A few comments that can give an idea what the video is about
Watched this earlier this morning and it was a great in depth video. It’s not digital vs film. Biggest complaints seem to be everything being shot with shallow depth of field, which is the current cinematic fashion.
Biggest issue though is everything being shot as evenly, and blandly, as possible to make it easier to change everything in post, rather than making sure everything looks as great as possible in camera.
”We’ll fix it in post” is the worst thing that happened to cinematography. Edit: Yeah not just that but the same mentality has been detrimental to all creative work.
Great watch and fully agree. Always blows my mind that Jurassic Park from 1993 looks so much better than the modern day Jurassic World films.
Im posting to praise you actually discussing your link. This is exactly what for me the perfect fediverse would be. If you just posted this as I link I would have clicked and seen nothing to interest me but Im going to give it a view if I get the time later and at the least I might remember it to go search for something like it based on the convo.
Movies on VHS still feel the most real to me.
Probably also something to do with the fact almost every movie then was mixed to a Nagra.
All these little beautiful mechanical subtleties add up.
Also everything mentioned here is true in music now too. “Fix in the mix. Record as dry as possible. Di everything, dont use mics” basically take all soul and risk and creativity out of music. Which is why audio quality has suffered greatly in modern times for the majority of popular music.
Nice vid.
I always feel way more comfortable when I understand the 3D space depicted (the first part of the vid), not just for the visual awe but screenplay reality as well (eg if two ppl are shooting at each other in a tiny closet or a giant hall).
And yes, some animated movies or series (and even comics to some extend) do it great too, eg the 3D fidelity and persistence in this one (not just wide shots as standalone niceties, but how truthfully they are used by the story/charterers, the individual buildings that make sense and how/where they are connected to the rest of the surroundings, how characters travel in them, etc too):
I’ve been subscribed to this guy for a while now, ever since this video came up on my recommended feed. I love his soothing, almost ASMR delivery, and the points he raises about filmmaking are always superb. One of my favourite YouTube channels.
Thank you for this comment, sounds like a very interesting channel indeed
Guy seems insightful enough for me to take seriously but I’d much rather watch two of those films than his 3.5 review. Looked in the comments briefly and did not see it but is there a list somewhere?
The list is in the description of the video.
He does plenty of smaller video essays, but this was something he’d been working up to for a while.
Oh so it’s not just me being a cranky old man then, good lol. Really interesting video thanks!
This was an amazing breakdown and a high quality video.
Well those buzzwords certainly told me not to watch this.
Reminds me of an extended essay where someone tried to argue that jerky 24fps film is inherently better for films than 60fps because it allows your mind to “imagine what goes in between the frames” (this is not how persistence of vision works).
People are very keen to provide justification beyond “I just like it” or “I’m just used to it”. Of course I’m blatantly guessing at the content here because I don’t trust anyone to use the term “cinematic qualia” correctly and have it mean something, so you should probably ignore me…
24k is industry standard because of tradition. Nothing more.
It has nothing to do with what the human eye can perceive. It was settled on as the standard because it was the minimum fps that provided smooth motion. Any lower got too choppy, and any higher was pointless because the projectors and technology at the time simply had no use for more visual data than that.
The reason it sticks around (and the reason I personally prefer it) is because we’ve been seeing it for so long that changing it is jarring. Almost in an “uncanny valley” kind of way, you watch a film at 60fps and something just seems off but you just can’t put your finger on it. Its almost too crisp.
We are so baked into the look of “cinema” for so many decades that it’ll take time to adjust.
Tl;Dr - 24fps looking better is subjective. But its prevalent because its all we’ve known for literally most of cinema history.
I hope you don’t mind but I’m just going to reply by reposting my comment below in this very same branch…
…
24 frames per second is the rate human sight registers reality.
If it goes lower, one will start to perceive the “stuttering” of having still photographs in sequence to create the illusion of motion.
But if it goes higher it will start to allow something that the human eye doesn’t register, which is motion without blur. Movement is not registered with clarity by our sight.
You can wave your own hand and notice you will not see the hand moving, but the dragging blurred effect of its’ motion.
It’s the same with depth of field and focus. We never see everything at once. When we focus on something, everything in the foreground or background in relation to the object in focus becomes blurred as well.
