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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Projection - Film Look - flicker - call me crazy

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Benjamin Scot

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So I was thinking about it and something struck me as to why digital may not have that 'film look'.. and I was wondering if there were any solutions to this....

Bear with me.

So you are shooting 24fps at 1/48th for your shutter. Only half of every second is actually captured. However, when displayed on a computer, that 1/48th of a second is shown for 1/24th of a second. There is no blank space between one frame and the next... its just one to the next.

I am assuming that film projectors had something blocked the lamp or lens when the film progressed from one frame to the next. So there would be some blank space. There would be a flicker.

Each frame may have only been displayed for 1/48th of a second, which is closer to what was actually captured.

So this brings up an interesting thought. Would digital footage shot at 24fps look better projected at 48fps with a blank frame slid in between each frame????

Am I crazy? Does the flicker give movies in the theater part of their look? Is there a flicker? Do digital projectors handle this completely differently?

Yes you can capture at 24fps which indeed is choppy... but the fact that each frame is sort of stretched out to last longer than it really should (1/48th being shown for 1/24th) may be messing things up.

Thoughts????

Please bear with me... I know very little
 
The flicker of film projection would be caused by the edge of frame (the border around each frame in a film strip) It's hardly an entire frame. Also, wouldn't it make more sense just to transfer your DI to film for presentation? That way there's no second guessing and it'd be exactly the same as traditional projection.

Assuming there is an automated way to put in blank (black) frames after every frame, this should be fairly easy to test, too. Personally, I think there's a little too much emphasis on mimicking how film used to look. I'm noticing more and more these days that even moves shot on film, are trying to emulate the crispness/cleanness of digital... we (and the audience) are slowly but surely adopting higher quality images.
 
okay cool. yeah I wasn't sure if film just flew through the projector at a steady speed, or stopped briefly on each frame, just like it would in the camera.

going to film would definitely fix the problem.

I guess I had just never realized that we were seeing 1/48th for a 1/24th time on our computers.... and wondered if that had anything to do with it!

Thanks for the feedback!
 
In film projection, each frame is dragged between the light source and the lens. It pauses briefly while a shutter opens, the image on the frame is briefly projected on the screen, the shutter closes, and the film advances.

See the wikipedia entry, under "Shutter."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movie_projector

I believe the sensation of flicker can be reduced by advancing the frame more quickly than 1/48th of a second, and having the shutter open for longer, but of course the whole cycle has has to complete more quickly than 1/24th of a second, just as in a camera.

Roger Ebert claimed at one point that because electronic images don't flicker, they lack film's emotional impact. See Todd McCarthy's piece in Variety:

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117503451?refCatId=5

Michael
 
If I am not mistaken, when film is projected, each frame is actually shown twice - so you are actually seeing 48 images per second.
 
Yup, butterfly shutter double flashes on film projectors...DLP triple flash 144fps (72fps for each eye).
 
I worked as a projectionist for four years before digital -- 1998-2002 -- and replaced MANY shutters! Projection shutters look like a Bow Tie -- or a pizza with four slices and two pieces taken out on opposite sides. One side of the shutter blocks the film frame while it advances and the other cuts right through the frame while it sits there in the film gate. So the same side of the shutter always blocks the blur of the frames advancing and the other one always passes over the image that is sitting in the gate getting the light projected through it. So there is a flicker and there is a point in which the image is getting obstructed from the screen by the projection shutter.

I can't imagine how a fraction of a second worth of black affects emotions -- that sounds like typical Roger Ebert BS -- but to each his own.
 
P.S. + I have a collection of burned projection shutters where the bulb of the Projector was not turned off at the end of a showing (due to a missing "cue") and so the shutter would take all the heat for however long before it was noticed and turned off by someone. During this time, the bulb would focus all of its power to about 1" circle and cook a hole right through the shutter. When the hole got big enough, it would not allow for a "clean advance" from frame to frame and then a ghosting/flare would occur. So needless to say, the guy that left the bulb on would get reprimanded for neglect.

I was a projectionist from age 16-20 for AMC Theaters. When I was 20 I was in charge of the entire projection department. Largest theater in the state. It's amazing how the big theater chains let such babies run their most valuable asset!
 
Very cool. Thanks for all the replies. I had no idea it flashed twice.

I don't think having something that is more film-like would affect emotions at all. I know in the end its all about the story!
 
Benjamin Scot said:
Very cool. Thanks for all the replies. I had no idea it flashed twice.
Click to expand...
This can also be done with digital projectors, which will also tend to flicker if you just use a straight 24fps mode (without using an electronic shutter to flash each image twice or even three times). I know of people who are very sensitive to this issue and actually would get physically ill -- or at least would get headaches -- if we didn't use these technical tricks to avoid flicker.

This is one of the issues Peter Jackson is trying to avoid with the 48fps production of The Hobbit. Cameron's going one better, shooting the upcoming Avatar projects at 60fps. It'll be very interesting to see how both look. I have no doubt these will help reduce flicker and improve motion smoothness, but the amount of data going through post will be a daunting challenge.
 
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