Undercranking

[Kevin Desson]

Looking for suggestions of a good framerate for shooting undercranked, to mimic films of the silent era. The director wants to shoot 20fps and I know back in the day 18fps was common, but I don't want to stray too far from 24fps, just enough so the effect is visable to the audience.

 

 

 

Thanks,

 

 

Kevin

[Stephen Williams]

Looking for suggestions of a good framerate for shooting undercranked, to mimic films of the silent era. The director wants to shoot 20fps and I know back in the day 18fps was common, but I don't want to stray too far from 24fps, just enough so the effect is visable to the audience.

Thanks,

Kevin

 

Hi,

 

I would hand crank the camera aiming for 18fps. If this is for telecine then also run the telecine slow otherwise you will speed up the action. I did a test in PAL running the telecine at 16 2/3 frs.

 

Stephen

[Olex Kalynychenko]

Looking for suggestions of a good framerate for shooting undercranked, to mimic films of the silent era. The director wants to shoot 20fps and I know back in the day 18fps was common, but I don't want to stray too far from 24fps, just enough so the effect is visable to the audience.

Thanks,

Kevin

 

I had similar test. I use Konvas-1 russian 35 mm cine camera with hand crank.

You can have speeds up to 28 fps with hand crank.

And the footages have good quality.

 

The " old style " of footages have a few sides, the low speed, the not stable speed, soft lens and other.

 

The otrher idea, use cine camera with mechanical spring motor.

This can be russian 35 mm AKS-1 camera. This is camera have old style lenses too.

[David Mullen ASC]

Remember that silent movies were not supposed to look sped-up -- if they were shot at 18 fps, they were supposed to be projected at that speed (although there were no strict standards since projectors were also hand-cranked, and some projectionists overcranked to speed up the movie and get more showings in per day.)

 

Also, many silent era movies were actually shot near 24 fps, not all were 18 fps. I saw a contact print off of the original negative of Valentino's "The Eagle" (restored by Kevin Brownlow) that looks correct, speed-wise, at 24 fps.

 

Anyway, try 18 fps but telecine at 18 fps.

[Kevin Desson]

Thanks for the replies. I am aware that silent films shot at 18fps would have been intended to be projected at or near that same frame rate, which is why I'm hesitant to shoot anything less than 22fps (using normal telecine) because I don't want the action to be overly sped-up.

 

Also, could you please explain the effect of shooting 18fps and doing a telecine at that same fram rate.

 

Thanks again,

 

Kevin

[David Mullen ASC]

Also, could you please explain the effect of shooting 18fps and doing a telecine at that same fram rate.

 

The speed would be normal but the motion "steppier" due to fewer motion samples per second. Plus there would be some judder / pulldown cadence from the conversion to 60i.

 

You should look at the opening of "Avalon", which was shot at 16 fps and had every other frame optically printed twice to restore the speed to 24 fps, a practice that used to be done to restore silent movies that had to be projected only on modern 24 fps projectors (most silent era films are restored to be shown on variable speed projectors so this conversion isn't necessary.) The motion has an interesting steppy cadence to it.