Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the
Speaker 1: tech are you? So? Today I wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: cinematic frame rates because I think it's a fascinating subject
Speaker 1: that combines technology, psychology, physiology, and, as Doc Terminus would say,
Speaker 1: any other ology you can think of. Also, a big
Speaker 1: shout out to y'all out there. If any of y'all
Speaker 1: know who Doc Terminus is, I might be narrow casting.
Speaker 1: The standard cinematic frame rate is twenty four frames per second,
Speaker 1: and we'll get to the reasons why in just a moment.
Speaker 1: But this means that traditionally, filmmakers would capture twenty four
Speaker 1: images twenty four still photographs on film per second, and
Speaker 1: then play those pictures back at that same speed. This
Speaker 1: is what creates the illusion of movement. As Quentin Tarantino
Speaker 1: has pointed out in various interviews, film really has no
Speaker 1: movement in it at all, because it really is just
Speaker 1: a series of still photographs, and when they are projected
Speaker 1: onto screens at a speed of twenty four images per second,
Speaker 1: we get the illusion that things are actually moving around
Speaker 1: in front of us. And to Tarantino, at least, this
Speaker 1: element of film is intrinsic in the experience, you know,
Speaker 1: the magic of movies. I'm somewhat inclined to agree with them.
Speaker 1: Not that I haven't enjoyed digital films projected digitally, I have,
Speaker 1: But there is something special about film, I would argue,
Speaker 1: And part of the magic that Tarantino is talking about
Speaker 1: is inside of us. This isn't some sort of Disney
Speaker 1: version in which the magic was inside you all along.
Speaker 1: I mean that for films to work, they have to
Speaker 1: because of the way our brains work. Vision is a
Speaker 1: really complicated topic, and most of what we would have
Speaker 1: to focus on really is happening inside of our brains,
Speaker 1: not our eyeballs. So, for example, let's take this idea
Speaker 1: of the persistence of vision. So say that you get
Speaker 1: yourself a cardboard tube, and you cover one end of
Speaker 1: the tube, you know, with cardboard paper or something like that,
Speaker 1: and you cut a slit in the end so that
Speaker 1: you know, if you hold the tube up to your eye,
Speaker 1: you get a very narrow view of whatever's in front
Speaker 1: of you. Well, if you were to do that and
Speaker 1: then to turn your head quickly so that you're getting
Speaker 1: a really quick pan of your surroundings. Your brain would
Speaker 1: actually take little slices of information and stitch them together
Speaker 1: in a bigger picture in your brain. So that's kind
Speaker 1: of like how some digital cameras will let you take
Speaker 1: a panoramic shot right by taking a series of photographs
Speaker 1: where you just line up the edges and you keep
Speaker 1: taking them and it stitches it together in a big
Speaker 1: panoramic image. But obviously for us, you have to do
Speaker 1: it much much faster, and it's just using your brain.
Speaker 1: So your brain can hold on to an image for
Speaker 1: around one thirtieth of a second, and that's not a
Speaker 1: hard and fast rule, but that's a general typical experience.
Speaker 1: So that's why you need to turn your head quickly
Speaker 1: to get this effect. If you were moving much more slowly,
Speaker 1: then your brain isn't retaining the earlier information to let
Speaker 1: you stitch together that bigger picture. This is possibly why
Speaker 1: we also get that illusion of motion on screen when
Speaker 1: the projector shows us one image. Our brain holds on
Speaker 1: to that information as the next picture is coming up,
Speaker 1: and it's our noggins that piece this all together to
Speaker 1: create the illusion of movement seems like all of us
Speaker 1: should also get an Academy award too, because without our brains,
Speaker 1: films just wouldn't work, even for Adam Sandler movies. That
Speaker 1: was a dig. Now, I should say that the persistence
Speaker 1: of vision theory isn't necessarily the whole story. In fact,
Speaker 1: there are those who criticize this theory, and they have
Speaker 1: some very thoughtful objections. This isn't just people arguing for
Speaker 1: arguing's sake. For example, they say the theory appears to
Speaker 1: describe an effect that should manifest as our brains perceiving
Speaker 1: just a series of still images, but not an actual
Speaker 1: illusion of motion, and that it would be akin to
Speaker 1: flipping through a sequence of photos at a slower rate,
Speaker 1: like if you were just taking a stack of photographs
Speaker 1: and you look at the top line and you then
Speaker 1: put it aside and you look at the next one,
Speaker 1: and that you know, that wouldn't be fast enough for
Speaker 1: us to create an illusion of motion. And the argument
Speaker 1: here is saying that persistence of vision only would describe
Speaker 1: us seeing a sequence of pictures, but not the feeling
Speaker 1: of something actually moving. So there is some debate about
Speaker 1: the physiology behind this illusion of motion. I should also
Speaker 1: mention flicker. Flicker is an important part of this too.
Speaker 1: And if you were to project a sequence of photographs
Speaker 1: and you weren't masking the transition of one image to
Speaker 1: the next, you would get a lot of blur on
Speaker 1: your screen, to the point where you might not even
Speaker 1: be able to tell what you're looking at. So to
Speaker 1: counter this, inventors created shutters for projectors, and the shutters
Speaker 1: they would use would be in the form of a wheel.
