox
Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965), 20th Century Fox
Doctor Dolittle (1967), 20th Century Fox
Star (1968), 20th Century Fox
Hello Dolly (1969), 20th Century Fox
Airport (1970), Universal Pictures
Baraka (1992)

I can hardly wait for the HD DVD version of Baraka.


Interesting thing about this list. This a list of Todd-AO films, but:

Only the first two Todd-AO films, Oklahoma! and Around the World in Eighty Days employed 30 fps photography. Because of the need for a conventional 24 fps version the former shot simultaneously in 35 mm CinemaScope. The latter shot a simultaneous 2nd Todd-AO version at 24 fps. All subsequent Todd-AO films have been 24 fps. About 16 feature films were shot in Todd-AO.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd-AO

24P will be here until we move to 100% digital which is prolly 10-20 years away.

It was barely ten years ago that the first mainstream digital still cameras hit the market, and back then many said such cameras would never threaten film photography -- today film photography is on its way out for all but a few purists and specialty purposes. If it takes much more than another ten years to convert the movie industry to digital acquisition and delivery that will be surprising.

Last night I saw the latest Bond film in a theater and noticed motion artifacts in several scenes which looked like the results of too slow frame rates. I still can't see any logical reason to prefer 24 fps over smoother, more realistic motion at higher frame rates, but I guess that's partly a matter of personal taste. Good movie though: as usual content matters more than format.

If it takes much more than another ten years to convert the movie industry to digital acquisition and delivery that will be surprising.

The movie industry will only switch over once digital offers both a quality incentive and a money incentive. At the moment, when it comes to cameras which can be used as an alternative to film such as the Dalsa etc, it offers neither. The cameras are too big and bulky, and the workflow for such new devices isn't standardised in the industry.

Remember, 35mm is an established workflow for Hollywood. It runs like clockwork. Digital currently doesn't currently offer them any real reasons to abandon film. Also remember that not all films go through a DI process either. So in the scheme of things shooting everything digital in Hollywood doesn't make sense. On top of this, it will take cinemas a long, long time to all convert to digital projection. Its a very expensive upgrade.

It will happen eventually. But it won't happen overnight, and film will be around for a very long time yet.

Stills photography cannot really be used as a comparison because the needs and workflow are totally different.

35mm film is very good for HD transfers, and is archivable for many years, and doesn't require banks of hard drive arrays to store. 35mm doesn't require constant backups, and the data can't be lost in a computer crash.

Digital makes grading easier. But thats about it. Quality wise, 35mm film still rules the roost.

The movie industry will only switch over once digital offers both a quality incentive and a money incentive.

If the financial incentive is there the quality issues may become secondary, and the quality will get there sooner or later. Again, we had this same discussion ten years ago for film photography and that's pretty well settled now. A lot can happen in ten years.

Also remember that not all films go through a DI process either.

Are there really major motion pictures being made today by splicing film originals and replicating the result without use of digital intermediaries? Examples?

35mm film is...archivable for many years, and doesn't require banks of hard drive arrays to store. 35mm doesn't require constant backups, and the data can't be lost in a computer crash.

Film inherently deteriorates from the moment it's exposed and requires carefully controlled storage, can't be duplicated exactly and can easily be destroyed by fire or other disasters. There are some advantages to having a physical image as opposed to a bunch of bits on a disk, but that's manageable.

Are there really major motion pictures being made today by splicing film originals and replicating the result without use of digital intermediaries? Examples?


Any film with a negative cutter credit. I'm sure there's still plenty.

[edit: I just went to IMDB to find a recent movie with that credit. Casino Royale qualifies]

Batman Begins too.

"Phantom of the Opera" didn't do a D.I. Neither did Nolan's "The Prestige". Plenty of smaller films don't do a D.I. either, like "Girl with a Pearl Earring" or "Capote". I just had a film out earlier this year that I shot called "Akeelah and the Bee" and it didn't go through a D.I.

But D.I.'s will become more and more commonplace, that's for sure. But the reason isn't a lack of faith in the long-term archivability of film, which if stored properly (and this includes archival masters) should last over a hundred years or more. In fact, many studios are looking into ways of outputting the data files for D.I.'s onto 35mm b&w film separations for long-term storage, which shows you which medium they have more faith in. With so many computer file and tape formats becoming obsolete, the studios would rather go with a more stable technology that will be easily machine readable decades from now, i.e. film.

In response to the first post in this thread... It's simple to change the shutter speed so that you capture less blur and more motion in the shots...

