60 frames a second....holy shit Frank!

[LilyRox]

I know absolutely nothing about this topic, but this thread has piqued my interest. It seemed to me that filming with a low shudder speed would create some noticeable stroboscopic effects; i.e. wheel going backward etc. I tend to agree with Jamie though in that if your interests are narrative, there may be no need to eliminate these sorts of aberrations (which we're all probably used to anyway). I did a little searching and found this

http://www.projectorcentral.com/judder_24p.htm

It's an article which claims that films shot in 24 fps when played on high end blue ray systems which play back at 1080 fps (do I have that right?) suffer from some rather extreme visual distortions. Like I said, I have no dog in this fight. Just thought the article might be relevant to the discussion.

No, 1080p is the screen resolution of the picture. Fps are how many frames per second there is. 24 fps was the magic number when film was created for sound. There are ways of syncing audio for 48 fps and 60 fps now days though.

The article is talking about the motion judder you get when filming in low fps like 24 fps. 24 frames per sec sounds like a lot, but it's not compared to our vision and how much we can process in a sec within the real world. I like the little comment in there. "Welcome to 24p" lol.

[trish]

Thanks

[LilyRox]

Movies try to avoid this a lot with the editing. I have seen tons of fighting movies where you can see this easily though. There are lots of movies out there that have ridiculously fast hand to hand combat scenes where you literally can't hardly see anything because of the motion blur. I also think 48p or 60p would be great for watching real fights like the UFC.

[Jamie French]

High frame rate + sports = appropriate use.

High shutter speed + action scene = appropriate use, (think the opening D-Day scene in Saving Private Ryan.)

[broncofan]

Motion blur looks natural to the human eye. Look around really quickly... shit got blurry for a second didn't it? Nuff said. 24 looks better. anything higher looks like a fever dream and should not be tolerated. .

This makes perfect sense and jibes with what I've seen. You lose realism by seeing pictures with less motion blur. I also think it changes perspective of the viewer; instead of seeing the image as you would ordinarily see it you are reminded that you are watching something artificial.

[Jamie French]

People are largely confusing the terms "real" and "good" and "fake" because they want those words to match how the feel.

Films look great because they are basically composed of rich, high contrast, color graded images with all sorts off odd, mostly shallow depths of field. Every frame is almost a painting in its own right. This in turn takes you into the land of story telling and imagination when blended with an appropriate frame rate. When the mind is forced to fill in the gaps, the film largely becomes a product of the mind. It becomes internalized. You and the film are one. An immersive experience.

That's why plays aren't the most popular medium for story telling in this day and age. It's too real, so you are only bearing witness to a story that never really belongs to you. It belongs to the actors and characters on stage. A play can be enjoyable but only in a visceral sense and not in the same way that films are normally enjoyed. A higher frame rate turns movies into plays, or operas... or more appropriately, soap operas, (See? Things are named things for a reason.)

This makes perfect sense and jibes with what I've seen. You lose realism by seeing pictures with less motion blur. I also think it changes perspective of the viewer; instead of seeing the image as you would ordinarily see it you are reminded that you are watching something artificial.

[scarecrow_from_Oz]

Interesting thread.
I would like to add my two-penneth. or should I say two-cents worth?
Until the advent of Blu-Ray (how many people have this, even now?), we would only see the "filmic look" (24fps) at our local cinema.
Anything else, on television, whether it is via the broadcasting network or a DVD, would either be in 25fps (PAL - Mostly Europe) or 30fps (NTSC - USA) and interlaced at that!! These framerates generally being governed by the frequency of the electricity supply. PAL=50 Hertz, NTSC=60 Hertz. It is all very complicated, right down to what colours space is used and even the resolutions are different.
Now HD television has arrived, used in conjunction with Blu-Ray, We can watch films at their original 24fps. So amongst the special fx, the colour grading and the purposeful cinematography of any decent film, did anyone notice the framerate difference? Maybe in USA, since 30fps to 24 fps is a big drop requiring a method of conversion called 3:2 Pulldown. What about in Europe? 25fps to 24fps (film is sped up by an acceptable 4.1%) is hardly noticeable, or is it?
I think the brain will generally adjust/adapt to whatever the media limitations are, as long as what you watch is entertaining!