Speaker 1: So imagine a disc, right, but one side of the
Speaker 1: disk extends further outward than the other side. It's like
Speaker 1: it has a blade on it, so that half the
Speaker 1: disc extends out significantly. The other half of the disc
Speaker 1: ends earlier. And when you spin this and you have
Speaker 1: it positioned between the projector lamp and the film, then
Speaker 1: the blade part blocks the light from the lamp, and
Speaker 1: it does so just at the moment that the projector
Speaker 1: advances to the next image on the film. And so
Speaker 1: this very careful choreography happens where the light goes through
Speaker 1: and illuminates a full image on the film and then
Speaker 1: is shut off by this shutter. It's blocked by the
Speaker 1: shutter while the projector pulls the film downward so that
Speaker 1: the next image is in place to be shown to
Speaker 1: the people watching the movie. And this is happening incredibly fast.
Speaker 1: Like I said, standard would be twenty four frames per second,
Speaker 1: So with a single bladed shutter, that shutter is turning
Speaker 1: twenty four times a second. Now, the issue here is
Speaker 1: that blocking the lamplight introduces flicker. That's why some people
Speaker 1: refer to films as flicks. It's from the flicker that
Speaker 1: would be created by the use of a shutter, especially
Speaker 1: if you were watching like films that were on lower
Speaker 1: frame rates and the shutters not moving as fast because
Speaker 1: it doesn't have to turn as quickly to cover the transitions,
Speaker 1: you get a lot more noticeable flicker. You needed to
Speaker 1: get up to around at least sixteen frames per second
Speaker 1: to reduce it to a point where it wasn't just now. Interestingly,
Speaker 1: modern projectors have shutters that have multiple blades on them
Speaker 1: so that when they do one full rotation, it actually
Speaker 1: blocks the light more than once two or three times. Typically. Why, well,
Speaker 1: this helps you get around to sixty or seventy flicks
Speaker 1: per second where you hit the flicker fusion threshold. And
Speaker 1: I'm not making this up. This is a point where
Speaker 1: our brains just perceive a persistent brightness from the projector.
Speaker 1: We don't actually see the flicker anymore. It's too fast
Speaker 1: for us to notice it's still there, but we can't
Speaker 1: see it. We can't perceive it ourselves. I guess we
Speaker 1: see it, we just don't perceive it. It's an interesting distinction.
Speaker 1: To learn more about this, I really recommend the engineer
Speaker 1: Guy's video How a film Projector Works. It's an absolutely
Speaker 1: phenomenal YouTube video and it will really make you appreciate
Speaker 1: the mechanics inside a projector and how elegant it all
Speaker 1: works together to create this effect that we're used to,
Speaker 1: this cinematic effect. But again, that shutter is important to
Speaker 1: reduce blur, and by creating multi bladed shutters where you're
Speaker 1: seeing the same image illuminated two or three times before
Speaker 1: it moves to the next image in the film, it
Speaker 1: means that that flicker no longer is perceptible. So getting
Speaker 1: back to frame rate, twenty four frames per second is
Speaker 1: the standard, but some filmmakers have experimented with different frame rates. Now,
Speaker 1: if you shoot at a higher frame rate, like say
Speaker 1: forty eight frames per second, but you're still projecting your
Speaker 1: film at the standard twenty four frames per second, and
Speaker 1: you haven't converted the film like it's still at forty
Speaker 1: eight frames per second, well, then you would get slow motion.
Speaker 1: Everything would move half as fast as it did when
Speaker 1: you were shooting it. If you were shooting a sequence
Speaker 1: at one hundred and twenty frames per second but playing
Speaker 1: it back at twenty four, then the action on screen
Speaker 1: will be five times slower than what happened in real
Speaker 1: life while you were filming it. So if the sequence
Speaker 1: took ten seconds for you to film than the film version,
Speaker 1: the projected version of that scene will take fifty seconds,
Speaker 1: and so on. Now you could also do the opposite.
Speaker 1: You could shoot a sequence at one frame rate and
Speaker 1: project it at a higher frame rate, and that will
Speaker 1: make the action that's on screen speed up considerably. It
Speaker 1: might also look really jerky, depending on how low a
Speaker 1: frame rate you used when you were shooting the scene,
Speaker 1: because there's more time that's passing between each sequential shot
Speaker 1: in that sequence. Right, if you shot a sequence at
Speaker 1: twelve frames per second and you played it back at
Speaker 1: twenty four frames per second, everything would move twice as
Speaker 1: fast on screen as it did in real life. Now
Speaker 1: you can also shoot at a higher frame rate and
Speaker 1: project at that same frame rate upon screening, So you
Speaker 1: could shoot a movie at forty eight frames per second
Speaker 1: and then play it back also at forty eight frames
Speaker 1: per second. That's what Peter Jackson did with the Hobbit films,
Speaker 1: at least for some of the film releases. You know,
Speaker 1: there were others where a conversion process had to be
Speaker 1: done so that the forty eight frames were converted down
Speaker 1: to two twenty four frames. Essentially means I mean literally
Speaker 1: ditching half the frames that were shot in order to
Speaker 1: make this work. And that's because a lot of theaters
Speaker 1: didn't have projectors capable of showing a film at forty
Speaker 1: eight frames per second. But for those that did, you
Speaker 1: could get that experience of a film that was shot
Speaker 1: at forty eight frames per second and then projected at
Speaker 1: forty eight frames per second. This meant that you were
Speaker 1: seeing more information per second, like literally twice as much
Speaker 1: information per second as someone who was seeing the twenty
Speaker 1: four frame per second version. And more information being packed
Speaker 1: into every second would result in a few different effects
Speaker 1: like reduced motion blur. Everything would be much more crisp
Speaker 1: and clear and there'd be less blur as things were moving,
Speaker 1: even if things were moving quickly, there was also more
Speaker 1: clarity in the image, and in my opinion, it created
Speaker 1: a worse viewing experience. I saw the first two Hobbit
Speaker 1: films in high frame rate and in three D, and
Speaker 1: my experience was so unpleasant that I never bothered to
Speaker 1: watch the third film at all. Still haven't seen it.
