Filming a TV Screen

[mrmatta]

I'm sure this topic has been covered ad nauseum, but 20 minutes of searches on this forum and lots of "Googling" have left me without a satisfactory answer to this basic question.

 

I would like to film someone watching a B&W TV and use some of the TV footage in the shot. I don't want to green screen the TV footage, because the light from the TV is important to the shot.

 

I know on features you would simply hire a "24fps playback guy" and he would use a "sync box", but what exactly is the technology?

 

I would theoretically be shooting with a 16mm sync camera (not sure of model, it would be a rental) and ideally would like to use a large LCD monitor dressed as a "TV" playing back 24P footage from FCP. Is this possible, and, if so, how exactly does the synchronization work??

 

Also, if this is possible, I would also like to figure out a system to playback the video at 48fps and shoot a few setups at 48fps so the video is real-time and the people watching are in slo-mo (abstract indie music video).

 

Any guidance would be much appreciated, as would any links to previous discussions of this topic.

[David Mullen ASC]

If you use an LCD screen then there are no sync issues.

[Guest]

David is 100% right on this, of course :D

 

Use a LCD screen and then you won't have to worry about sync issues. Getting all of the gear and right film camera capable of shooting a NTSC TV with no flicker can be quite expensive if you don't have the budget for it.

 

Flat screen TVs are now down to the $500.00 mark for a no name brand.

 

They look nice on film as well. I used one as a computer screen on my last shoot, the shots came out very nice.

 

Richard

[John Sprung]

If you must use an ordinary picture tube TV and you don't have the budget for anything better, shooting with a shutter angle of 144 degrees reduces the size of the roll bar to zero. It's still there, and if something is moving horizontally in the TV picture, it'll be cut and displaced where one field ends and the next begins. If the TV is small enough in the film frame, this can be an adequate solution.

 

 

 

-- J.S.

[Michael Nash]

For film that gets transferred to video (as is the case with music videos) I've simply shot the screen footage at 29.97 fps, and then telecined that footage at that rate if I needed to maintain lip synch with the screen image. If you don't need synch, then you can get away with transferring at the normal 24fps, and motion on the TV screen appears a little slow.

 

For your slow-mo segment, you could create playback footage that's double speed (but the signal is still 29.97), and shoot your actors and TV at 59.94 fps.

 

You still need to phase the camera to the TV screen if you want to completely eliminate the bar on screen (it's pretty thin at this rate), but I've been able to do this without a separate synch box. Modern Arri cameras like the SR3 have a phase button that allow you to slightly slow the motor after you start rolling until you clear the phase bar off the screen.