Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: Welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Pollett, and
Speaker 1: I am an editor at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me, as he always does, is senior
Speaker 1: writer Jonathan Strickland. It's time to make the music. It's
Speaker 1: time to light the lights. You know you you you
Speaker 1: bring this seriousness to to the lyrics at the Muppet Show.
Speaker 1: I have a feeling that it requires gravitas. Yes. So
Speaker 1: we're going to talk a little bit today about the
Speaker 1: technology used to make movies, and we're breaking this up
Speaker 1: into several podcasts because, as it turns out, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of tech that goes into making movies and it
Speaker 1: would be way too much material to cover in one
Speaker 1: single podcast unless we just mentioned things and then moved
Speaker 1: on immediately. Yeah, I agree with you. So we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about what goes into capturing images and sound
Speaker 1: and then projecting them for your entertainment, you lucky people. So, um,
Speaker 1: let's let's start off with talking about We're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about both film and digital here, but let's start with film,
Speaker 1: because of course that preceded digital, So film is an
Speaker 1: interesting thing already. All right, So we're talking about a
Speaker 1: material that is photoreactive. When exposed to light, a chemical
Speaker 1: change occurs and you can capture the light from a
Speaker 1: particular instant and preserve it on film. And this is
Speaker 1: this is how film cameras work. You have a very simply,
Speaker 1: you've got a lens that focuses light. You have an
Speaker 1: aperture which is normally blocked by the shutter. The shutter
Speaker 1: keeps light out from the film. Because of course, if
Speaker 1: you if you had light constantly exposed to the film,
Speaker 1: it would just the chemical reaction would occur in an
Speaker 1: uncontrolled fashion, so you wouldn't be able to capture the
Speaker 1: picture that you wanted, right So, plus you wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to control the exposure and much light gets to it,
Speaker 1: so washed out. Be this weird, washed out, blurry picture
Speaker 1: of nothing, um, which could be interesting, but it's not
Speaker 1: not going to work as a movie, at least not
Speaker 1: unless you're some sort of grad student in Hollywood who's
Speaker 1: trying to make some sort of quote statement unquote. So
Speaker 1: assuming that's not the case, you need to have the
Speaker 1: shutter there to block light out when you when you
Speaker 1: open the shutter, light comes through the lens, is focused
Speaker 1: by the lens through the aperture, which is the opening
Speaker 1: that exists between the lens and the film, and then
Speaker 1: hits the film. The shutter closes, and the chemical reaction
Speaker 1: that takes place on the film is what preserves that image.
Speaker 1: So uh, that's how a film camera works in general.
Speaker 1: Now a movie film camera is based upon the same premise,
Speaker 1: with the major difference being that film is fed through
Speaker 1: the camera at a certain rate and the shutter opens
Speaker 1: and closes at a particular frequency so that you take
Speaker 1: several images all within a second, and when you play
Speaker 1: those images back at the proper speed, you get the
Speaker 1: illusion of movement. So that's that's the whole basis of
Speaker 1: film right there now, the way it works. And in
Speaker 1: the old and olden days with film cameras, you had
Speaker 1: hand cranked cameras. That sounds like fun, Yeah, um, these
Speaker 1: are the cameras. If you've ever seen footage of of
Speaker 1: old movie sets or even a film where that's it's
Speaker 1: set in that era, you see like the guy peering
Speaker 1: into the camera and he's turning a crank on the
Speaker 1: side of it is the shooting a film. Uh. That
Speaker 1: is physically moving the film past the shutter which is
Speaker 1: opening and closing at a specific rate. Uh. And if
Speaker 1: you were a very good film operator, camera operator rather, um,
Speaker 1: you could move that at a pretty consistent rate through
Speaker 1: the camera. When it was played back, it would be
Speaker 1: smooth ish. Well, because we're human, right, Well, of course
Speaker 1: we're never going to move it at the specific speed
Speaker 1: we need. And again, projector speeds are also variable, so um,
Speaker 1: the theater operators might in fact, in the olden days
Speaker 1: has happened a lot back in the silent film era,
Speaker 1: theater operators might set their projectors to to play back
Speaker 1: a little faster than normal because it meant that you
Speaker 1: could fit more showings in a single day. I see,
Speaker 1: your film would be over faster. So anyway you would
Speaker 1: hand crank the film, the film goes past the point
Speaker 1: where the shutter opens, closes and the images are captured.