So when Filmmakers/Photographers break with these characteristics they are not simply breaking with tradition, but with the natural perception of human sight.
General photography mimics these characteristics for a reason. And when it doesn’t, it flattens the experience in relation to how we naturally experience the world.
In this particular case, it is not a discussion on aesthetics or formality and tradition. It is truly just science and how sight functions. Not convention for convention sake.
Most movies still preserve lighting techniques that were requirements of the limitations of past equipment, in order to achieve legibility through low resolution. Which are no longer necessary. These are places where arguing convention or preference like you are would be with merit.
But frame rates and focus are preserving the inherent traits of our perception of reality. And that is factual not opinion based.
As if one enjoys it or not in breaking with our natural perception, that becomes a discussion of taste again.
But why it is more natural to one’s perception is not subjective but objectively scientific.
Sidestepping… Behaviour in acting was altered due to theater and live space limitations. Like speaking loudly and clearly, and movements being broad and deliberately exaggerated to communicate in distance in the room. These were carried out to film, and throughout time were shed off as unnecessary given the nature of the medium allowing them to be shed. But original cameras and microphones(not even used initially in the silent era) allowed very little freedom initially as well. So performances preserved this not without merit but for a reason. But there was no reason to have motion pictures staged and shot like theater as they initially did. Films initially were staged like plays with only one point of view of the room. This was not entirely necessary even in the original soundstages and all their limitations.
This was habit and familiarity. Convention.
This is more akin to the argument you were trying to initially make.
But the reasons the frame rates and focus endure, do not come from the limitations of the medium, equipment or residual conventions but the inherent limitations or characteristics of human sight.
Anyway, I hope this was helpful in any way.
There is a lot of aggression and overzealous arguments being thrown back and forth in this comment section and in this comment branch as well, without attempting clarity in the process.
…
It can be helpful to watch the video before discussing it. The points it makes really aren’t what you’re assuming they will be.
As I said, you should probably ignore me.
i mean, the soap opera effect is a well-documented phenomenon.
Yes, and I’m not sure if this is your point, but it’s not an objectively bad feature of films shot at higher frame rates. It’s disliked because of the association with low quality TV.
It’s disliked because it looks fake and jarring.
What exactly about it looks fake? What does your experience of the real world look more like a jerky 24fps film with motion blur, or a smoother 60 or higher FPS recording with less motion blur?
Jarring, yes. Because every time you sit down in a cinema, you see something at 24fps.
I guess no one here has seemed to explain it…
24 frames per second is the rate human sight registers reality.
If it goes lower, one will start to perceive the “stuttering” of having still photographs in sequence to create the illusion of motion.
But if it goes higher it will start to allow something that the human eye doesn’t register, which is motion without blur. Movement is not registered with clarity by our sight.
You can wave your own hand and notice you will not see the hand moving, but the dragging blurred effect of its’ motion.
It’s the same with depth of field and focus. We never see everything at once. When we focus on something, everything in the foreground or background in relation to the object in focus becomes blurred as well.
So when Filmmakers/Photographers break with these characteristics they are not simply breaking with tradition, but with the natural perception of human sight.
General photography mimics these characteristics for a reason. And when it doesn’t, it flattens the experience in relation to how we naturally experience the world.
In this particular case, it is not a discussion on aesthetics or formality and tradition. It is truly just science and how sight functions. Not convention for convention sake.
Most movies still preserve lighting techniques that were requirements of the limitations of past equipment, in order to achieve legibility through low resolution. Which are no longer necessary. These are places where arguing convention or preference like you are would be with merit.
But frame rates and focus are preserving the inherent traits of our perception of reality. And that is factual not opinion based.
As if one enjoys it or not in breaking with our natural perception, that becomes a discussion of taste again.
But why it is more natural to one’s perception is not subjective but objectively scientific.
Sidestepping… Behaviour in acting was altered due to theater and live space limitations. Like speaking loudly and clearly, and movements being broad and deliberately exaggerated to communicate in distance in the room. These were carried out to film, and throughout time were shed off as unnecessary given the nature of the medium allowing them to be shed. But original cameras and microphones(not even used initially in the silent era) allowed very little freedom initially as well. So performances preserved this not without merit but for a reason. But there was no reason to have motion pictures staged and shot like theater as they initially did. Films initially were staged like plays with only one point of view of the room. This was not entirely necessary even in the original soundstages and all their limitations.
