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Step Printing effect in Digital Camera


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I’m going to be creating the famous step printing effect similar to what Christopher Doyle achieved in Fallen Angels and plenty other Won Kar Wai Films.

What I am concerned about it choosing a frame rate - my base frame rate for all of my other coverage is 25fps. Does this mean I should stick to 5 or 10fps or will it matter if I shoot at an odd number like 8 or 6fps? 
I don’t want to stitch up the edit so trying to find out if there will be an issues in post!

Any advice is appreciated. Thanks!

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It depends to an extent how your camera allows you to set the frame rate. If you need to set it in terms of an absolute number of frames per second, then if you set something that's a multiple of the project frame rate (25 in your case) then when you play it back, all of your step printed frames will be the same duration so it will look more consistent. I assume you've realised that and that this is why you're asking the question.

If you can only set integer frame rates then that does limit you somewhat on 25fps projects because the only things that divide into 25 are 5 and 10. Naturally if you can set twelve and a half or eight and a third, so be it, but not a lot of cameras give you that. 24-frame projects can have 2, 3, 4, 6 or 12.

The other thing is that if you are particularly keen to shoot a specific step-printed rate, if you're not relying on sync sound, then you can probably just shoot something close to what your output rate will be and just live with the fact that it won't play back at exactly the rate it was shot. I'd go higher (9 or 13 rather than 8 or 12) so it's slightly slowed down as opposed to slightly sped up; sped up is often more noticeable.

Or, you can live with the fact that it won't be played back at an entirely consistent rate, that is, all your step printed frames won't all be exactly the same number of output frames.

P

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Another way I can imagine doing it is shooting it with slow shutter speeds to get some painterly motion blur and just shoot at 25 fps. In the edit you could decide a pattern and cut out/ repeat frames as required. For 25 fps, I would probably cut out two frames after every frame and probably double the frame I left in.

For example take frames A, B, C, D, E, F, G and perhaps make it something like A, A, D, D, G, G and so on...

I've done some step-printing on an optical printer and I did lots of tests of various patterns to get the effect I wanted. It always came down to getting the right cut/repeat pattern of frames. One can also let the "projector" side of an optical printer roll out of sync to create motion "streaks".

If nothing else, I suggest that you do lots and lots of tests before hand. Find what works for you, before you shoot your final scene.

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