70's & 80's Sitcom Openings Shot on Film - 24p or 30p?

[John Osteen]

I was wondering if anyone out there knows if any of the old 3-camera TV sitcoms that were shot on film (such as Taxi, Cheers, or Seinfeld), or ones where the the show was done with video but their opening sequence mixed filmed shots with video from the show (such as Bosom Buddies and Night Court), shot their "filmed" segments at 24 fps or 30 fps?

We're about to do a project shot in that 3-camera style and I'm still debating whether to shoot everything 30p, or shoot the opening 24p and the show 30p to differentiate their look. I've never worked with mixed frame rates, so not sure if that's a potential headache in waiting.

 

[Nick Morrison]

I was wondering if anyone out there knows if any of the old 3-camera TV sitcoms that were shot on film (such as Taxi, Cheers, or Seinfeld), or ones where the the show was done with video but their opening sequence mixed filmed shots with video from the show (such as Bosom Buddies and Night Court), shot their "filmed" segments at 24 fps or 30 fps?

We're about to do a project shot in that 3-camera style and I'm still debating whether to shoot everything 30p, or shoot the opening 24p and the show 30p to differentiate their look. I've never worked with mixed frame rates, so not sure if that's a potential headache in waiting.

Not sure. But I can tell you that a majority of broadcast shows are currently shot at 24p. All my clients are Cable networks, and almost all their shows shoot and deliver in 24p. For broadcast, a 1080i master is also delivered on tape.

 

[Marc Wielage]

I worked on 44 different sitcoms from the 1980s through the 2000s, and the main titles for even the videotaped shows (like Roseanne, The Facts of Life, etc.) was always shot at 24 fps. Mixed frame rates are usually a very bad idea for editing timelines, but there are exceptions. I say, keep it simple, and get the advice of your post house and/or a good editor first. And do a workflow test first.

 

[Charles Papert]

In that era 60i was the only NTSC broadcast format, so anything shot on film got a pulldown to 60i in telecine.

If you are looking to emulate a classic 3-camera sitcom look, it would be more "authentic" to shoot at 60p to duplicate the motion cadence of 60i without interlacing headaches.

 

[John Osteen]

Thanks for the response guys. We're shooting the opening this weekend and I'm leaning towards shooting it 24p. Then once the sets are built, doing tests with 24p, 30p, and 60p and seeing how they look with the opening. I was always a fan of how the opening for some of those sitcoms always looked different then the rest of the show.

Marc, any chance you can tell me some of the sitcoms you worked on in the 80s?

 

[Marc Wielage]

Marc, any chance you can tell me some of the sitcoms you worked on in the 80s?

I'd have to think: The Hogan Family / Valerie; Life with Lucy; Foley Square; Something Wilder; Anything But Love. Bear in mind during most of the 1980s, they did not do much color correction (if at all) of 1980s shows shot on tape, and the shows I worked on in film were basically color-timed during dailies, and the dailies aired and that was that. Eventually, digital came in and allowed us to do final color correction with zero quality loss.

Far more in the 1990s, including Dave's World, Caroline in the City, Will & Grace, Boston Common, Cybill, My Wife & Kids, Moesha, Working, Andy Richter Controls the Universe, That '70s Show, Third Rock from the Sun, Harry & The Hendersons, Bernie Mac, Off Center. The rest are a blur. The LA company we worked for, Complete Post, arguably did more sitcoms than any other post house during the 1990s (typically about 15-20 series per season).

To me, being concerned about the stylistic look of a sitcom kind of begs the question: is it funny? To me, funny is the only thing that's important. I can recall when the Newhart show was on the air, I think it was the ugliest sitcom on television... but it didn't matter, because the writing and the performances were so good. The cinematography was important, but it was very low on the Top 10 list of what the network and the producers felt was important. I don't believe making the open looking different is a good idea at all; to me, it's kind of a conceit to believe that the opening titles need do anything except set up the stage to tell the story. I can recall hundreds of sitcoms getting rid of the open entirely in the early 1990s just to get right into the story itself after about a :10 second title. My memory is that Frasier was the first show to do this, after certain episodes came in long.