Speaker 1: And keep in mind, the Hobbit was my favorite book
Speaker 1: as a kid, but a combination of factors, including the
Speaker 1: high frame rate, contributed to me forming a negative opinion
Speaker 1: about the films. And was I just being snobby? Was
Speaker 1: I just resisting what Peter Jackson was saying was going
Speaker 1: to be the future of film? Could I just not
Speaker 1: see the improvements or something else going on? Is something
Speaker 1: fundamentally human that impacts perception playing a part in this?
Speaker 1: That's kind of what we're going to talk about today.
Speaker 1: And first, of course, we need to talk about some history.
Speaker 1: And we're not going to walk through the entire history
Speaker 1: and evolution of film, because I've already done that in
Speaker 1: other episodes. And there's an awful lot in fact, just
Speaker 1: the transition from still photography to creating a moving picture
Speaker 1: has so many different steps in it. So we're going
Speaker 1: to skip ahead to the early days of actual cinema,
Speaker 1: when folks like Thomas Edison had invented cameras and projectors
Speaker 1: or really slapped his name on a patent after one
Speaker 1: of his engineers invented it. And in those early days
Speaker 1: you had folks in France who were experimenting with cameras
Speaker 1: and projectors that worked at around sixteen frames per second.
Speaker 1: Edison felt the sweet spot was really forty six frames
Speaker 1: per second, an interesting number that he arrived at. He
Speaker 1: just assumed that at forty six, where I guess he
Speaker 1: determined that forty six was what you needed in order
Speaker 1: to get a point where you didn't have flicker being
Speaker 1: distracting and you had a good smooth representation of action. Now, remember,
Speaker 1: projectors used the shutter to block light from the projector
Speaker 1: in order to transition from one image to the next,
Speaker 1: which meant the shutter was blocking light at least once
Speaker 1: per frame, and at lower frame rates it really is
Speaker 1: noticeable and it becomes distracting. That's why Edison thought a
Speaker 1: rate of forty six frames per second would be fast
Speaker 1: enough for flicker to no longer really be an issue,
Speaker 1: and we wouldn't even notice it. Now. As I mentioned
Speaker 1: earlier there, that's a little bit slower than the sixty
Speaker 1: or seventy flicks per second that typically we would say
Speaker 1: reaches the flicker fusion threshold. But it's much closer to
Speaker 1: the right number than sixteen frames per second. But that's
Speaker 1: interesting because then you get into people saying, well, we
Speaker 1: have a workaround, which is again the multi bladed shutter.
Speaker 1: If you have a shutter with three blades and you're
Speaker 1: projecting your sixteen frame per second film and you're allowing
Speaker 1: one full rotation of the shutter per frame, that means
Speaker 1: each frame of your film is displayed three times in
Speaker 1: a row before it goes to the next one. Remember
Speaker 1: this is not a fraction of a second. But the
Speaker 1: end result of that is you get forty eight frames
Speaker 1: per second of projected film. Yeah, you're only showing sixteen
Speaker 1: separate images every second, but the shutter is multiplying each
Speaker 1: frame three times, and then you get kind of forty
Speaker 1: eight frames per second effect, and you get less flicker,
Speaker 1: not smoother motion, but less flicker. Now, why were people
Speaker 1: kind of gravitating towards sixteen frames per second even though
Speaker 1: Edison was saying, no, no, no, you should be doing
Speaker 1: forty six. It all has to come down to money.
Speaker 1: And speaking of money, we're gonna take a quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsors and then we'll come back and
Speaker 1: I'll tell you more about how money plays a big
Speaker 1: part in the evolution of cinema. Okay, we're back, and
Speaker 1: now it's time to talk about that dalla dalla bill, y'all.
Speaker 1: So film costs money, right, Film stock, the actual raw
Speaker 1: material you use to shoot upon, is a thing you
Speaker 1: have to purchase. And then on top of that, once
Speaker 1: you shoot film, you have to process it before you
Speaker 1: can display it, like you have to develop the film
Speaker 1: and you have to transfer the negative to make a master.
Speaker 1: All this kind of stuff is costly. Right, the more
Speaker 1: film you shoot, the more expensive it's going to be.
