shutter angle

Michael Narimalla · April 24, 2009

hi, Im a film student who is an aspiring cinematographer. I am aware of shutter angles and that they can be modified in degrees, but i have no idea...

1) why change the angle (under what circumstances)

2) what type of effect does one get from increasing and decreasing the angle?

Can someone give me a brief rundown on shutter angles?

Edited April 24, 2009 by Michael Narimalla

Tom Jensen · April 24, 2009

I just posted this somewhere the other day. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shutter_angle This should help. They clipped the shutter in Saving Private Ryan. I think it 45 degrees and that is what gave it its' look along with hand held and the bleach by pass in processing.

Edited April 24, 2009 by Tom Jensen

Michael Narimalla · April 24, 2009

brilliant, thank you so much

John Sprung · April 24, 2009

The Wikipedia article is pretty good. I'd add that variable shutters really aren't all that important. The majority of film cameras don't have them. The cost of the extra mechanical parts outweighs the advantages of adjustability. Typically, camera designers use the largest shutter angle that the pulldown mechanism will allow. The range is roughly 165 degrees (Eyemo) to 185 degrees. If you have a variable shutter, it's generally best to leave it at the widest setting. You need to know what your shutter angle is, though.

Using very small angles for effect, to eliminate motion blur, and therefore eliminate the illusion of motion, is something you don't often need.

There are a few special shutter angles worth knowing about: 144 degrees allows you to shoot an NTSC TV set at 24 fps, and reduce the height of the roll bar to zero. This is OK if the TV is an unimportant background object, but not good enough if it's prominent in the shot and we need to see what's on the screen. 172.8 degrees does the same for PAL/SECAM TV at 24 fps. These angles also eliminate flicker if you're shooting at 24 fps with discharge lamps, 144 for 60 Hz countries and 172.8 for 50 Hz. countries. At 25 fps in the PAL/SECAM/50 Hz countries, what you want is 180 degrees.

All film cameras are quite severely undersampling temporally, but we're all used to it. It does produce some motion artifacts, like wheels turning backwards.

-- J.S.

Santtu Jaakkola · February 16, 2010

Hello

Im about to shoot a 24fps film in europe. That will be my first 24fps film, because usually we use this 25fps shooting speed. This film will also be a testing for 24fps look. I read that previous article here, and i wanted to ask a question about it. If i shoot 24fps with 180degree shutter angle and I use artificial light, lamps, arri lamps, kinoflows, dedo lights etc, does it really do some sort of flicker to the picture? In the previous article there was a suggestion, that if I shoot 24fps film using lamps in europe (50hrz), i need to have this 172,8 shutter angle. I might use arri sr3 in this film, and the closest adjustable shutter angle to 172,8 is only 172... So... Does it matter if the angle is 0,8 less than in mr. Sprung told? This whole 24fps flickering thing is a new piece of information to me, so i really would be happy to recieve any answer, or help in this case. Thank you for reading and hope you know the answer for helping me.

Edited February 16, 2010 by Santtu Jaakkola

Adrian Sierkowski · February 17, 2010

The Arri is 172.8 if you set it as such, and you'd need it at that angle to keep it flicker free in a 50Hz country. Though, out of curiosity, why not just shoot 25. It's negligibly different than 24.