 

[Siddharth Seth]

I'd have to think: The Hogan Family / Valerie; Life with Lucy; Foley Square; Something Wilder; Anything But Love. Bear in mind during most of the 1980s, they did not do much color correction (if at all) of 1980s shows shot on tape, and the shows I worked on in film were basically color-timed during dailies, and the dailies aired and that was that. Eventually, digital came in and allowed us to do final color correction with zero quality loss.

Far more in the 1990s, including Dave's World, Caroline in the City, Will & Grace, Boston Common, Cybill, My Wife & Kids, Moesha, Working, Andy Richter Controls the Universe, That '70s Show, Third Rock from the Sun, Harry & The Hendersons, Bernie Mac, Off Center. The rest are a blur. The LA company we worked for, Complete Post, arguably did more sitcoms than any other post house during the 1990s (typically about 15-20 series per season).

To me, being concerned about the stylistic look of a sitcom kind of begs the question: is it funny? To me, funny is the only thing that's important. I can recall when the Newhart show was on the air, I think it was the ugliest sitcom on television... but it didn't matter, because the writing and the performances were so good. The cinematography was important, but it was very low on the Top 10 list of what the network and the producers felt was important. I don't believe making the open looking different is a good idea at all; to me, it's kind of a conceit to believe that the opening titles need do anything except set up the stage to tell the story. I can recall hundreds of sitcoms getting rid of the open entirely in the early 1990s just to get right into the story itself after about a :10 second title. My memory is that Frasier was the first show to do this, after certain episodes came in long.

Marc, you just saved me the effort of typing in the exact same thing! Regarding the OP's question, if you take the example of That 70's Show, apart from the Kaleidoscopic effects and transitions, there wasn't much room to play with effects as such. The intro was shot with the same technical specs as the show itself. This was followed by many sitcoms. However, sometimes you may have noticed that there is a cityscape shot in the middle (Seinfeld, Friends etc) - these shots were sometimes 30FPS, especially if they were wide shots. Sometimes the change in quality was highly noticeable.

 

[Marc Wielage]

Yeah, the open for That '70s Show was shot single camera, but it was the same DP (the late, lamented Ron Browne) who shot the open and the show. I'd agree that the open had a somewhat different style than the multi-cam lighting of the series.

The trick to multi-cam is that the backlight for the characters on stage right becomes the key light for the characters on stage left, and vice-versa. It's a fascinating thing to analyze a really well-lit sitcom and see how it's done, as well as how much the lighting has to be changed with certain blocking problems. I learned a lot from Don Morgan (Moesha, Wife & Kids, Daddio, Grownups, Home Improvement), as well as Tony Askins (Will & Grace), who both won multiple Emmy awards for multi-camera lighting over the years.

Sitcoms are much, much harder to light than you might think. I think a lot of it boils down to keeping the actors in the foreground separated from the backgrounds through careful flagging, as well as anticipating camera positions relative to the actors to minimize the potential for flare and glare, yet also retaining the drama of the scene. When you see a cheap, poorly-done sitcom (and I won't mention any by name), you see how "flat" and one-dimensional they can look in the hands of somebody who's just trying to crank out a lot of shows and not worry enough about image quality and telling the story.

 

[Zakaree Sandberg]

I was wondering if anyone out there knows if any of the old 3-camera TV sitcoms that were shot on film (such as Taxi, Cheers, or Seinfeld), or ones where the the show was done with video but their opening sequence mixed filmed shots with video from the show (such as Bosom Buddies and Night Court), shot their "filmed" segments at 24 fps or 30 fps?

We're about to do a project shot in that 3-camera style and I'm still debating whether to shoot everything 30p, or shoot the opening 24p and the show 30p to differentiate their look. I've never worked with mixed frame rates, so not sure if that's a potential headache in waiting.

I believe all those shows you listed were all shot on 35mm..not just intro.. the actual show..

 

[Marc Wielage]

No, Bosom Buddies and Night Court were both shot on 1" tape. (Actually, 2" in the case of the former.) Night Court, was edited at Compact Video in the 1980s, and I can remember seeing the Betacam tapes coming in at the vault, when I walked into the building.

The opens for all of these shows are up on YouTube, and it's generally easy to tell if it's film or tape. Some of the film opens look horrible, like the 16mm print used for the original All in the Family. The later Norman Lear shows look a little better, like the mid-1970s film open used for One Day at a Time.