Shooting a television monitor.

[SoundGuy]

Greetings.

 

I am going to be shooting an old TV that will have a VCR hooked up to it and playing footage I shot with a mini-DV camera (I've transferred the DV footage to VHS...).

 

I will be shooting this TV with a 16mm Bolex Reflex camera.

 

Will I have a problem with raster bars flickering on the TV? How should I meter the TV? Any tips for this situation would be helpful.

 

B

Edited March 17, 2006 by SoundGuy

[Clive Tobin]

I am going to be shooting an old TV that will have a VCR hooked up to it ...

 

Yes, you are going to have a problem. You need to be using a camera with preferably a 180 degree shutter opening, and filming at 29.97 or 14.985 FPS. Our Milliframe Controller will give you the required speed, plus a Phase button to move the bar to the bottom of the monitor frame. Something like an Arri S or M with one of our crystal motors would give you the 180 shutter, plus the mirror reflex shutter will enable you to see where the bar is in the frame.

 

Your Bolex's 135 ? degree shutter will be giving a wide shutter bar at 29.97. You will have a wide bar that flickers through the frame if filming at 24 FPS.

 

The instruction manual that comes with our crystal motors goes into how you can do it with a Bolex by using a strange filming rate: http://www.tobincinemasystems.com/page114.html .

 

The present preferred method is to film from a thin flat-panel LCD monitor instead. I gather that you can film from it at any speed without shutter bar. Would it be feasible to rip the guts out of the old TV and put a new LCD monitor inside it?

[SoundGuy]

Thanks for the reply.

 

Would shooting at 30 fps slightly minimize the problem?

 

B

[Matthew Skala]

There is also a section in the American Cinematographer Manual about this. This is a book No cinematographer should be without :)

[Clive Tobin]

Would shooting at 30 fps slightly minimize the problem?...

 

Shooting at 29.970 FPS will give a wide but stationary shutter bar. Shooting at 30 will give a wide and moving slowly shutter bar. You won't know where it is at any given moment since the Bolex does not have a mirror shutter. I suppose if you shot a long take at 30, there would be occasions where the bar is at the bottom and not showing much.