Speaker 1: And if you're shooting at a higher frame rate, it
Speaker 1: means you're consuming film faster than you would if you
Speaker 1: were using a lower frame rate. You could think of
Speaker 1: it this way, if you're spending bookoos of cash for
Speaker 1: every foot of film that you have to purchase for
Speaker 1: your movie, and then you're given the option to either
Speaker 1: tell your story with sixteen photographs per second or choosing
Speaker 1: forty six photographs per second, you're likely to go with
Speaker 1: the sixteen. It's going to take up less film for
Speaker 1: you to shoot a second of footage unless you're part
Speaker 1: of the lustrous money bags family, I guess. But yeah,
Speaker 1: film was a limited and costly resource, and for that reason,
Speaker 1: or at least primarily for that reason, a lot of
Speaker 1: early filmmakers gravitated towards sixteen frames per second in those
Speaker 1: early days of filming, and they relied on projectors to
Speaker 1: kind of smooth things out by using multi bladed shutters.
Speaker 1: Now I say gravitated towards sixteen frames per second, but
Speaker 1: even saying gravitated as being a bit generous because early
Speaker 1: film cameras and projectors were frequently hand cranked. They didn't
Speaker 1: have an electric or even spring loaded motor in them,
Speaker 1: and a steady camera operator might manage to keep a
Speaker 1: fairly regular rotational speed while literally cranking the camera or
Speaker 1: the projector, but usually there was some variation in there,
Speaker 1: so you're talking more like sometimes between ten and eighteen
Speaker 1: frames per second, with sixteen being the goal. And then
Speaker 1: there were also filmmakers who were purposefully experimenting with undercranking,
Speaker 1: which means you're recording more slowly than the projection rate
Speaker 1: will be, or overcranking, where you're recording a faster frame
Speaker 1: rate than the projection rate should be. And like I
Speaker 1: said earlier, this kind of translates into faster or slower
Speaker 1: action on screen, and it can also make things a
Speaker 1: little jerky, depending upon how erratic the changes are. So
Speaker 1: if you watch those early silent films, you might notice
Speaker 1: that the action is erratic, it's inconsistent in its speed,
Speaker 1: and that's because during the record arding frame rate was
Speaker 1: a little bit variable, and if it's played back on
Speaker 1: modern equipment, well, the playback speed is not varying at all.
Speaker 1: Now you could, I guess, try to digitally convert everything
Speaker 1: so that it maintained a consistent playback speed in conjunction
Speaker 1: with whatever was recorded, but one it would probably look
Speaker 1: really weird, and two it might have been that the
Speaker 1: director intended for those different frame rates in order to
Speaker 1: create a specific effect on the film itself. But yeah,
Speaker 1: we have to come back around to variable frame rates
Speaker 1: because that will play a part in our discussion toward
Speaker 1: the end. But the silent film era had a lot
Speaker 1: of different frame rates that were used both for filming
Speaker 1: and for projection, and often those frame rates tended towards
Speaker 1: sixteen frames per second or thereabouts because one it seemed
Speaker 1: to be about the lowest you could go without affecting
Speaker 1: perception of the film negatively. And it also allows you
Speaker 1: to save as much money as you could on film
Speaker 1: stock because you're not chewing through it. Super movie houses
Speaker 1: would sometimes take advantage of all this. They would actually
Speaker 1: play movies back at a higher frame rate than what
Speaker 1: was shot because if you can play a movie back
Speaker 1: at a faster frame rate, the screening takes less time. Right,
Speaker 1: you get through your film faster, and you might be
Speaker 1: able to fit in an additional seating at the end
Speaker 1: of the day and sell more tickets that way. But
Speaker 1: things would trend towards standardization because of a new technological
Speaker 1: development for film, which was adding sound to it. So
Speaker 1: here's the thing. The way sound on film would work
Speaker 1: like early on, there was an attempt to pair films
Speaker 1: with things like a record album and you would start
Speaker 1: the two at the same time. But this was tricky.
Speaker 1: You could easily have an issue where things were out
Speaker 1: of sync and then it just becomes distracting. The big
Speaker 1: development on film was optical sound in that there's an
Speaker 1: optical track, a light based track that holds the sound information,
Speaker 1: and this track runs a long side the actual image
Speaker 1: is captured on film. There's a very narrow band where
Speaker 1: the optical track lives, and within a projector, there's a
Speaker 1: separate lamp from the actual film lamp that beams light
Speaker 1: through this narrow band on the side of the strip
Speaker 1: of film, and you have a photosensitive detector that's on
Speaker 1: the opposite side, and the photosensitive detector picks up light
Speaker 1: that's coming through this optical band of information, and the
Speaker 1: light that's passing through ends up being converted into an
Speaker 1: electrical current through this photo detector, and that sends it
Speaker 1: to an amplifier, which then can go to speakers and
Speaker 1: then you can get sound playing back. I've also done
Speaker 1: episodes about this, so I'm not going to go further
Speaker 1: into detail, but it is cool now. In a projector,
Speaker 1: this means that the bit that you are seeing and
Speaker 1: the bit you are hearing are actually offset on the
Speaker 1: physical film itself, because you are you talking about two
Speaker 1: different lamps typically, So that means that if you were
Speaker 1: to freeze time, the bit that you would see on
Speaker 1: screen would be from one lamp showing through the picture
Speaker 1: on the film. The sound that you would somehow be
Speaker 1: able to hear while you have frozen time would be
Speaker 1: going through a separate lamp a little further down in
Speaker 1: the film, so they're offset from each other. If this
Speaker 1: weren't the case, then everything would look like a really
Speaker 1: badly dubbed movie and the words wouldn't match characters' mouths.