Speaker 1: Um as and if you if you were to crank
Speaker 1: the film faster so that you're you're putting more film
Speaker 1: through and you're getting more shots of the action. Uh.
Speaker 1: This actually translated into slow motion, so uh, they back
Speaker 1: in the silent film era, the standard frames per second
Speaker 1: that you would have for for film. And that's another
Speaker 1: good thing to point out film is is we talked
Speaker 1: about film in frames, and a frame you can think
Speaker 1: of a frame as a single still photograph. Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: So back in those days, the standard, and I used
Speaker 1: the term loosely, was sixteen frames per second, and that
Speaker 1: was sufficient to give you the sense of movement when
Speaker 1: it was played back at sixteen frames per second. If
Speaker 1: you were to speed that up, where you take maybe
Speaker 1: thirty two frames per second, but you're playing it back
Speaker 1: at sixteen frames per second, the action would look very
Speaker 1: slow to you, actually look like half speed, because you're
Speaker 1: would be using twice as much film in that time
Speaker 1: being Yeah, yeah, so you're using twice as much film
Speaker 1: to capture the same action. Uh, And when you play
Speaker 1: it back at the normal speed, it feels like it's
Speaker 1: slow motion. Same thing if you were to if you
Speaker 1: were to under crank, if you were to use less
Speaker 1: film to capture the action, it would look sped up
Speaker 1: and jerky. So when you see those old silent films
Speaker 1: where everyone suddenly running at a speed that is not
Speaker 1: humanly possible and everyone's kind of jerking around. That's when
Speaker 1: they were undercranking the camera. And eventually they added motors
Speaker 1: into cameras, which allowed you to create an actual standard speed.
Speaker 1: And uh, it wasn't until they found a way of
Speaker 1: putting sound into um into film as well in a
Speaker 1: in a standardized way that they settled on twenty four
Speaker 1: frames per second, which is the current standard of of
Speaker 1: how many frames per second for film. And now, Uh,
Speaker 1: you were going to say something I could tell and
Speaker 1: I just interrupted you before you can even start. Well, no,
Speaker 1: I was gonna point out that TV cameras shoot at
Speaker 1: thirty frames per second, which is why TV looks different.
Speaker 1: It's got that different feel than than watching a movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's using video as opposed to film the film.
Speaker 1: So yeah, there are a couple of differences with that
Speaker 1: video is taken in. When we talk about a frame
Speaker 1: of video, it's not the same thing as a frame
Speaker 1: of film because with film, like I said, you take
Speaker 1: the film from a camera. Actually, when you take the
Speaker 1: film from a camera, it's it's in its negative format.
Speaker 1: You have to develop the film before you can look
Speaker 1: at it as if it were a regular image. Basically,
Speaker 1: that's bathing it in in some chemicals that will help
Speaker 1: bring the images out. Um. And then of course, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, stopping the reaction and fixing it in place
Speaker 1: right before it can be you know, preserved for the
Speaker 1: long haul, right right. And that's another time where you
Speaker 1: can't have this film exposed to light because then it
Speaker 1: would ruin the process. It would, but it would it
Speaker 1: would continue. It would be as if you were continuing
Speaker 1: to film on that film essentially, um. And we'll probably
Speaker 1: get into that a little bit more in our second
Speaker 1: part of this where we're talking about post production. But
Speaker 1: the other element of video is that a frame of
Speaker 1: video is not is not like a single image as
Speaker 1: it is in uh in film. Um. Television, at least
Speaker 1: if we're not talking about progressive scan TV. We're talking
Speaker 1: about classic television is played where each frame is made
Speaker 1: up of two fields. Okay. I think of your TV
Speaker 1: as a series of of lines of dots, Okay, like
Speaker 1: horizontal horizon lines, and field number one would be all
Speaker 1: the odd number lines, so lines one, three, five, seven, etcetera.
