1/60 th sec ——> 24 fps
Don’t understand where to start with. Where does this urge to learn everything involved in film making comes from? Can I control it? Will it really help me in becoming a better director? Why does it keep bothering me? Why the heck I am writing this article? Am I trying to show off my mediocre skills or stupidity? Why do I have to convince people close to me that everything in life is predetermined? Why do these people have tough time understanding it? Why can’t we have acceptance in life? May be I am in a mood to ask too many questions today? But to whom? Don’t know? Please take it light it’s a part of journey of a film student.
Lets start. Cinematography is one of the things which captures my imagination..Lot of questions keep coming to me..Why the hell it is like this and has remained like this since its invention? Why can’t we have 12 fps or say 16 fps instead of 24 fps a question just came this very second? May be coz will have to change the whole system. But whats wrong in it? Won’t it help a film maker like me to make films cheaper or the industry on the whole? This is a distraction please ignore it. One of such questions, which came to my mind was if the film is exposed for 24th of second in a film camera, why does not the image look blur?This was last year before I moved back to India. Folks familiar with photography can imagine that its extremely slow shutter speed, exposing the film too long that the impression of a moving object would blur the image (similar to progressive scan in digital photography). Had a lengthy discussion with an assistant director friend of mine, who had worked for 6-7 years in so called Bollywood. He has a valid point. He says I remember the frames in the edit they all look fine, the facial expressions are all very clear. But then a question pops out, does a fast moving object like a train look clear in a still frame? Don’t know. Then I played a dvd on the computer and made a frame still. Everything was clear no blur image. But it was a facial expression. What about a fast moving object like a train? I found out it was indeed blur. I realized that I am missing something but not sure what. Google search on the topic took me to a link. Its was about the new King Kong film. The topic was, why does not the computer graphic work look real for e.g. the scene where King Kong is on the top of the tower with planes flying around him. The footage looks unreal coz everything in the frame is sharp..the fast moving plane, king kong’s motion etc..The human mind subconsciously does not relate to sharp images as it is accustomed to blurry fast moving object in the films, but can’t nail it. It is a technical error while doing the graphics? Then the article explained why it happens. The reason lies in the mechanism of the film camera. The 24 fps does not mean exposure is 1/24th of a sec. There are additional steps other than exposing the film, like moving the film and holding it, which take time. 1/24th of a sec actually gives an exposure of around 1/60th of a sec. But why is 1/60th sec exposure necessary? The answer I thought has lot to do with our SLR still cameras. 1/60 is the slowest shutter speed, which could capture clear human emotions. For eg a character starts to smile during the shoot. The smile spreads across his face during the click. The image will not look blur and would be crisp. But if u took the same pic at 1/30th sec it would look blur. Since the films were essentially about humans, their emotions, dialogues, the facial muscle movement is the basic constraint, which can be nailed at 1/60. Some might ask why the need for minimum largest possible exposure time? One of the answer would be to work in minimum light. It made me aware that the film/movie cameras are extension of our still cameras. The thing which unites them is the medium FILM! FILM is a very important word. What’s its importance? The answer why do u call a movie FILM? Anyways it’s again a distraction, which came from no where. The other question, which comes out is why was the image behaving like it did in case of 1/30 th and 1/60th of a sec. Again thrown into a phase of questioning? May be coz of the chemical composition of the FILM, which takes its own time and light to create an impression. Or it could be a chicken and hen story. May be it’s designed for the still camera. My bet would be on the FILM, that it came first then the camera.
While shooting for Brahm I had to flash at the camera during a particular shot where press photographer were supposed to click actor furiously. Then again a question arised what will happen in the final result when the film gets developed? Will these flash show up? There is no definite answer to this. Its all luck? I got a chance to talk with our still photographer Shailendra Sharma and asked him the importance of synchronized flash in still photography. What would happen if the flash is synchronized say at 1/60th of a sec and the pic was taken at 1/30th and 1/125th of a sec? I kind of guessed the result, but was not sure why and how exactly it happens? Shailendra told me the secret. It lied in the mechanism of the shutter operation of the still camera? May be its time to stop..This incident helped me understand the shutter mechanism of still and movie camera, how it is different from still camera.. Now learnt that the exposure time in modern cameras Arri 435, 535 and may be Arri 3 has gone up to 1/48th sec and the images look crisp!OK I will stop now..