Speaker 1: But more importantly, for frame rates, this meant the industry
Speaker 1: had to establish a solid standard, because audiences could tolerate
Speaker 1: some variation in playback speeds as far as images go,
Speaker 1: but for sound it's a different thing. Folks were not
Speaker 1: lining up to watch a picture in which Clark Gable
Speaker 1: was going to sound like a chipmunk or something. So
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty nine, the industry agreed upon a standard
Speaker 1: frame rate of twenty four frames per second. This was
Speaker 1: low enough to still be somewhat economical when it came
Speaker 1: to film stock, and it also represented a number that
Speaker 1: was easily divisible that editors happy, right because a full
Speaker 1: second of your footage would be twenty four frames. If
Speaker 1: you wanted to edit down to a half second, you're
Speaker 1: talking about twelve frames. A third of the second was
Speaker 1: eight frames and so on. So this made precise edits
Speaker 1: really possible and easy to do mathematically. Twenty four frames
Speaker 1: per second also allowed for some decent audio fidelity with
Speaker 1: your optical tracks. If you went with a lower frame rate,
Speaker 1: you would get lower quality audio to the point where
Speaker 1: it would be distracting to an audience. So by using
Speaker 1: twenty four frames per second as the standard, then a
Speaker 1: projector outfitted with a double bladed shutter, which means each
Speaker 1: frame of film would be projected twice, you would get
Speaker 1: the effect of a forty eight frames per second projection
Speaker 1: speed with each frame repeated a single time. Right. So,
Speaker 1: for half a century, twenty four frames per second was
Speaker 1: a practically unassailable standard. It defined cinematic esthetic. At twenty
Speaker 1: four frames per second, there's still motion, blur and potentially
Speaker 1: some flicker depending upon the projector and the shutter. Twenty
Speaker 1: four frames per second met the technical, economic, and psychological
Speaker 1: thresholds to be a practical way to capture stories on film.
Speaker 1: Some folks, however, were not satisfied with this. They really
Speaker 1: wanted to push the technological envelope, which is super cool,
Speaker 1: even if I personally find deviations from twenty four frames
Speaker 1: per second off putting from a cinematic experience, like that's
Speaker 1: my own personal reaction, But they also recognize the need
Speaker 1: for innovation and how exciting it is to experiment. So
Speaker 1: one of these pioneers was a guy named Douglas Trumbull,
Speaker 1: who sadly passed away a couple of years ago, but
Speaker 1: he was a legend in the film world. He created
Speaker 1: amazing special effects in really influential movies, like he did
Speaker 1: effects for Stanley Kubrick's two thousand and one A Space Odyssey.
Speaker 1: He effects for Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. He worked on
Speaker 1: tons of movies, and he came to it honestly because
Speaker 1: his dad actually, briefly anyway, worked in visual effects. He
Speaker 1: apparently did visual effects for the nineteen thirty nine classic
Speaker 1: film The Wizard of Oz. So it's possible that Douglas
Speaker 1: Trumbull didn't have blood in his veins but instead had celluloid.
Speaker 1: It sounds like he was born to really work in
Speaker 1: the film industry. But in the mid nineteen seventies, Trumbull
Speaker 1: began to develop a cinematic technology he would call show scan,
Speaker 1: and this tech would use seventy milimeter film thirty five
Speaker 1: milimeter is standard in cinema, but there have been directors
Speaker 1: who have worked in seventy milimeter, so his version used
Speaker 1: seventy milimeter filment and a projection speed of sixty frames
Speaker 1: per second. So the result was that the image on
Speaker 1: screen had much greater clarity and far less motion blurb
Speaker 1: than a film that was shot on standard twenty four
Speaker 1: frames per second. But it also would eat through film
Speaker 1: at two and a half times the speed of a
Speaker 1: normal camera, So using Trumbull's method would definitely impact your budget.
Speaker 1: You'd be spending a lot more money just on film
Speaker 1: stock alone. But trumble felt that audience has had a
Speaker 1: much stronger emotional reaction to films that were shot and
Speaker 1: projected at higher frame rates. He actually did experiments with
Speaker 1: this where people would respond with how they felt a
Speaker 1: film impacted them, and Trumbull said that when you got
Speaker 1: to these higher frame rates, people were making stronger emotional
Speaker 1: connections to the stuff that they were seeing, and that
Speaker 1: the experience meant that you had reduced some of the
Speaker 1: artificiality of film. You make the images seem more realistic
Speaker 1: and vibrant. So Trumbull created some short films to demonstrate
Speaker 1: this technology, but his technological solution wouldn't really find a
Speaker 1: place for itself in movie theaters. It did find its
Speaker 1: way into simulator style rides, and Trumbull's advocacy for high
Speaker 1: frame rates would find other supporters in film a couple
Speaker 1: of decades later. Now, the economics of film were very
Speaker 1: much in play in the nineteen seventies. In fact, it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be until nineteen ninety six that a new technology
Speaker 1: would start to chip away at the end edifice of
Speaker 1: cinema and the domination of film, and that was digital filmmaking.