This was habit and familiarity. Convention.
This is more akin to the argument you were trying to initially make.
But the reasons the frame rates and focus endure, do not come from the limitations of the medium, equipment or residual conventions but the inherent limitations or characteristics of human sight.
Anyway, I hope this was helpful in any way.
There is a lot of aggression and overzealous arguments being thrown back and forth in this comment section and in this comment branch as well, without attempting clarity in the process.
That’s a lot of words to say something that’s not true. When you move your hand in front of your face it blurs, depending on what speed you move it at and how bright it is, but it doesn’t stutter across, only sampled about 24 times a second.
You can’t show the eye fast motion without it being blurred, because the eye interpolates what it sees over a few fractions of a second; motion blur is not something you need to have in the film print. If you shoot something at 24fps and again at 48, each with maximum shutter angle (or equivalent) two adjacent frames from the high framerate shot will together have the same apparent motion blur as one frame from the low one. But the amount of perceived stuttering and flickering is less.
sure, it’s all about the history of film. but not everyone who disliked the hobbit watched low quality soap operas, so there’s something else there.
Well yeah, The Hobbit was a pile of garbage for many reasons…
if you say so. point being that it was a pioneer of “high frame rate” recording, at 48 frames per second. industry professionals really wanted to push it, and the public hated it. that’s not indicative of everyone in the public having bad taste in movies, it’s about some psychological effect. again, there’s something there.
They got the most criticism because they were bad, which can come from anyone with a brain.
They got some criticism for being higher framerate, but that, I contend, did come from people who associated it not necessarily with soaps but with stuff shot on video which was historically cheap stuff.
from what i’m reading it was the other way around. performances, score, and visuals were praised, while most criticism centered on pacing and the high frame rate.
Yeah, 24fps + blur is just less data given to the viewer in scenes of motion vs 60fps.
A monster running by? No, the reason you didn’t see it wasn’t bcs it was that fast, you didn’t see it properly just bcs of a limitation of the medium (had the viewer been there irl with the same pov the monster would have been clearly seen).
I’m sad that the industry pushed 4k (and even 8k) instead of using the same digital bandwidth for HD@60fps.
I know, shooting on analog film doesn’t require more physical film to get from SD to 4k whereas going from 24 to 60 frames per second does require 2.5× as much film (some big productions even did film in 60fps iirc … ?).
However once having 60fps that would actually deliver that additional (2.5× more) visual data to the customer (unless they intentionally added extra blur in post, but that would be very very noticeable), unlike todays 4k content that is either encoded or stylised mostly in a way that there is only minimal difference between HD and 4k on average so you don’t actually get 4× more visual content (not to even mention, how few ppl can appreciate the difference even in best case scenarios due to various other limitations).I’m sad that we pushed 4k (and even 8k) instead of using the same digital bandwidth for HD@60fpS
We didn’t. The specs for UHD / 4K TV purposely included 60 fps.
It’s good for sports and natural history, but elsehwere, creatives don’t like it, and they mostly believe that audiences don’t like it. The only thing with any budget behind it was the couple of Ang Lee projects, and they flopped.
In a more practical sense, you have generations of filmmakers who produce visually excellent material in 24fps. You can’t just turn a knob and get great looking 60fps content. It takes intent, desire, and technical skill to be able to do it at higher frame rates, and the lack of creative desire is what prevents it, not any industry push (or lack of).
Well, my personal opinion is that basically all 24fps content would look better in 60fps without any additional concerns (but production costs would have been bigger, notably so in old movies especially, technical skills insulted), no additional art mastery needed in most cases (again, this is imho for my content consumption).
Besides, the industry adapted to much bigger art changes than it would have been a move to 60fps - eg how much they had to adapt to HD (they had to change sets, clothes, props, etc), or all the things to digital postprocessing and other CGI special effects (now half the set is green screen or a led wall - how much the required art skills changed there vs practical effects).
It’s def not as simple as ‘just turn a knob to switch to 60fps’ but if it were that easy, I bet a lot more movies would have been shot that way, maybe even for the viewers to choose between the two modes.