Speaker 1: All the way down those would be field one, and
Speaker 1: that would be half of a frame, and that would
Speaker 1: that your your television would paint these these dots. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it does at a very very fast rate. It
Speaker 1: sounds like it's you know, like you'd be able to
Speaker 1: see it, but it's so fast that you can't you
Speaker 1: can't perceive it. But it would paint all the odd
Speaker 1: lines first, and then it would paint the even lines.
Speaker 1: That would be the second field, field one and field two,
Speaker 1: and together those two fields would can would make a
Speaker 1: frame of video. Um, and your television would be playing
Speaker 1: that back. Is it thirty or sixty? I think, well,
Speaker 1: I know that when you're when you're capturing it, it's
Speaker 1: thirty frames per second. But um, so it's a little
Speaker 1: it is a little different. It feels different from film,
Speaker 1: and that translates over into digital cinema will get into
Speaker 1: that too. So getting back to the film, uh set,
Speaker 1: So you're limited originally with the old cameras, you were
Speaker 1: pretty limited to stat shots. You couldn't really move the
Speaker 1: camera very much. So if you look at old old movies,
Speaker 1: you'll see a lot of shots that are single take
Speaker 1: and it lasts a good long while and then it'll
Speaker 1: move to a totally different setting and a new scene
Speaker 1: and the point of view won't change very much, right,
Speaker 1: just because of the you know, the setups that they had.
Speaker 1: They didn't have the sophisticated equipment that goes along with
Speaker 1: you know, the setting up the shots that we used today,
Speaker 1: the the dollies and all the cranes and all those things,
Speaker 1: right exactly. Yeah, those and back then you would have
Speaker 1: a tripod, set up a camera on the tripod, and
Speaker 1: that was pretty much it. You might be able to
Speaker 1: do a pan where you you turn the camera uh
Speaker 1: in a certain direction so that you can follow the action,
Speaker 1: but beyond that, it wasn't There wasn't much movement. It
Speaker 1: wasn't until we started thinking seeing things like dollies, and
Speaker 1: a dolly is essentially a platform that's on wheels, uh,
Speaker 1: And the tripod is on the platform, so the camera
Speaker 1: itself is still stable, it's just on a surface that
Speaker 1: can move around. Uh. Many dollies, in fact, I would
Speaker 1: I would probably say most tend to be set on tracks,
Speaker 1: so that in turn also limits the motion that the
Speaker 1: camera will experience while you're capturing film. Uh. This is
Speaker 1: in general a pretty good thing because most filmmakers want
Speaker 1: to avoid the really jerk emotions you would get if
Speaker 1: you were just holding a camera and trying to capture images.
Speaker 1: If you've ever you know, watch any home home video. Ever,
Speaker 1: the home video effect is something that most filmmakers want
Speaker 1: to avoid unless they're doing something like a documentary, or
Speaker 1: they want to evoke a particular mood. Like let's say
Speaker 1: it's a war scene and you want that chaotic feel
Speaker 1: where you know it's every it's very disorienting and frightening
Speaker 1: and you're not really sure what's happening. Uh, you may
Speaker 1: want to have a handheld camera effects so that it
Speaker 1: gives the audience kind of a feeling of disorientation and
Speaker 1: it helps evoke the mood you were going after. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just just to point out for all of you amateur
Speaker 1: home video efficionados, Yes, it can be better than that,
Speaker 1: but most people don't take the time to invest in
Speaker 1: the equipment and practice shooting as a professional uh filmmaker might. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and there are a lot of that you can't
Speaker 1: do it. Oh sure, there are a lot of people don't.
