Shooting a TV set

[Juan Cajiao Director DP]

Any advise about shooting the TV set screen. the best way to avoid the black running strip. I will have a real action sequence happening around the TV.

 

Thanks in advance

[David Mullen ASC]

What sort of camera and what sort of TV in what country?

[John Pytlak RIP]

American Cinematographer Manual has a section on "Filming Television Screens".

[Juan Cajiao Director DP]

we are going to shoot on 35mm arri III camera using latinamerican Tv formats (NTSC).

Thanks a lot for the recomendation about the american cinematographer manual.

[John Sprung]

Does that Arri let you adjust the shutter angle to 144 degrees? If so, at 24 fps that gives you an exposure of 1/60 sec, equal to the duration of a TV field. The roll bar is still there, but its height is roughly zero lines. If the size of the set in the shot is small enough, say 1/10 the height of the frame or less, this usually looks OK.

 

The finder won't show you the effect of the 144 degree shutter angle, you'll still see the roll bar there. Each time you start, it'll sync differently to the TV.

 

Note that with a mirror shutter reflex camera, what you see in the finder in terms of space is exactly what you get on film. But in terms of time, what you see is exactly what you *don't* get on film.

 

Therefore, if you sometimes get a roll bar in the finder and sometimes not, bump it to always see the bar in the finder.

 

 

 

-- J.S.

[David Mullen ASC]

Some of the older Arri-III's don't allow a 144 degree shutter angle, so you need to check if it is an option.

 

You can run the camera at 23.976 fps with a 144 degree shutter. The 144 degree shutter turns the thick roll bar into a thin roll bar. The 23.976 fps stops the roll bar from drifting. Using a film-video sync box, you can put the thin line where it is least objectionable (either one line in the center, or you can have two lines, one near the top and one near the bottom.)

 

You can run the camera at 23.976 fps with a 180 degree shutter when filming a special 23.976 fps monitor and special playback (24 fps video playback companies supply the equipment.) Using a sync box to phase to the monitor, there will be no bars at all.

 

You can run the camera at 29.97 fps with a 180 degree shutter, using the sync box to phase to the monitor. There will be no bars at all.

 

You can shoot an LCD flat screen TV with no syncing needed at all, normal frame rate and shutter.

[John Pytlak RIP]

Large LCD monitors are available, and becoming much more affordable.

[Juan Cajiao Director DP]

Thanks to all for your advise and help. I will let you know how was going everything.

 

Sincerely

 

Juan Cajiao

[oscar jimenez]

I do have one question. If you are using a 35-3 with a CE cristal control speed base, if you run your camera at 29.97 FPS and press tha phase shifter button, wont it remove the scroll bar? I dont know but I did it one time with the Phase button on the CE Xtal control at 29.97 and worked good. It was NTSC