VIDEO to FILM

J Costantini · February 8, 2006

Hi.

I'm using a dvx100 to shoot a short-film and I have a few doubts about framing and shutter speed.

1) what's the effect that a change in the shutter speed (from 1/48 to 1/500, for example) may create when I transfer the material to film? Is it better to use higher shutter speeds when you plan to transfer 24P video to film?

2) about composition... when I transfer the material to film, what area of the frame will be seen on a 35mm copy? what about a 16mm copy? where will it crop?

I don't have an anamorphic adapter and will be shooting 4x3. How should I compose?

Thanks a lot

Edited February 8, 2006 by nillo

Jamie Metzger · February 8, 2006

Hi.
I'm using a dvx100 to shoot a short-film and I have a few doubts about framing and shutter speed.

1) what's the effect that a change in the shutter speed (from 1/48 to 1/500, for example) may create when I transfer the material to film? Is it better to use higher shutter speeds when you plan to transfer 24P video to film?

2) about composition... when I transfer the material to film, what area of the frame will be seen on a 35mm copy? what about a 16mm copy? where will it crop?

I don't have an anamorphic adapter and will be shooting 4x3. How should I compose?

Thanks a lot

For your last question; I don't think shooting 4x3 is the best option, but then again I don't know what you are printing back onto? Super 16mm, 35mm?

David Mullen ASC · February 8, 2006

For your last question; I don't think shooting 4x3 is the best option, but then again I don't know what you are printing back onto? Super 16mm, 35mm?

Not many film recorders that go to 16mm neg anyway...

First of all, if you are shooting 24P or 60i, as long as your shutter speed is not longer in exposure time than the capture speed allows (i.e. no shutter at all, 1/24th at 24P or 1/60th at 60i) then there will be no affect on quality or the ability to film-out (in fact, there's no reason any shutter speed would affect the ability to film something out.) If you had a camera that allowed you to select an exposure time longer than would seem possible -- for example, if you are taking 24 pictures a second, how could a per frame exposure time be longer than 1/24th of a second, like 1/12th of a second? It can't. The camera is somehow reducing the capture rate to allow longer exposure times. So an interlaced-scan camera that allows 1/12, 1/4, etc. may be compromising on vertical resolution to give you those long exposure times.

So at 24P, anywhere from no shutter (1/24) to 1/48, 1/50, 1/60, 1/2000, whatever, has no afffect on anything but motion blur per frame. Now a film camera running at 24 fps with a 180 degree shutter would be an exposure time of 1/48, so selecting 1/48 in the DVX100 would be the closest in look to that; however, 1/50th and even 1/60th is close enough that it's not going to make a major difference in look (24P at 1/60 would be the same as shooting in film at 24 fps with a 144 degree shutter angle.) 1/24 would be rather smeary in faster movement and produce a look not typical for a 24 fps film camera. But in super low-light conditions, it may be a good compromise in order to get more exposure, especially if there isn't much movement in the frame. But normally you'd try and shoot near 1/48 at 24P.

35mm print projection is almost entirely widescreen, either 1.85 'flat' or 2.39 'scope'. 4x3 is 1.33. While you could transfer your 4x3 image inside a black windowbox inside the 1.85 projection area, you'd see black borders on the left & right side of the screen unless the curtains can be moved in.

Most commonly, 4x3 video is transferred to 35mm 1.37 Academy, which is then cropped during projection top & bottom to 1.85 : 1, so the best thing would be to compose 4x3 for cropping to 1.85 (or to 16x9, which is 1.78 and very close to 1.85.) Or shoot 16x9 with an anamorphic adaptor.

Scott Fritzshall · February 8, 2006

Most commonly, 4x3 video is transferred to 35mm 1.37 Academy, which is then cropped during projection top & bottom to 1.85 : 1, so the best thing would be to compose 4x3 for cropping to 1.85 (or to 16x9, which is 1.78 and very close to 1.85.) Or shoot 16x9 with an anamorphic adaptor.

Would you really recommend he shoot with an intent to crop? Cropping MiniDV to 1.85 would leave him with ~390 lines of vertical resolution; it hardly seems worth the cost of a film out if that's all he's got to put on it.

Then again, I've heard that they've made some good advances in upsampling algorithms, so maybe it wouldn't be as bad as I'd imagine.

David Mullen ASC · February 9, 2006

Would you really recommend he shoot with an intent to crop? Cropping MiniDV to 1.85 would leave him with ~390 lines of vertical resolution; it hardly seems worth the cost of a film out if that's all he's got to put on it.

Then again, I've heard that they've made some good advances in upsampling algorithms, so maybe it wouldn't be as bad as I'd imagine.

Well, like I said, it's the most common approach used for DV-to-35mm transfers like for films like "Personal Velocity", "Tadpole", or "November". Whether it is a good idea or not, that's a matter of debate. 35mm projection is widescreen these days. You transfer all the lines of video to 35mm; it's just that the projector isn't showing all of them when masking to 1.85. It's the same problem when blowing up regular 16mm to 35mm.

Releasing 4x3 windowboxed inside 1.85 is looked down upon by distributors, although "Blair Witch Project" was transferred to film that way. But it could justify the 4x3 frame because the audience is supposed to be aware that they are watching "found" video and 16mm footage, rather than seeing a window onto "reality" like most movies.

Anamorphic adaptors improve pixel resolution but not necessarily sharpness in the transfer.

Clive Tobin · February 9, 2006

...2) about composition... when I transfer the material to film, what area of the frame will be seen on a 35mm copy? what about a 16mm copy? where will it crop?...

Our video to 16mm film transfers record the entire video frame (that is, larger than what you see on a typical overscanned monitor) on the film, in the standard size and position of conventionally shot film footage. So depending on your monitor, you should see the same area of the video frame on the screen. You may even see more if your monitor is one of the old style ones with excessive overscan.

35mm will follow if I ever get caught up and am able to finish building the machine. Again, the full video frame width will correspond to the size of a conventionally shot negative. The height will depend on whether we are recording ordinary 4:3 or 16:9 video. Cropping in projection is another can of worms, as many theaters don't even use a rectangular aperture plate, it may be bought undersized and then filed out in a trapezoid to give a rectangular screen outline when projecting downwards at an angle to the screen. So the top of the screen may be using the full normal width of the print, but the bottom may be using less, but expanded by the projection angle to fill the same width as at the top.

We are running a re-introductory special of 25 cents per 16mm foot with your provided stock and processing. I have been involved with video to film transfer since the 1960s but we got out of the business some 10+ years ago. However, I missed it and have another improved setup now using a Palmer SW3 pin-registered camera, some digital signal processing, etc.

Shameless plug: this can all be admired (?) on my website at http://www.tobincinemasystems.com/page48.html . Cheers.