Speaker 1: And there are a lot of of home filmmakers who
Speaker 1: have made their own dollies, they made their own cranes,
Speaker 1: they made their own steady cams. We'll talk about steady
Speaker 1: cam in a second. Um. Yeah, actually, I ran into
Speaker 1: that in my research and it's it's pretty cool. It's
Speaker 1: not that hard to do to build, you know, just
Speaker 1: a basic setup for home video equipment. Yeah, it's very
Speaker 1: it's it's very much kind of a Jerry Rigg kind
Speaker 1: of approach to it. But really the whole film industry
Speaker 1: is based off of that sort of ingenuity. You know.
Speaker 1: We we look at the stuff that is used in
Speaker 1: films today and you think, wow, it's advanced technology, but
Speaker 1: all of it is pretty much based on some guy saying,
Speaker 1: you know, it would be really cool if we could
Speaker 1: get this such and such shot, but how do we
Speaker 1: do that? And then just coming up with a way
Speaker 1: of making it work. And really it's just refining that
Speaker 1: mother necessity. Yes, yes, hey mama. So uh all right,
Speaker 1: so we've talked about how how film is capturing the
Speaker 1: light and you know, you get it the photochemical reaction
Speaker 1: on the film. You later developed the film and you
Speaker 1: can you can watch it once you play it back
Speaker 1: at a in a projector let's talk about the difference
Speaker 1: with digital. Okay, so to kind of kind of transition
Speaker 1: from film to digital. Let's talk a little bit about video.
Speaker 1: And we mentioned it already about how it's played back,
Speaker 1: it's captured and played back at a different speed than film,
Speaker 1: so it does give you a different feel. Um. And
Speaker 1: this is this is actually perceptible. People will say, like,
Speaker 1: you know, television does not look like visa and even
Speaker 1: watching a movie on TV doesn't feel like it does
Speaker 1: when you're watching it in a in a theater. And
Speaker 1: not just because you're not watching it on in a
Speaker 1: huge screen and you have, you know, a fifty surround
Speaker 1: sound system around you or anything like that. It's that
Speaker 1: the actual quality of the picture and the quality of
Speaker 1: the movement that you see in the picture is different.
Speaker 1: It's because there's a weird conversion process. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to get into it. We've mentioned it before. Then the
Speaker 1: pull down process. Yeah, yeah, there's a weird process that
Speaker 1: you have to go in order to make the frames
Speaker 1: of film fit the frames of video format. And it's
Speaker 1: a very strange mathematical process. Uh. And it doesn't it
Speaker 1: doesn't give you the most natural uh playback, which is
Speaker 1: why it doesn't really look the way it should in
Speaker 1: the lord of the way it would if you were
Speaker 1: seeing it in the theater. Um. Now, video cameras have
Speaker 1: uh an interesting set up as opposed to the the
Speaker 1: film cameras. So instead of capturing the image and putting
Speaker 1: it onto film, it's using something called a charge coupled device,
Speaker 1: all right, So that's a semiconductor image sensor, and so
Speaker 1: it's it's measuring light and it is then taking those
Speaker 1: measurements putting it towards photo sites, which convert this, uh,
Speaker 1: with an analog to digital converter, convert this this these
Speaker 1: measurements of light into ones and zeros. That's where we're
Speaker 1: getting into the digital. Now, these ones and zeros, that's
Speaker 1: just digital information that can either be used to capture,
Speaker 1: to to put onto magnetic tape. You actually wouldn't even
Speaker 1: use the analog to digital in that case. You could
Speaker 1: just put the measurements of the light directly onto the
Speaker 1: magnetic tape, use the magnetic tape to play back in
Speaker 1: something like a VCR and that would take those measurements
Speaker 1: and cover them back into light and sound. Or you
Speaker 1: could do the analog to digital conversion, um, and then
Speaker 1: you have a digital image, right which you can play
Speaker 1: back and lots of devices, as it turns out, things
Speaker 1: like DVD players, computers, that kind of stuff. Uh. The
Speaker 1: interesting thing about digital versus film. Uh, there is a
Speaker 1: difference in the appearance. Again, you're not capturing necessarily at
Speaker 1: twenty four frames per second. Although there are digital cameras
Speaker 1: out there that can do that, they can capture images
Speaker 1: at the same rate as film. In fact, the Attack
Speaker 1: of the Clones was filmed with a camera that could
Speaker 1: do that, and that was the as a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: the very first major movie as I'm not if I'm
Speaker 1: not mistaken that used digital filmmaking. And that's actually that's
Speaker 1: that one of the reasons that you might go to
Speaker 1: this process. You know, you might say, well, hey, why
Speaker 1: would somebody use if there's equality to film that makes
Speaker 1: it different from shooting it directly to a digital version
Speaker 1: of of the movie, why would you do that? Well,
Speaker 1: one of the biggest reasons, um, other than its flexibility,
Speaker 1: is the cost, because there is a huge cost savings. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't have to buy film. Yeah for one thing.
