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News and film mode
mwardy
Posts: 1,925 Forum Member
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I've noticed that international news reports on the BBC (and possibly Channel 4--I've not been keeping close enough tabs) have recently started to be shot in film mode. Though I don't agree with what he says about cinema, Charlie Brooker (technical errors aside) has noticed it as well:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/29/difference-hobbit-news-not-much
This seems to augur something else. Paul Mason's Newsnight report on economic policy in America in relation to the car industry the other night, as well as being in film mode was very mannered and looked at times like a (very) sub-Scorsese effort to signal, well, I'm not sure what. Americanness? More specifically, the artistic ambitions of the director perhaps?
And over the weekend we had a half hour report on the BBC news channel on Danish crime thrillers where the subject was shot interlaced but the interviewer was (mostly) shot progressive. Ergh!
What is going on? Is this happening just because the tech makes it easy, and producers are under (or over) trained? Is there no editorial control over PQ on these matters? Have they consciously accepted progressive as an acceptable news format, or have they simply given in somewhere along the line and are not worrying about the niceties of visual presentation any more?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/29/difference-hobbit-news-not-much
This seems to augur something else. Paul Mason's Newsnight report on economic policy in America in relation to the car industry the other night, as well as being in film mode was very mannered and looked at times like a (very) sub-Scorsese effort to signal, well, I'm not sure what. Americanness? More specifically, the artistic ambitions of the director perhaps?
And over the weekend we had a half hour report on the BBC news channel on Danish crime thrillers where the subject was shot interlaced but the interviewer was (mostly) shot progressive. Ergh!
What is going on? Is this happening just because the tech makes it easy, and producers are under (or over) trained? Is there no editorial control over PQ on these matters? Have they consciously accepted progressive as an acceptable news format, or have they simply given in somewhere along the line and are not worrying about the niceties of visual presentation any more?
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The problem is they shoot progressive and quite often only at 30fps. While it is mathematically easier to convert between frame rates using progressive, it isn't when converting to interlace and most prosumer and even pro desktop editing software make a hash job of it resulting in the effect you describe.
What it needs is a pass through something like a Snell Alchemist or just use propper video cameras to start with.
@TCW: I don't think it's that, or not entirely. Surely Newsnight wouldn't be using DSLRs for its main correspondents' reports? And while the Danish thriller report was lower budget, half the time it looked absolutely fine, i.e. when it was showing the interviewee, but with the shots of the interviewer being mostly in film mode. (Admittedly, perhaps they had to give the main camera back then took the rest with a cheapo! Or somebody didn't know what they were doing and changed mode half way through the shoot--who knows?)
So it seems likely to me this is more than just the sneaking in of substandard cameras and is more of a deliberate (and annoying) trend. Though what look like simply mistakes or shoddy work (as in the case of the Danish report) seem to be getting through as well...
BTW you can't really convert progressive to interlace, can you? You can wrap it in interlace but the better temporal resolution has been lost forever.
Ah, OK, I should have realised this from TCW's post. A specialised task though, and I'm rather amazed it exists for professional use! (As against frame interpolation in TVs, which is of course everywhere, and pointless.)
But still, I don't think this accounts for these new trend in news production, does it? They are just shooting progressive because they can, not because they have to, aren't they?
Isn't it mostly due to convenience, cost of equipment and transporting kit? If you're filming in a war zone or in other dangerous regions, then a dSLR with a couple of lenses is easy to carry and inconspicuous.
If you're travelling to do a foreign report you can bring your own kit and it takes up very little space so there's no cost for transporting expensive full-size cameras. Most newsgathering crews still use SD cameras as far as I can see apart from in a few specialist areas like sport. I would think there's a definitive cost saving.
Whether you 'like' the look is a different matter. When you use a dSLR lens there is a tendency to overuse the large depth-of-field for all shots and sometimes wide-angle lenses. Of course, it could be that they've just got one lens and have to 'run and gun' without thinking about choosing an appropriate lens.
They choose to shoot at 24p which I think is fine for news commentary and documentary. Apart from the film effect caused by 24p I think another big change is the quality of the light that is captured by the combination of camera and lens.
It does jar a little for more current news reports and doesn't feel 'live' but we will get used to it. Before CCD cameras started to be used in the 80s, location news reports were all on film (and black and white). Viewers got used to the change to electronic cameras.
It's just that electronic equipment has finally caught up with its analogue predecessors.
So it has the £2000 lens block of a Sony S270, then?
What the blog does seem to show is that 24p is a deliberate choice. I agree with TCW the results of this choice are not great. Couldn't they shoot 50i and retain the other 'artistic' effects if that's what they want? (And should they want them, though that's probably a different matter?)
And obviously not being reliant on lights is a boon in many ways, but the comments on the blog put their finger on something else that was disturbing me about the film--the white balance is all over the place. Fine in footage grabbed in difficult circumstances, but here? Might it be more operator error rather than deliberate 'art'?
Anyway, as Mason says, they are experimenting, so I'll be looking on with interest.
In the meantime, there are some whacky broadcasts going out that you would never have seen before. Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares US looked like something off Youtube in terms of motion rendition. Presumably some sort of horrendous mess in standards conversion? It seems broadcasters are assuming the audience is much more tolerant of below par pictures in, precisely, the age of Youtube and watching TV on mobile phones. And maybe they are right.
There are loads of Discovery Channel / National Geographic documentaries filmed in 30p that have to be converted when shown over here. Its not easy to do it right.
I've just read the Paul Mason blog, very interesting response to Charlie Brooker's article but I have to take issue with one of his comments;
iPhone, interlaced?
Yes, but I assume you are talking about appropriate pulldown? It seems (if I've understood it right) this Alchemist system does temporal interpolation to construct fields from frames as if they'd been shot interlaced to start with. Which is impressive to me as someone with no practical experience of the industry.
Yeh, I noticed that.