Speaker 1: This would be the thing that would change the nature
Speaker 1: of cinema for almost everybody. I mean, there are holdouts,
Speaker 1: right Quentin Tarantinos still insists on shooting on film and
Speaker 1: wants his films to be projected in film, not on digital,
Speaker 1: Although there have been Tarantino films projective digitally, and I
Speaker 1: respect him for it. I still prefer film myself, but
Speaker 1: for a lot of people, digital filmmaking would be a
Speaker 1: true game changer. Now. Some elements of digital information were
Speaker 1: already making their way into film as early as the
Speaker 1: early nineteen nineties, but that would be digital audio that
Speaker 1: made its way into movies that became a thing in
Speaker 1: film before digital cinematography did. Digital movies also didn't immediately
Speaker 1: splinter off from film based movies. You had cases in
Speaker 1: which someone took a film like something shot on film,
Speaker 1: typically a classic film, and then use a film scanner
Speaker 1: to transfer those images from film to digital. This is
Speaker 1: often a first step for digital restoration of movies, so
Speaker 1: if you've ever seen a digitally restored film, this is
Speaker 1: part of that process, the earliest part, really. But you
Speaker 1: could also take a digital recording and then transfer that
Speaker 1: to film, like you could take something that was shot
Speaker 1: on digital, transfer that to film, and then your finished
Speaker 1: product can be shown in a normal film projector. Right,
Speaker 1: you don't need a digital projector. You just take the
Speaker 1: film that you've created and put it through that. But
Speaker 1: the rise of digital projectors would really change things up.
Speaker 1: Now you could both shoot and project on digital technology
Speaker 1: without using film at all. I typically think of Star
Speaker 1: Wars Episode one, The Phantomnace, as the beginning of that era.
Speaker 1: There had been other films that had used digital cameras,
Speaker 1: but it was George Lucas who was able to convince
Speaker 1: a small hand full of theaters, only a few of them,
Speaker 1: to install digital projectors in order to show his movie.
Speaker 1: But this is the start of a trend, and it
Speaker 1: was also the start of me not liking Star Wars anymore.
Speaker 1: But then I'm an old gen X dofist, so don't
Speaker 1: listen to me go on about that. If you love
Speaker 1: Star Wars, by golly, keep loving Star Wars. Digital cinema, however,
Speaker 1: has its own limits that are technologically dictated. So for example,
Speaker 1: the bitrate for a digital camera matters a lot. So
Speaker 1: what is bitrate? Basically, bitrate is how much data a
Speaker 1: digital system can handle per second. So recording at a
Speaker 1: higher bitrate means you're capturing more information per second of operation,
Speaker 1: but it also means you're creating more data per second.
Speaker 1: So you need adequate digital storage to hold onto all
Speaker 1: that information, and you have to have the bandwidth to
Speaker 1: be able to move that much information from capture to
Speaker 1: storage at that timeframe. So there are still parameters that
Speaker 1: filmmakers have to work within, but they would no longer
Speaker 1: be confined to physical film stock if they just wanted
Speaker 1: to switch to a purely digital approach. And some filmmakers
Speaker 1: really embrace this wholeheartedly, and some preferred to stick with
Speaker 1: film Tarantino. As I mentioned, still is with film. Also
Speaker 1: just side note, On top of the aesthetic of film,
Speaker 1: which I tend to prefer, I feel like film also
Speaker 1: impacts the actual process of filmmaking in ways that go
Speaker 1: beyond aesthetic. Like the physical limitations of film. It's cost,
Speaker 1: you know, it's scarcity that means that directors have to
Speaker 1: take a very particular approach to their work. They can't
Speaker 1: just hit a button and delete the last eighteen takes
Speaker 1: that they didn't like, right, They're actually committing stuff to film.
Speaker 1: So it might mean that directors have to be satisfied
Speaker 1: with a take that isn't totally what they envisioned, unless
Speaker 1: they're Stanley Kubrick, in which case they'll just burn through
Speaker 1: as much film as they absolutely need to. But these
Speaker 1: kinds of limits can all contribute to that movie magic feeling.
Speaker 1: Assuming that you got yourself a real kick ass editor,
Speaker 1: at least you need to have one of those if
Speaker 1: you're going to be like taking some consolidations as far
Speaker 1: as how good the take was. But to me, like
Speaker 1: that's all part of what makes movies special. Okay, we're
Speaker 1: gonna get right back on frame rates. Before we do that,
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break to thank our sponsors. Okay,
Speaker 1: there's a whole discussion we could have about frame rates
Speaker 1: for television, which is different. It's not really frame rates,
Speaker 1: it's video rates. But you know, TV is just not
Speaker 1: the same thing as film. It's a complicated topic all
Speaker 1: by itself and deserves its own episode. It is worth
Speaker 1: mentioning that TV and film have long had different recording
Speaker 1: and playback speeds for images. In the case of television,
Speaker 1: we're actually talking about video fields rather than in a
Speaker 1: single photographic skills. And obviously the transition from film to
Speaker 1: digital cinema would mean we're treading a little closer to
Speaker 1: television technology than the old film stuff if we're staying
Speaker 1: purely digital. But even with the move to digital, most
Speaker 1: filmmakers stuck with twenty four frames per second. A few
Speaker 1: did not. Peter Jackson, Ang Lee and James Cameron are
Speaker 1: three notable directors who decided to work in higher frame rates.
Speaker 1: So let's start with Peter or mister Jackson if you're nasty,
Speaker 1: So Peter Jackson's The Hobbit, an unexpected Journey, would become
Speaker 1: the first widely distributed major motion picture shot at and
Speaker 1: then projected at forty eight frames per second. Now, most
Speaker 1: cinemas projected the film at the standard twenty four frames
Speaker 1: per second. This was obviously after editors had converted the
Speaker 1: film from forty eight to twenty four frames per second.