Speaker 1: That's that's exactly right. And film unlike unlike digital. You know, digital,
Speaker 1: if if something is actually there's a lot of reasons
Speaker 1: why you would do this, but film, that is one
Speaker 1: of the bigger ones. Right, Film you can only you
Speaker 1: can only use once, that's right. So you buy, you
Speaker 1: have to buy way more film than you're actually going
Speaker 1: to end up using in your movie, because of course,
Speaker 1: you know you're not every take is going to be perfect,
Speaker 1: and you want to make the best film possible, which
Speaker 1: means you have to do lots and lots and lots
Speaker 1: of takes to give yourself as many choices as possible
Speaker 1: in the post production process, which we'll get into in
Speaker 1: another podcast. Um, you wanna give as many choices as
Speaker 1: possible once you reach that point so that you don't
Speaker 1: have to go back and do anything again, or do
Speaker 1: a new scene or anything like that. So, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a huge cost buying you know, ten times more film
Speaker 1: easy than you're ever going to Actually ten times is
Speaker 1: not even close to how much film some of these
Speaker 1: these movies required in order to bring a two hour
Speaker 1: film to theaters. Um. And also distribution. If you're distributing
Speaker 1: a film, that means you have to actually produce. If
Speaker 1: you have to buy more film to to produce your movie,
Speaker 1: you have to actually make another print of it, yes,
Speaker 1: and then ship that to a physical copy theater. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if you have you know, multiple screens, say for
Speaker 1: one of the blockbuster films, right, then you have to say,
Speaker 1: you know, have your local screen megaplex and six of
Speaker 1: those screens are showing the same blockbuster movie. Then you've
Speaker 1: got six copies for that one theater alone. Right, that's expensive. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the other another really big problem with using film
Speaker 1: versus digital I'm not I mean again, film you get
Speaker 1: that certain quality with it, but digital you can see
Speaker 1: immediately how well that take came out. Well. Yeah. Anybody
Speaker 1: who has a digital camera still camera, who has used
Speaker 1: film in the past is fully aware of the differences
Speaker 1: of being able to, you know, go back and look
Speaker 1: at the screen and see what you just shot, versus well,
Speaker 1: I'll see this after I get it back from the
Speaker 1: developer and two or three weeks and then I'll see
Speaker 1: whether or not that that picture actually came out. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The immediate feedback to digital is a huge boon to filmmakers.
Speaker 1: They can see, like, you know, you shoot a scene,
Speaker 1: you take a look at the scene immediately after you
Speaker 1: shoot it, and then you decide whether or not you
Speaker 1: need another take. Uh. With film, you you all you
Speaker 1: can go on is what you saw as the as
Speaker 1: the take was going. But you can't really you know,
Speaker 1: maybe the camera wasn't aligned properly, and maybe the light
Speaker 1: wasn't quite right for the film to capture it. Um,
Speaker 1: but you wouldn't know until you get a chance to
Speaker 1: look at it later on in daily's and that you know.
Speaker 1: By then you're like, you may find out that you
Speaker 1: have to go back and reshoot a scene that can
Speaker 1: push your whole production back. So yeah, digital definitely helps
Speaker 1: during the movie making process to keep things on schedule.
