Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

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I'm not a cinematographer but having gone to USC I met and talked with some (both aspiring and those who came back to give guest lectures). There was a digital projection system back in the 80's which had 60fps video, the output was much more 'real' in the sense of looking at the screen seemed more like you were looking at real life, and it jarred folks. One of the directors who was giving a lecture on the future of film felt it was the future but acknowledged the following counterpoint.

24FPS celluloid, with its known gamut limitations and temporal resolution creates an ambiance for the film. This is not unlike the way that canvas and oils create a certain ambiance about an oil painting. Now is the future of 'art' digital printers that can reproduce what an artist might have painted in oils, something they can paint using a Wacom tablet and Illustrator? No, not really. The medium is part of the art, its part of the palette.

Do digital films at high FPS have a place? Of course they do (art is pretty liberal in what it will accept as a medium :-) but will 24fps celluloid be consigned to the history books? Answering that question is less obvious.

The change from hand cranked to mechanically operated shutters was a clear win for cinematographers because it took some randomness out of what the audience would see, talking pictures did the same. The change from celluloid to video is however a medium change not a technique change.

I believe the comment at the particular talk I attended was "If Leonardo could have taken a picture of Mona Lisa instead of painting her, would it be in the Louvre today?" Can't easily answer that.

This sounds like an argument similar to the one lamenting the advent of digital photography because the grain of the film no longer provided the same effect in photos. But although the grain effect is available for digital photos, it is seldom seen.

Your claim "But although the grain effect is available for digital photos, it is seldom seen." is a fallacy. I'm sure if someone wanted a grain effect in their photograph they would be more likely to actually use film rather than use a digital simulation of what film would have looked like had they chosen to do that. I don't see wide spread use of the 'water color' effect either but people still make water color pictures. It is just that they start out with water colors.

I was rebutting the claim that shooting film on celluloid would 'go away' because there were higher frame rate technologies available. I don't believe that conclusion is supported by either current or past experience the art world. It was not a 'lament', it merely challenged the reasoning that 24 fps celluloid movies would be replaced in their entirety by higher frame rate ones.

> Your claim "But although the grain effect is available for digital photos, it is seldom seen." is a fallacy.

Yet it's factually true.

> I was rebutting the claim that shooting film on celluloid would 'go away'

Perhaps I did not choose the best words.

It will not disappear from the face of the Earth, of course. But it will be relegated to "retro" or nostalgic movies, etc.

It depends on how quickly the new, less limited technologies are adopted by the big names in cinema, and of course by how quickly the old generation, accustomed to the old way a film "is supposed to look", will retrain their taste or die off. :)

a grain effect added to a digital photo is a kind of affectation, an artifice that is not intimately connected to the process of making the image, included as a stylistic decision; possibly an afterthought. it seems dishonest (not necessarly wrong) but it is part of a panoply of effects that can be applied that constitute what's possible with digital. there's no need to 'lament' since each medium has its own panoply of possiblities: photochemical emulsion gets to be 'honest' about grain, however, and digital does not, since with emulsion grain is not an 'effect': it is what emulsion, in fact, consists of. the same cannot be said about digital.

there are analogous issues between film and video, and even between older video formats and digital video. the future of movies no doubt includes a choice of frame rates, frame resolutions, interlace vs. progressive, and aspect ratios as creative choices. they will be part of the panoply of possibilities that artists will be able to use.

n.b.: in the silent era, there was no real standard film speed, and the film was often exhibited (in the days of hand crank projectors) at varying speeds to suit the content of the image and the music that was invariably played live alongside it. for example, romantic scenes might be cranked a bit more slowly; comedy scenes could be cranked a bit faster. it was only when the industry started to be professionalized that silent films were shot a 16 or 18 fps. with the sound era, the fps was upped to 24 partily to improve the fidelity of the optical sound. most projectors have for decades now multi-leaf shutters which actually interrupt the light path as many as 3 times per frame elimitate the perception of flicker.

...interlace vs. progressive...

Please, no. Interlacing doesn't have the same nostalgic effect as a 24fps frame rate, and only serves to lower video bandwidth for devices that can't handle a progressive image at the desired frame rate. It's a tradeoff between vertical and temporal resolution that works well for limited technology because it preserves the sharpness of still images. Basically everything except broadcast TV can handle 1080p60, though, so let's let the hack die.

generally speaking, i'm no fan of interlace either, but my argument still stands that it could be used expressively -- in other words, to enhance the experience of the content for appropriate material. as an example, it might be a good choice if you were making a program and you wanted to exploit the impression that the viewer was watching a tv broadcast from a few decades ago.

There's simulated and real. I see scanlines all the time for CRTs appearing in cartoons, which has nothing to do with the actual format of the video playing.

I definitely agree that no option should be removed from the palette available to artists, just as long as the final delivery medium doesn't require deinterlacing.

That is an argument of professional taste. This is different. Many non-professionals unconciously associate the more realistic quality of video with TV movies, soap opera's and game shows. (e.g. 60fps video is a sign of lower quality content.)

The same was not true for still photography. It certainly is an open question on whether a negative association with Video will go away or if it will remain.

Instagram is showing that people do like low-fi effects.

But I agree with you -- this is a mere affectation, a slightly way of turning common images into something evocative. And this becomes much easier to achieve when starting with a high resolution image.

I think any picture Leonardo would have taken would be a significant cultural artifact, as would any telephone he built, or any computer he made.

Now we have higher framerate digital and post-production teal and orange effects.

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