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It’s fairly easy to convert a 23.976 project to 24 for a DCP — the main issue is resolving the sound to be in sync with the change. Image-wise, there is no difference, you are shooting whole frames and just playing them back at 24 fps instead of 23.976 fps.
Since HD broadcast is 59.94i, any true 24 fps material is shown at 23.976 fps. Any film shot at 24 fps is transferred to video for dailies at 23.976 fps as well. The main issue, as I said, is a sound sync issue, the speed of the recording and the speed of the playback, the sound mix, the mastering, etc. Someone has to keep track of that.
I made this mistake, or post did, on my first HD feature back in 2001 on the Sony F900, which had the option for either 23.976 or 24 fps. Since we were planning a film-out for projection, I shot at 24 fps. Later I asked the editor how the final mix was going and she said fine except that the sound was drifting on every reel and they were manually syncing it back. I realized that this was because I shot 24 but sound had been posted using a 23.976 video copies.
I don’t believe in compositional rules per se, but I try to avoid being just slightly angled on a flat wall — either I want to be flat to it, or obviously angled to it was a diagonal line effect.
That’s the effect of a mistimed shutter in a movie camera, though they might have used VFX to simulate it. You can see it in parts of the D-Day battle in “Saving Private Ryan”. When the shutter is mistimed, the film starts to get pulled-down to the next frame before the shutter is closed or while it is opening so a percentage of the exposure is streaked (the highlights, since they register first on film). I’m sure there are some post plug-ins for “shutter timing error VFX” or something.
There are hardly any movies where the same lens was used 100% of the time; especially not “Psycho” (mostly a 50mm)… nor “Touch of Evil” (mostly a 18.5mm). Supposedly “The Last Picture Show” was all shot on a 28mm but who can be sure? Most of “Paper Moon” was shot that way too, but Kovacs also used other lenses, like a 30mm.
Wes Anderson movies often mix in a zoom lens shot now & then so they aren’t 100% shot on one prime lens.
Ozu was famous for using a 50mm on every shot so he would be a good choice.
A diffusion filter has some element that causes light rays to be diffracted, throwing them out of focus, but has to have some clear areas to allow a sharp image to pass through — it’s the overlay of a sharp and soft image that creates diffusion.
There is another category of filters that have particles that spread and halate light: low-cons, fogs, and mist filters… but by virtual of having particles, they also cause some diffusion. Some are designed to soften less but lower contrast more, some are designed to soften more but halate less. Tiffen Smoque filters are a type of low-con filter that gives the impression of haze in the air if any bright areas are in the frame like a daytime window.
There is seemingly opposite advice regarding filter strength, one is that the tighter you go on the subject, the heavier the filter needs to be; the other is that the longer your focal length lens gets, the lighter the filter needs to be. But these are two separate issues, the first addresses the viewer’s need to see fine detail in wider shots versus close-ups of faces, the second is a technical issue that often the elements that blur focus on a filter get enlarged on longer focal lengths so you might have to reduce the strength. Ultimately this is why you have to make a judgement by eye.
If you want the look of diffusion filters, then use them! Just remember that it is safer to go lighter because you can easily make it heavier in post.
You were asking about the look of movies on home video pre-D.I. when color-timed interpositives printed from cut negative were used in telecines, not post-D.I. when uncut negative camera rolls were scanned for the D.I.
But the 90s were also the era of EXR Kodak stocks before Vision became the norm.
The recent “Dune” movies did this as well, scanned an interpositive or dupe negative laser recorded from the digital file, then scanned the film element. It’s a rather expensive technique, a feature-length 35mm intermediate costs about $10,000 for the stock alone, then there’s the laser recording and the scanning costs. Most people would opt for film grain simulation software (as “The Holdovers” did, using Live Grain and adding some subtle gate weave).
Telecine transfers of movies were primarily from a color-timed low-contrast interpositive struck as also a protection master after answer-printing. Projection prints are a bit too high in contrast to make a good element for transfer though they will be used if nothing better exists. Sometimes a cheaper option than an interpositive was to make a low-con print, a stock that Kodak discontinued eventually. I believe that interpositives were made on a step contact printer which was more stable than the high speed continuous contact printer used for release prints.
Sometimes, at some risk, the original negative was transferred for the final video master… but since it is not a color-corrected element, and sometimes has A and B rolls, plus has splices at every cut, it was not the first option though the quality was the highest.
It’s just my opinion, but the early daylight-balanced Kodak EXR stocks (50D and 250D) were definitely higher in contrast than the tungsten-balanced ones, but by the time of Vision-3, Kodak made them all pretty similar (almost too similar). The main change between Vision-2 and Vision-3 was the introduction of “micro grains” (very slow in speed) which increased detail by 1-stop in the extreme overexposure areas.
I use daylight stocks sometimes but whether I do a show that is, let’s say, 250D and 500T versus 200T and 500T, depends on a number of factors. As Roger says, you can pull the 85 filter on tungsten stocks for cooler shadows or a blue dusk effect, or let the scene itself be timed on the cool side (i.e. only partially correct for the missing 85 filter.)
So I tend to base the decision on whether it’s a movie that will lean cool or lean warm — if I’m doing a wintery movie in the woods, I’m more likely to stick to just tungsten stocks, if I’m doing a summer movie in the desert, I’m more likely to get the daylight stocks partly to avoid the 85 filter.
I worked 2nd Unit on Season 1 of “Westworld” matching footage from the first half of the shoot before they shutdown, and one DP used 50D whenever he could and the other DP shot everything on 500T — I’m not sure viewers saw a big difference…
Roger has switched to slower stocks in day exteriors in the past, like the use of 100T 5248 outside in “No Country for Old Men”.
There are DPs who use 500T for everything — John Seale for example, or Emmanuel Lubezki in “Tree of Life”.
There are arguments both ways. Yes, using 500T for everything in theory is more consistent… but often grain is easier to see in scenes with large areas of midtones (a blue sky for example) and day scenes can have more midtones than night scenes. You can also argue that our eyes perceive daytime exteriors as sharper and more clear, with more depth of field, than we do in interiors and night scenes.
On the other hand, 250D is so similar to 500T in look (and is just slightly finer-grained) that it’s a toss-up whether you need to switch. But I think 50D does tend to stand out when mixed with 500T — it’s SO clean. 200T is somewhere in between as you can imagine.
Just from a stock management angle, I’d try and limit yourself to two stocks though. Unless you really want that 50D look for select scenes.
Why? What difference does it make? If you want to learn good handheld staging and operating, why does it matter if only 50% of the movie was handheld versus 80% or 90% or 100%?