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Manjeet: Nice questions and nice thought process.
Hey are we witnessing growing up of a camera friendly director like Govind Nihalani:)
After a long time but a nice one:d
RK, Saw Govind Nahliani at MAMI and read his article on the brouchers the importance of understanding the art of cinematography for a director.
Mr. Pavan Kaul is also a great inspiration, where I go with me doubts, which keep arising time n again A lot of our discussions are about understanding cinematography and treatment. Camera dept head Hiroo Keswani and camera assistants Akilesh and Shubra are of great help. I keep eating their head all the time:)
Manjeet: you are lucky that you got chance to sit with Pawan Kaul, who is a director, knows much about camera work.
Yes Sir, its a real honour. He has the ability to visualize the impact of a lens, camera movement etc. He taught me the diff between zoom in and track in. Lot of other things for eg:- He was talking about a scene in one of his film, where the camera was moving in on tracks and the zoom lense was used. The zoom was on the character’s face. Coz the focal length changed the angle of the lense also changed so did the background size:) The actor was surprised to see the background changing its size, while he is steady. This was in early or mid 90s, nowadays its commonly seen. Lot of such small things make u realize the power of cinema.
Manjeet,good to hear u after a long time. i thought u will be blogging regularly about the film Bhram. guess that was my bhram :-? N about frames n shutter speed, now u have confused me more with so many things at one go. will have to google few things i guess.
Manjeet: thats true. Camera work can do wonder. That may be the reason after some films Satyajit
Ray, started handling camera himself.
Bhram’s shooting is finished? There is no follow up on PFC abt the film and it suggests you all have been quite busy in the shooting. Were you in Goa also where some law and order problems occured
while shooting?
A motion picture camera also works on the basics of SLR camera. Modern SLR cameras can take up to 10 frames/sec but a motion picture camera can take at much higher or lower speeds. The shutter speed tells you the time in seconds for which the frame was exposed to the light.
For general info:
Slow motion or the fast paced scenes are filmed by varying the frames/sec.
if you want a sequence to be in slow motion, you shoot it with a higher frame rate..lets say 48 fps or even higher. Then you play that film at 24 fps and u see the slow motion.
For pace you do the opposite. shoot at lower frame rates than 24 fps and while playing use 24 fps, its gonna look faster.
Phoenix: Its difficult to take out time and blog, while the shoot is on. We hardly get time to complete required sleep.
RK: Actually the incident you are talking about happened at Gorai beach, Mumbai. Some localities drove an Auto straight into the jimmy jib, dismantaling it. The camera hit Shailendra’s body and fell on the ground. Then they started hitting one of our ADs prasad, who started bleeding. The police also sided with the localities. It got nasty. But we dealt with it in a mature and diplomatic way, did nothing, left the location and registered FIR in Borivili. Then media was called it was in newspapers, those people were arrested. I wanted to write about but had no time during the shoot. Now its too late its already in the media.
I am thinking of writing an article about the directors, who venture out into other aspects of film making other than direction. May be few well known directors in world cinema.
RK: Have u seen Gopi Gayen Bhaga Bayen? Ray collabration with the DP creats a magical effects optically (no CGs)in the mid 60s. The film itself is way ahead of its time. A brilliant example of visual story telling looking through the lense!!
Pavan ji is planning to shoot an experimental film may be in HD. It would be more like pure passion of going to an outdoor location, shooting with minimum crew and untrained actors:) Don’t know when it would start.
The other thing he wants to do is to shoot the entire film using a single prime lense. I guess 50mm would be a good choice.
manjeet, good to see a post from you.. it’s been a while. from the sounds of it, you’re having an awesome time learning, yearning, and of course, earning
way to go! 