Film inherently deteriorates from the moment it's exposed and requires carefully controlled storage, can't be duplicated exactly and can easily be destroyed by fire or other disasters. There are some advantages to having a physical image as opposed to a bunch of bits on a disk, but that's manageable. I'm puzzled, a hard drive is more fragile than 35mm film since it's an electro-mechanical device, it's something we can count on to fail (no one quotes MTBF [mean-time between failures] for film, however it's standard procedure to do it for hard drives) at some point in it's life. No medium is perfect, they each have their limitations.

With hard drives, couldn't you pay a lot of money to get the data recovered? (Much like... film.)

With hard drives, couldn't you pay a lot of money to get the data recovered? (Much like... film.) Call one of those hard drive recovery services and get a quote... and they can't always recover from catastrophic failures in which the head crashes and tears the *&^$% out of the media.

But we're getting off-topic so I'll stop myself, this was about 24P after all, not film.

Some interesting thoughts on this thread…
But one of the important reasons why 24p looks (or seems) to us as a “film-like” is that we have simply become accustomed to certain conventions over the years. For us film has always been 24 fps, and on top of whatever advantages 24 fps might have over other frame-rates, whether visual, economical, or any other, this is the frame-rate we’ve always watched movies in the movie theaters.
Just like in some countries it’s normal to watch a foreign film with only one translator narrating a whole film and overshadowing original actor’s (or actresses) voices. While in US, we’ve become familiar to reading subtitles and any other way of watching foreign film (such as dubbed, or other) seems unnatural and wrong to us.
Vic

Number one most popular debate on DVInfo.net in the past two years: which is most important factor in creating a film look: frame rate or depth of field?

My vote has always been frame rate--I started using a frame store to create a 30 fps look in the late 80's and Filmlook (the original 24p process that all current cameras license) a few years later, and I've never looked back. To me, 24p with all the depth of focus in the world is much more film-like than 60i with shallow focus (which I think looks odd, frankly).

I am however open to the notion that over the next generation, a new aesthetic will become acceptable and preferred.


How about the material? Film is called film because it is shot on film and video is shot ... well in many different ways, but not on film. Film gives texture, etc. This is in addition to and on top of frame rates, DOFs, etc

In response to the first post in this thread... It's simple to change the shutter speed so that you capture less blur and more motion in the shots...

Well, no; you have blur specifically because you're capturing more motion. A faster shutter speed gives you less blur because the exposure time is shorter and moving objects don't move as much during the exposure.

I think the reason 'film' went with 24p is because it was the minimum needed to produce smooth motion. Film costs a lot of money so it makes sense to shoot as little as possible.

One reason you may not like 24p is that panning too fast leads to stuttery motion. The ASC manual recommends an object should take 7 seconds to cross the screen during a pan (or slower) to avoid that problem.

Anyways, it's all up to subjective taste. I personally don't care too much what frame rate something was shot on, although I'd probably prefer 30p (this is in the context of watching images on a CRT-based TV; other display technologies look different in terms of motion reproduction).

The Film Industry decided to convert from the earlier 10 to 19 fps variable speeds (there was no standard film speed until talkies came out) to 24 fps in the 1920s when engineers of the time were attempting to add an optical sound track to film. Audio couldn't be reproduced faithfully at lower speeds, so projector and camera manufacturers and operators decided on 24 fps (this was the birth of SMPTE, although television had not yet been invented).

Optical cutters were limited and could not make the cuts small enough to attain acceptable high frequency response for audio (especially music) at the slower film speeds of the time. They determined that 24 fps was the minimum speed the film could move across the optical pickup and faithfully reproduce high frequencies.

So we owe 24 fps to the Film Industry's conversion from silent films to talkies in the 1920s... and that's the truth.

According to Mark Schubin of The Schubin Report (http://theschubinreport.com), 24fps was standardized due to the need for stable sound, but we owe the specific frame rate to a researcher from Western Electric who measured average hand crank speed at various theaters.

Here's the direct link (http://www.theschubinreport.com/archive/05PM06-theschubinreport.mp3) to his podcast. The 24p story starts at 6:07 which is at about the 40% point.

According to Mark Schubin of The Schubin Report (http://theschubinreport.com), 24fps was standardized due to the need for stable sound, but we owe the specific frame rate to a researcher from Western Electric who measured average hand crank speed at various theaters.

Here's the direct link (http://www.theschubinreport.com/archive/05PM06-theschubinreport.mp3) to his podcast. The 24p story starts at 6:07 which is at about the 40% point.