Speaker 1: Assuming you're not someone like Stanley Kubrick, who would do
Speaker 1: a hundred takes of a single scene, whether or not
Speaker 1: it was perfect the first time, that would be immaterial. Um, well,
Speaker 1: you never know, there might be something in the other
Speaker 1: and the other versions one of the other takes. It's
Speaker 1: oh yeah, I never even intended that, but look at that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another difference between digital and film, which we mentioned really quickly,
Speaker 1: assuming that you're watching a digital movie on some sort
Speaker 1: of digital uh playback device as opposed to because some
Speaker 1: digital movies are converted into film, right, You shoot it
Speaker 1: digitally and then you transfer it to film. In fact,
Speaker 1: a lot of movies have to be done this way
Speaker 1: because not every theater has a digital projector, so you
Speaker 1: have to convert it into film. But assuming that you're
Speaker 1: watching it from a digital sort and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: like a digital projector, it's gonna look the same way
Speaker 1: the hundredth time it's shown as it did the first
Speaker 1: time it was shown. So if you want those little
Speaker 1: burn marks, you have to put them in there when
Speaker 1: you're right. Yeah, the little hair that's going across the screen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: with film, film degrades over time and overuse. So the
Speaker 1: hundredth time of film is shown, a physical film is
Speaker 1: shown is gonna look different than the first time because
Speaker 1: the film is gonna have some wear and tear on it.
Speaker 1: So that's another thing that the filmmakers taken too consideration.
Speaker 1: So the digital process is different when it goes to
Speaker 1: these photo sites. The light when it's hitting the photo sites,
Speaker 1: that then gets converted into ones and zeros. Some of
Speaker 1: the digital cameras have something called a beam splitter, splits
Speaker 1: the light into component colors. All right, Yeah, So the
Speaker 1: component colors of video are red, green, and blue. And
Speaker 1: we've actually had some listeners right in with a related
Speaker 1: question asking why is that considered the primary colors in film? Why? Red, green,
Speaker 1: and blue? Because in art class I learned that the
Speaker 1: primary colors were red, blue, and yellow, because red and
Speaker 1: yellow make orange, and yellow, blue make green, and blue
Speaker 1: and red make purple, and a whole bunch makes a
Speaker 1: big mess. Um. And the answer to that is the
Speaker 1: difference between additive and subtractive colors. Now we've we've talked
Speaker 1: about this in the past two we got into the cables,
Speaker 1: right right, So let's I'll talk about subtractive colors first,
Speaker 1: because that's that's kind of the you know, you go
Speaker 1: to elementary school and you learn your primary colors red, blue,
Speaker 1: and yellow, and you get a little color wheel and everything, um,
Speaker 1: subtractive and it sounds it's first it seems kind of
Speaker 1: um counterintuitive because you think of it as subtractive, but
Speaker 1: you're adding pigments together to make new colors. But in
Speaker 1: subtractive you start with white. All right. That's that's that's
Speaker 1: one end of the spectrum. And the more colors you add,
Speaker 1: the closer to black you get. So if you were
Speaker 1: to add all the different colors together, you would eventually
Speaker 1: get black. Um. And also I do know that if
Speaker 1: you want to be really technical, you you really should
Speaker 1: say mentioned to cyan and yellow, not red, blue and yellow. Um. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: for for print, for print and for for photos and
Speaker 1: things like that. Um. Now when we're talking about film
Speaker 1: and we go into red, green, and blue, that's because
Speaker 1: we're talking about light. When you're using light, you start
Speaker 1: with black. Black is the absence of light, so you
Speaker 1: have no light. UM. If you use different colors of lights,
Speaker 1: say red and uh and green, then you start If
Speaker 1: you add those together, that's when you start getting, um,
Speaker 1: different colors. You so instead of being red, yellow, and blue,
Speaker 1: it's red, green, and blue. And those are the colors
Speaker 1: that when you start adding the different colors of light together,
Speaker 1: you start getting the other colors of the spectrum. If
Speaker 1: you add all of them together, you get white. So
Speaker 1: you start with black and you end with white, as
Speaker 1: opposed to the subtractive method where you start with white
Speaker 1: and you end the black. So it's all all has
Speaker 1: to do with the nature of light and color. Yep.