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Its nice to hear from you manjeet…very informative blog and the fantastic thing is that when you learn something new you are teaching so many others.. and somewhat encourging us to do little of our own search… well at least its like that for me… so keep working hard, learn more and hope you keep us part of your journey…
sometimes i feel the director should not go over board with his tech gyaan….infact should also be naive enough to ask the DOP for the impossible even if the DOP thinks the Director is nuts and does not know a thing….i feel it helps other techies to think out of the box by pushing them to realize ur mad dreams…little knowledge is dangerous i agree…but a lot of it too is not fun i feel….DOP ko camera sambhalne do na bhai….you let him know what you want…How he does it let him figure it out….By this i do not say you must not know abt it…just that keep that space…to explore and to be naive and stupid…it helps….you might fall
Vasan,
The only rule which applies in film making is that, there r no rules.( Someone said that don’t know who it was. )
The closet analogy that I have realised is that of a scientist engineer, who wants to do pathbreaking research, has good ideas, but does not enjoy solving mathematical equations. At every step he has to consult a fellow researcher to solve the problems. He is not able to visualize an impact of a parameter in non linear differential equation or say the results if the variables change.
Made it sound too complicated I guess. Its something, which needs to be felt not forced upon.Does not have to be absolute neccesary.
Manjeet,
I may be wrong, and anyone is free to correct me if I am, but I believe the reason the film camera shoots at 24fps(frames per second) is because you project the image at 24fps. The reason you project the image at 24fps is because of the persistence of vision. We can retain an image for 1/14th of a second. At the rate of 24fps, the image doesn’t look blurry because the earlier image has been wiped over by the subsequent one within 1/24th of a second i.e. faster than the persistence of 1/14th of a second. Now if you did shoot at less than 24fps and project it at 24fps the entire thing would look faster than it is and vice-versa. For eg. if you shot at 16fps(like most Charlie Chaplin films were as films back then were projected at 16fps) and projected at 24fps, everything would be faster by 1/3rd. That is why Chaplin films look all fast now, they aren’t supposed to be the way that we see them. Why film is projected at 24fps is a different issue. I’m not completely sure but apparently projecting at 24fps gives you just the right amount of true motion i.e. not too blurry and neither too sharp. Which is why televison always looks sharper as video runs at 25fps. I hope this is the answer to your question.
Abzee dear, If I remember correctly the persistence of vision is 1/10th of a sec. The answers to me questions are there in the post itself:)
Its a known fact that if u shoot at a lower frame rate and project it at 24fps the images wud appear to move faster. That has nothing to do with the post.
The post is kind of abstract trying to answer why the projection speed was set as 24 fps. The answer is it must have come from the still camera setting of 1/60 th of the sec, the maimum possible duration where the image looks clear, slower speeds like 1/30 sec wud make it blur. If u shoot at 20 fps and project it at same speed the images will look fine. But u will have to record the sound at the same speed, change the projection systems present all over the world. But the question is how much exposure will u get for a frame?It will have to be lesser than 1/60th of sec. The cameras today have exposures of 1/50 of a sec allowing more light,also the film stocks have developed to a great extend..may be it is possible to shoot with 20fps with current technology advances, without adding much burden on increased lighting requirements, but will have to change the whole system in place.
To clear your doubts If the image is blur in all frames projected at 24 fps it will not clear, it will still look blur. the best practical satisfaction u can get is pause a dvd and see the frame if its clear or blur. the fast moving objects will be blur but not the human face.
Yes the pal runs at 25fps n NTSC at 29 fps so again u can record at any frame rate n play at the same rate the result will be same:)
My bad Manjeet. I was obviously too eager to spout whatever little that I know.
I’ve just started to learn filmmaking. Until now, I used to sit on the other side of the fence as a film-critic.
I’m glad I’ve found a forum such as this.
BTW, which prosumer camcorder would you suggest for a short film? I’m planning to make one, given that my script(originally written as a play) has been passed over by everyone. I was thinking Panasonic NV-MD9000EN or Canon XL-1. Are these available in second hand(or used) and if yes, where?
Abzee, Your thought process is so right. It shows you were able to visualize, what I myself struggled with. I had to confront the same questions you put forward. It makes me feel happy if this article fires someones imagination.
The best way to clear your doubts is google them, thats what I have learned;)
Regarding the cameras I guess u cud use anything. NV-MD9000EN or Canon XL-1 should be a decent choice.
I have little idea of where to find them. try searching the internet, which u might have.