A little history on 24fps

[Daniel D. Teoli Jr.]

An interesting article on the history of fps.

From the Archives: Hacking Film - Why 24 Frames Per Second? - Film Independent

[Simon Wyss]

Thomas Alva Edison didn’t build a thing, he had things made. His chief photographer, actually just photographer William Dickson was charged with building something but even Dickson wasn’t a machinist. It was John Krüsi who did the physical job.

The frame rate of 46 a second with the Kinetograph has to do with the electric generator in use. Dickson described that in a book he wrote and edited together with his sister Antonia in 1894.

The pictures from the Kinetograph cannot be compared with films made by other pioneers because the reproduction of the positives happened under direct sight of the spectator into the light of an electric bulb behind the strip. The only half transparent or half translucent stock made for the necessary nondirectional illumination. Also the scenery in the Black Maria was a tar black background, the subjects lit by the sun. So the actors stand out from an emptyness around them in the Kinetoscope peephole machine. This is the reason why Edison films met with little success when projected.

Charly Chaplin’s films were not necessarily sped up in their times. After Edison had moved from production to jealous management through the MPPC the frame rate settled generally to around 16 a second with very few exceptions lower (12, Eidoloscope) and only little competition higher. Cameras were mostly so designed as to expose one foot of film at one turn of the crank. Lumière’s cinematograph worked not differently. Le Roy’s Marvellous Cinematograph, a projector, allegedly used in February 1894, the same. On the contrary, Chaplin had brought poetry to the movies, at least in comparison to the rest of what Essanay churned out every week. To present a Chaplin movie faster than what’s fit destroys a lot of the tenderness of what he has to say. Many a production more simply falls with too fast projection, I’m thinking of some of the work by Griffith. Now, I’ve made a leap of 20 years.

24 frames per second was chosen as sound speed according to a technical need, which is resolution of the signal on a photographic track. The disc sound system Vitaphone was employed at up to 26 fps for shorts, at 24 in general, and at 22 fps with long features. That was between 1924 and 1930. Agfa provided the studios with a special sound recording stock from 1929 on, Eastman-Kodak was late on that. The optical sound pioneers experimented with print stock due to its finer grain, yet often with whatever they could find. Orthochromatic films were somewhat better in response to higher frequencies but grainier. From there more hiss. 24 frames per second is a very practical figure. It is divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, and 24. Good for sound editing (beats) and animation.

One can say that the speed of projection had increased over time but we must acknowledge that it was the harsh action productions and the slapstick comedies that pulled other pictures into an eddy. You have projectionists and projectionists to say nothing of theater owners.

I had once screened Aelita from the USSR many years ago, unfortunately at sound speed, and I felt ashamed. To round this off, 25 is too fast for films shot at 24 and 24 I find even worse for a sound movie that has to be reproduced at 25.

[Daniel D. Teoli Jr.]

Thanks for the info Simon! 

It is a crapshoot with my scans of films. So far I'm scanning all silent films. Sometimes they work at 17fps, other times they look like they work best at 20 or 22 fps. I just try to see what looks natural and go with that.