Speaker 1: Otherwise it would have played at half speed and would
Speaker 1: have taken even longer. And I'm getting hives just thinking
Speaker 1: about sitting through that film and it being twice as long. Anyway,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned early on, I saw one of the
Speaker 1: high frame rate screenings of this film. The thinking was
Speaker 1: that the high frame rate would remove motion blur and
Speaker 1: increase clarity, and that could potentially be critical for a
Speaker 1: really immersive three D screening of the movie. That it
Speaker 1: would have its effect on two D screenings, but it
Speaker 1: would really be important for three D. You know, we
Speaker 1: are accustomed to some motion blur on a flat screen,
Speaker 1: but three dimensional images are different kettle of fish, really,
Speaker 1: And while there are plenty of three D films that
Speaker 1: were shot at twenty four frames per second, Jackson's goal
Speaker 1: was to create something that was much more convincing, right,
Speaker 1: And it was meant to be as if you were there,
Speaker 1: and it did feel like I was there, not there
Speaker 1: in Middle Earth, mind you. It made me feel like
Speaker 1: I was on the set of the film because to me,
Speaker 1: the clarity and the lack of blur made everything look artificial,
Speaker 1: like the image was super clear and crisp, but it
Speaker 1: meant that the clothing that acts were wearing look like costumes,
Speaker 1: it didn't look like clothing, and that the sets looked
Speaker 1: like sets, they didn't look like real buildings. It was
Speaker 1: kind of like going to a play where all the
Speaker 1: sets are purposefully made to emphasize their artificiality, and I
Speaker 1: hated it. Now a lot of people describe the effect
Speaker 1: of watching high frame rate footage as the Mexican soap
Speaker 1: opera effect, meaning the stuff you see looks more like
Speaker 1: the kind of images you would get with soap operas
Speaker 1: or broadcast news or sports. There's nothing inherently wrong with
Speaker 1: this look. It serves a purpose if you're watching a
Speaker 1: sporting event, for example, that kind of clarity and lack
Speaker 1: of motion blur it's incredible. But for a world that
Speaker 1: was conditioned to see twenty four frames per second and
Speaker 1: then associate that with the idea of cinema, it could
Speaker 1: be jarring to some folks. When you crank things into
Speaker 1: a higher gear or frame rate as it were not
Speaker 1: bad necessarily, but jarring. So while I hated the look
Speaker 1: of the Hobbit, that's really just my own reaction. Other
Speaker 1: people might have found it really engaging and immersive, and
Speaker 1: that's cool. Nothing I think can save the film from
Speaker 1: its screenplay, but that's a different matter. But seriously, though,
Speaker 1: was there anything guiding the decision to expand a simple
Speaker 1: children's story into three epic films other than a desire
Speaker 1: to cash in on the popularity of the Lord of
Speaker 1: the Rings movies? But I digress. So Peter Jackson sets
Speaker 1: the tone. Ang Lee then pushes things even further first
Speaker 1: with his film titled Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk. Lee
Speaker 1: shot this movie in three D and at a screamingly
Speaker 1: fast one hundred and twenty frames per second. So the
Speaker 1: film tells the story of a young soldier whose unit
Speaker 1: is about to be honored at a football game. But
Speaker 1: Lee's decision to shoot at one hundred and twenty frames
Speaker 1: per second was a huge one. It was unprecedented at
Speaker 1: that time for a major motion picture. I mean, sure,
Speaker 1: you had people who are experimenting, but they weren't doing
Speaker 1: a feature length film. Only five movie theaters in the
Speaker 1: world had projectors that were capable of showing the film
Speaker 1: at its native one hundred and twenty frames per second.
Speaker 1: All other theaters had to use a version that had
Speaker 1: been converted down to a lower frame rate, like The Hobbit.
Speaker 1: Some critics said this high frame rate ultimately caused more
Speaker 1: of a distraction than anything else, that it was very
Speaker 1: hard not to compare Lee's work, which was undeniably crisp
Speaker 1: and free of motion blur, as having that kind of
Speaker 1: video effect. Lee would employ a high frame rate on
Speaker 1: his film Gemini Man as well. While Billy Lynn's long
Speaker 1: halftime walk got kind of a lukewarm reception, Jimini Man
Speaker 1: was largely panned, but that was really more for story
Speaker 1: problems than necessarily the technical decisions. Perhaps for those reasons,
Speaker 1: Lee has since backed away from high frame rates. He
Speaker 1: has said that he learned the hard way that audiences
Speaker 1: just aren't ready for that yet. James Cameron has employed
Speaker 1: high frame rate technology in Avatar The Way of Water,
Speaker 1: the second of that Avatar films. This movie actually has
Speaker 1: a variable frame rate, so some scenes are in standard
Speaker 1: twenty four frames per second and occasionally it bumps up
Speaker 1: to forty eight frames per second and Cameron explained his
Speaker 1: decision in an interview at the Busan International Film Festival.