Speaker 1: And uh. You know anybody really who's messed with their
Speaker 1: computer settings and started pooling around with the little color
Speaker 1: settings on your computer. When you're you know, doing some
Speaker 1: kind of project UM and you have the different sliders,
Speaker 1: you probably have an idea of what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: But now I have to confess I am singing Ludwig
Speaker 1: von Drake's Spectrum song in my head. The red deal
Speaker 1: gree red, blue, blue, blue, red. Can't do that or
Speaker 1: Disney will sue me. Um you kept it under five seconds? Yes,
Speaker 1: all right? Yeah, like like there's any hard and fest
Speaker 1: rule to that. Um So. Anyway, with a digital camera,
Speaker 1: a lot of these have beam splitters in them that
Speaker 1: split the light into their various component the red, the green,
Speaker 1: and the blue, and then has they have dedicated photo
Speaker 1: sites that record that information converted into digital information. All
Speaker 1: of that together combined makes the picture. The reason for
Speaker 1: splitting the beam into the component colors is to try
Speaker 1: and stay as true to the original image as possible,
Speaker 1: so that what what you see in front of you
Speaker 1: with your own eyes when you're capturing it with your
Speaker 1: camera is what you would theoretically see when you're playing
Speaker 1: it back. Because we all know, you know, cameras can
Speaker 1: alter the way things look to you. Like you can
Speaker 1: see something that you saw with your own eyes, and
Speaker 1: then you see a picture of it and you think, wow,
Speaker 1: that looks that looks different than the way I remember it.
Speaker 1: And there are a couple of different reasons for that.
Speaker 1: Some of that is because we're human and sometimes our
Speaker 1: memories are not so so accurate. But others is that
Speaker 1: the cameras can kind of alter the way something looks. Um.
Speaker 1: I had another point there with that too, But now
Speaker 1: I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna falter around until I come
Speaker 1: back up with it. Do you need a minute? Yeah,
Speaker 1: vamp Oh, so you know this, it's funny. Uh not
Speaker 1: that this is on topic, but you know, we had
Speaker 1: meant to cover a whole bunch of other stuff in
Speaker 1: this podcast, and we are getting very close to time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think this may be how movie cameras work. Well, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna, I'm determined to get a little further in it.
Speaker 1: First of all, steady cam because I said that we
Speaker 1: were going to talk about it, okay, because we didn't
Speaker 1: even touch on the higher definition video cameras or any
Speaker 1: of that stuff. Yeah, well, we'll have to do one
Speaker 1: where we'll talk specifically about higher definition video cameras, because
Speaker 1: the red one is the one you wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about specifically. Yeah, but that's that's fine, because you know
Speaker 1: there's plenty more where this came from. Yeah. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: the nice thing is this is, uh, well, we'll have
Speaker 1: fodder for future episodes, and don't worry, folks, we will
Speaker 1: space them out so that you won't get exhausted. It's
Speaker 1: not how movies work after all. Um, So steady cam
Speaker 1: is that was an approach to Remember when I said that,
Speaker 1: you know, cameras were kind of in a fixed position
Speaker 1: until they came up with things like dollies and cranes
Speaker 1: and eventually things like helicopter shots and stuff. Um, they
Speaker 1: still it's still kind of hard. You didn't have as
Speaker 1: much freedom to follow actors as a director might like.
Speaker 1: And so that brings us to around nineteen seventies six,
Speaker 1: and yeah, that's that was. That was when steady cam
Speaker 1: became an actual like thing thing. The development of the
Speaker 1: state cam preceded that. And Garrett Brown is the guy
Speaker 1: who invented that. Was back in the early seventies. He
Speaker 1: started working on this in was the Steadicam brand became official.
Speaker 1: And that is a system that consists essentially of a
Speaker 1: vest and articulated arm and a rig that holds the camera.
