TV Screen

jean-louis · January 23, 2004

I have to shoot some scenes with a TV screen in the background. How should I proceed to avoid that fleecking from the television? Should I shoot at 29.97 fps and that's it or are there any other cautions I should take?

I'll be using an Arri-SR3

Mitch Gross · January 24, 2004

You can adjust the shutter on the SR3 to 144 degrees. This will reduce the flicker to a small horizontal line.

jean-louis · January 25, 2004

Buit that will not completely elimimate the flicker, will it?

That "phase" button on the camera isn´t somehow related to this?

David Mullen ASC · January 25, 2004

We're assuming you're shooting an NTSC CRT monitor, right? Not PAL?

If you run the camera at 24 fps and your monitor is NTSC (29.97 fps), changing the shutter angle to 144 degrees will reduce the roll bar from a thick line to a very thin line. It will still roll.

If you then change the camera speed to 23.976 fps, you can stop the bar from rolling. With the phase control, you can put the thin bar where you want it, either two bars, one at the top third and one at the bottom third -- or one bar in the center. But you can't get rid of the thin bar.

You can only do that by either shooting at 29.97 fps (shutter angle isn't an issue now - just use 180 degrees) or shooting at 23.976 fps at a special 23.976 fps TV monitor with a 23.976 fps playback deck (special companies have this equipment.)

BradHruboska · January 27, 2004

If you shoot at 29.97 and use the phase button to make the line drift dwon, just remove your finger from the button whne the line is buried under the bezel on the screen. You will have picture sync but your aduio will drift. effectively vs. your 24fps material you are overcranking a bit so you will get a slight slo motion effect. You may have to ADR the dialogue to get it sounding normal in the video sequences. A trick to help is to blow up the video a bit , make sure the first and last lines of signal are buried under the bezel of the TV set.....hope this helps.

Oh yes you will have to do this everytime you roll camera, sadly. If you can shoot a LCD screen at 29.97 the roll problem goes away, you just have to match to elominate flicker.......

Hope this helps...one of my best friends is a 24 playback artist, and has done huge setups, both in 23.976, and 24, but it taks a special convertor, either with a tape feed or a computer video file feed ( usually for techy stuff). B)

jean-louis · January 27, 2004

I don´t care about the sound sync at those particular takes, since there´re no dialogues there.

So, if i shoot an LCD display there´s no need to use the phase button?

Bob Hayes · January 27, 2004

If you plan a 24 FPS film finish and shoot your TV at 29.97 your action will be slowed down when projected.

One of the trick's I've done is to shoot the source material at 19.2 FPS. You can also have a video transfer house transfer original 24FPS material to 30 FPS speed. Then when you shoot it at 30 FPS it will be projected at the correct speed. Not a problem for video finish.

Bob