To second this, there's a similar reference in Scott Eyman's Book "The speed of sound"

According to Mark Schubin of The Schubin Report (http://theschubinreport.com), 24fps was standardized due to the need for stable sound, but we owe the specific frame rate to a researcher from Western Electric who measured average hand crank speed at various theaters.

Here's the direct link (http://www.theschubinreport.com/archive/05PM06-theschubinreport.mp3) to his podcast. The 24p story starts at 6:07 which is at about the 40% point.

To second this, there's a similar reference in Scott Eyman's Book "The speed of sound"

The references listed in the previous two posts and also cited above, oversimplify the Film Industry's move in 1927 to 24 fps... kind'a like 24 fps for dummies.

Below is a clarification of my previous post. Paul Wheeler says it best in his book, High Definition and 24p Cinematography, Focal Press, 2003, reprinted 2004, 2005. In his book on pages 23 and 24, he states the following:

"...so the SMPTE were on the right track.

The result of this recommendation is that, from the turn of the century to the coming of sound on film, the camera frame rate was set at roughly 16 frames per second. When sound recorded optically in synchronization with the picture came in 1927, the frame rate of 16 fps, or 60 feet of film per minute was too slow to make an adequate sound recording using the optical recording techniques available at the time. More film passing the sound head every second was needed to enable higher frequencies to be recorded with less background noise. By now, it was known that the flicker apparent in a film projected at 16 fps, or thereabouts, started to disappear above a projection rate of 20 fps. At 30 fps it seemed to disappear completely even on the most demanding scenes, these usually being those with pronounced highlights, as flicker is more discernible in the brighter areas of a scene.

In America the mains electricity has a frequency of 60 cycles per second (cps); therefore, a standard synchronous electric motor will have a shaft speed of 1440 revolutions per minute. This gives a shaft speed of 24 revolutions per second. The Americans, who after all pioneered the making of the talkies, therefore chose the very convenient rate of 24 fps as being almost totally free of any flicker, producing a linear film speed sufficiently high to enable good sound to be recorded with the picture on the same piece of film and being absurdly simple to drive the projectors at a constant speed from a simple synchronous motor. This frame rate (24 fps) is today the world standard for theatrical motion pictures."

So we owe the Film Industry's move to 24 fps film speed to the advent of talkies and our 60 hz. electrical system which delivered 24 cycles per second (1440 cycles per minute), along with simple synchronous motors in film projectors.

I hope this clears things up a little, Dave.

Right back at ya, Dave

Scott Eyman, (1999) The Speed of Sound: Hollywood and The Talkie Revolution 1926-1930" John Hopkins University Press Page 112

The speed of the film bearing the sound track had been standardised at 90 feet a minute, 24 frames a second. Although tradition has it that 90 feet a minute was the optimum speed for quality of sound reproduction, the fact of the matter was, that, originally, Earl Sponable and Theodore Case had experimented with a speed of 85 feet per minute, which appears to have worked satisfactorily. As Sponable says "After our affiliation with the [Fox company] this was changed to 90 feet a minute in order to use the controlled motors already worked out and in use on the Vitaphone System"*. The standardization, then, was not made for sound quality, but for maximum profit for Western Electric.

* Western Electric engineer Stanley Watkins averred that 24 frames per second was not part of a capitalist plot, but a purely arbitary decision. "According to strict laboratory conditions, we should have made exhaustive tests and calculations, and six months later come up with the correct answer." he related in 1961. 'what happened was we got together with Warner's Chief projectionist and asked him how fast they ran the [silent] film in theatres. He told is it was eighty to ninety feet in the best first run theatres and in the second run anything from a hundred feet up. After a little thought we settled on ninety feet a minute as a reasonable compromise."

I hope that muddies things up a little...

Right back at ya, Dave... I hope that muddies things up a little...

Thanks for the quote. It doesn't muddy things up at all, it adds more clarity to the discussion.

As Sponable says "After our affiliation with the [Fox company] this was changed to 90 feet a minute in order to use the controlled motors already worked out and in use on the Vitaphone System."

Western Electric's "controlled motors" were 60hz synchronous motors that ran at 1440 rpms, 24 cyles per second. Western Electric's employee decided to use Western Electric 60hz synchronous "controlled motors" to add profits to Western Electric's bottom line.

As I said,

"we owe the Film Industry's move to 24 fps film speed to the advent of talkies and our 60hz. electrical system which delivered 24 cycles per second (1440 cycles per minute), along with simple synchronous motors in film projectors."

And might I add... Western Electric's 60hz synchronous "controlled motor" profits.

I appreciate the quote and the reference. You have been very helpful.

Thanks, Dave.