The won kar wai - low frame rate effect

[Albion Hockney]

I'm sure this post has been made before, but I couldn't find a solid answer.

 

I'm shooting a project, probably on Red ...maybe Alexa. We want to achieve the low frame rate streaking effect of early doyle work on won kar wai films.

I know they acheieve the effect but shooting a low frame rate with high shutter angle and then printing duplicate frames.

 

My question is simple because a lot of people seem to make this seems like its a complex operation on digital.

 

Is the process not to simply shoot at 6fps and then in post double the frames to fill a 24p timeline?

Edited February 26, 2015 by Albion Hockney

[David Mullen ASC]

Yes. Wong Kar Wei shot at 6 or 8 fps with a 180 degree shutter (so at 6 fps, 1/12 of a second shutter time) and repeated frames in an optical printer thru dupes to get back to 24 fps.

 

So you can do the same thing with a digital camera if it shoots at low frame rates. The editor has to stretch this to 24 fps, if he just plays it at 24 fps, it will look sped up. He could look at it played at 6 fps of course to see the effect, but eventually he'd want to have the frames repeated so that it can be played at 24 fps and not look sped-up.

 

12 fps could be doubled to create 24 fps, but you'd need four frames for every original frame of 6 fps footage to get back to 24 fps. I guess it would be three frames for every original frame if you shot at 8 fps.

[Gregg MacPherson]

I'm glad somebody pointed out that dodgy math! (smiley face etc)

[Kenny N Suleimanagich]

What would the scanning workflow be for this? Would one need to scan film to a DPX file and then "stretch" them by duplicating? Or could it be done in the scanner itself?

[David Mullen ASC]

Generally you wouldn't do this at the scanning phase, you just scan each frame.

[Tyler Purcell]

Very interesting idea… I guess that's how he got the blur effect so well. Cool to know! :)

[Miguel Angel]

I found this, which might be interesting to see if somebody else asks about the topic.

 

 

Have a good day!