Speaker 1: He said, quote, we're using it to improve the three
Speaker 1: D where we want a heightened sense of presence, such
Speaker 1: as underwater or in some of the flying scenes, for
Speaker 1: shots of just people standing around talking. It works against
Speaker 1: us because it creates a kind of hyperrealism and scenes
Speaker 1: that are more mundane, more normal, and sometimes we need
Speaker 1: that cinematic feeling of twenty four frames per second end quote.
Speaker 1: So how did projectors compensate for this where you've got
Speaker 1: a film where sometimes it's in twenty four phrames per
Speaker 1: second and sometimes it's in forty eight frames per second. Well,
Speaker 1: they didn't have to. This is because James Cameron created
Speaker 1: an edit that is forty eight frames per second all
Speaker 1: the way through the film, but the twenty four phrase
Speaker 1: per second seconds of the movie had their frames doubled,
Speaker 1: so in those sections you would see frame one of
Speaker 1: a scene twice, then frame two twice, and so on.
Speaker 1: For the forty eight phrames per second segments, it would
Speaker 1: just be the single frame one, two, three, four, five, six.
Speaker 1: You know, And was it effective? Well, I guess that
Speaker 1: depends upon whom you ask. A lot of critics called
Speaker 1: this film absolutely stunning, at least from a visual aspect,
Speaker 1: like the technology was truly incredible and some of the
Speaker 1: most amazing visuals ever accomplished on film. So the technical
Speaker 1: aspects get a lot of praise, the story gets less.
Speaker 1: So a lot of people say the story, like the
Speaker 1: first Avatar film, is nothing to write home about. That
Speaker 1: being said, I have not seen these movies yet, I
Speaker 1: don't know if I ever will, so I don't have
Speaker 1: a personal opinion on this one. I just never felt
Speaker 1: the call to see Avatar, so I don't have a
Speaker 1: personal opinion on that. I did stumble on a message
Speaker 1: board and a thread in which gamers were talking about
Speaker 1: the disconcerting effect of seeing a film switch between forty
Speaker 1: eight frames per second to twenty four, But a lot
Speaker 1: of folks on that thread also said I didn't notice anything,
Speaker 1: and others were like, oh no, it was totally It
Speaker 1: felt like the film was lagging once it went from
Speaker 1: forty eight to twenty four frame rates and video games,
Speaker 1: that's a huge deal. I'm not going to dive into
Speaker 1: that beehive right now, because again, that's pretty a bunch
Speaker 1: of topic that deserves its own episode, But it seems
Speaker 1: to me that the frame rate issue is an ongoing one.
Speaker 1: Some filmmakers are likely to continue pushing for the adoption
Speaker 1: of higher frame rates for various reasons. And now that
Speaker 1: you're not worried about eating up your project's entire budget
Speaker 1: or supply of film just shooting a single scene at
Speaker 1: a high frame rate, options are wide open. With more
Speaker 1: theaters outfitted with projectors that can show films at higher
Speaker 1: frame rates, that are new opportunities for directors to achieve
Speaker 1: their vision. So will audiences respond to that? I guess
Speaker 1: it seems it depends upon the execute, and I think
Speaker 1: for some of us old folks, we might not ever
Speaker 1: warm up to the high frame rate experience. This doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that high frame rate is bad, it's just different.
Speaker 1: It's also bad. I'm sorry it is bad. I'm old,
Speaker 1: and I'm grouchy, and I do not like the look
Speaker 1: of forty eight frames per second. Now, if you'll excuse me,
Speaker 1: need to go outside and yell at a passing cloud.
Speaker 1: By the way, if you are fascinated with frame rates
Speaker 1: and particularly the mechanical elements of shooting on film, I
Speaker 1: have a couple of videos I really highly recommend you
Speaker 1: check out because I think they are so well done.
Speaker 1: The first is the one I mentioned already, the engineering
Speaker 1: guy who created the video how a film Projector Works.
Speaker 1: And then the second video is by the slow Mo guys,
Speaker 1: and that video is titled how a movie film camera
Speaker 1: works in slow Motion. Both of those videos are really
Speaker 1: good at showing how film projectors and film cameras work
Speaker 1: from a mechanical perspective, and it is just mind blowing
Speaker 1: to me how remarkable this technology is and how elegantly
Speaker 1: it all works together. In both of those videos, the
Speaker 1: technology being used is for sixteen millimeter film, so the
Speaker 1: projector and the camera in each of those it's a
Speaker 1: sixteen millimeter, but the actual mechanical process is pretty much
Speaker 1: the same no matter what kind of film is being used.
Speaker 1: It's just obviously the cameras and projectors have to be
Speaker 1: larger if they're handing like thirty five millimeter or seventy
Speaker 1: millimeter prints. But yep, that's it for this episode. I
Speaker 1: hope you found it entertaining and informative and maybe you know,
Speaker 1: maybe you really like high frame rate films, which again,
Speaker 1: nothing wrong with that. I joked about it being bad,
Speaker 1: but that is a joke. It's just very unappealing to
Speaker 1: me on an aesthetic level. But that's just my own opinion,
Speaker 1: and my opinion only matters to me. So if you
Speaker 1: love it, love the heck out of it, y'all. If
Speaker 1: you hate it like I do, cool, we'll go see
Speaker 1: a twenty four frame second movie and we'll just enjoy
Speaker 1: ourselves that way. Unless it's Adam Sandler. There's just no
Speaker 1: saving that for me. All right. I hope all you
Speaker 1: out there are doing well, and I'll talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.