Speaker 1: And the rig is essentially a pole with some elements
Speaker 1: on it that at the top, usually at the top
Speaker 1: you had the camera and at the base you might
Speaker 1: have a monitor so that the camera operator can see
Speaker 1: what the camera is capturing because it's not gonna be
Speaker 1: an eye level necessarily, and a battery to power the monitor,
Speaker 1: and uh it what it does is it increases the
Speaker 1: the amount of inertia that the camera experiences because you know,
Speaker 1: a camera is not that heavy and the tiniest motions
Speaker 1: can create these jerky reactions. And that's what you know,
Speaker 1: most filmmakers want to avoid because it kind of takes
Speaker 1: the audience out of the action at point of order. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just like to point out it depends on the camera.
Speaker 1: Some of those cameras are pretty heavy. Yeah, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: saying relatively relatively, like alright, compared to say a hum
Speaker 1: Vy now, which obviously has an elephant greater amount of
Speaker 1: inertionvved through the Humvy than it would with a camera
Speaker 1: um or say compared to a cameraman. Most cameras are
Speaker 1: going to be lighter than that. So the steady cam thing,
Speaker 1: it creates a bigger access that creates it changes the
Speaker 1: cinero gravity for a camera, and it reduces the jumps
Speaker 1: and jitters that you would get, uh as you move
Speaker 1: around with a camera. It's more or less like a
Speaker 1: system of shock absorbers. Yeah, because it's it's giving with
Speaker 1: the weight of the camera, and so it keeps it
Speaker 1: steady when all the world is bouncing around it. Right
Speaker 1: as the camera's weight makes it move downward. The the
Speaker 1: articulated arm actually has some springs in it, like shock
Speaker 1: absorbers that act in an opposite upward direction, which means
Speaker 1: that the camera itself kind of remains semi level. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's still going to be some movement, but it's it's
Speaker 1: much more smooth than it would be if it were
Speaker 1: held against the shoulder of a camera operator. Yes, so
Speaker 1: it's a it's a really interesting and useful invention. Um.
Speaker 1: My favorite steady camp shot ever is in Goodfellas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a five minute single take of following a character
Speaker 1: through a restaurant, and it is absolutely brilliant. Scorsese was
Speaker 1: a master as far as I'm concerned with that shot.
Speaker 1: That was amazing. Um, But there are a lot of
Speaker 1: other examples of steady camp shots as well, So I
Speaker 1: had to get that in there because I mentioned it before. Also,
Speaker 1: there's microphones. Yes, we're going to mention that we were,
Speaker 1: but I think we're going to have to we'll have
Speaker 1: to do an EPI so specifically about microphones and sound
Speaker 1: on film that will be in the future. Folks. We're
Speaker 1: gonna wrap this up because yeah, we're hitting the thirty
Speaker 1: minute mark now. So this was a good discussion about
Speaker 1: film and digital video cameras for in the filmmaking business.
Speaker 1: In our next episode, we will be talking about the
Speaker 1: post production side of making movies, and we might get
Speaker 1: into a little bit of sound stuff there. Um, not
Speaker 1: too much, probably because judging how long I talked about
Speaker 1: movie cameras, uh, it may end up being its own episode. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: other than the line, yeah, I mean to be honest,
Speaker 1: we're really scratching the surface of it. There's so much
Speaker 1: technology involved in the production of movies that we could, uh,
Speaker 1: we could probably do a pretty long series. We could
Speaker 1: probably really got into Yeah. Yeah, well, we'll talk about
Speaker 1: things like practical effects and digital effects and in future episodes.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we'll give them a nice rest for a while,
Speaker 1: so you guys can listen to some other podcast topics
Speaker 1: in the meantime. If you guys have any suggestions for us,
Speaker 1: or you know, you have a question or comment something
Speaker 1: like that, you can write us our email addresses tech
Speaker 1: stuff at how stuff works dot com and Chris and
Speaker 1: I will taught you again really soon. If you're a
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