would you go 24-frame for glreenscreen if you had a choice?

[Mark Suszko]

My goal in shooting the interview would be to have the entire body in sharp focus, and the green screen can go soft – which helps even-out any discontinuities and irregularities in that background. I can always simulate a tighter DOF in post if I decide that’s appropriate, but I can’t re-sharpen it in a non-obvious way, if it was blurred from the get-go in acquisition.

But this project isn’t going to a film-out delivery codec. It’s going to end up 29.97 in a very prosaic internal communications newsmagazine style piece, probably a heavily compressed mpeg4. The guy I’m doing this for just likes to shoot everything in 24 so he can apply pulldown and add the temporal side effects that, to him, make it “feel” “film-like”. And I don’t get what technical advantage this gives. I think it just complicates the project. I’ll do it, because that’s what he wants… I just want to understand why he thinks that’s better. I don’t see the utility of it.

[Todd Terry]

Mark there’s no utilitarian reason for doing it, it’s purely aesthetics. He prefers the more filmic-looking 24fps, even though it’s winding up at 29.97. There’s no technical or editing-based reason it’s better, but it’s not more complicated either.

It’s actually almost exactly the same way I work. Virtually all of my work winds up on the boob tube, at 29.97, of course. But I shoot almost everything at 24 (23.976) because that’s the look I almost always prefer. I shoot at 24, we edit in 24 projects, we give the client 24fps progressive versions to view/approve (on their progressive computers), and when they say “That’s good to go!” when we push the big “GO” button we output files for TV stations at 29.97, interlaced upper field first. There’s nothing more complicated about it by shooting (and editing) at 24fps, and I get the look I want.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Chris Santucci]

Your opinion is your opinion, but practically speaking, there’s little to no apparent visual difference between footage shot at 1/48 and 1/125.

https://www.santucci-cinematographer.com

[Chris Santucci]

I am also not talking about “increasing DOF so that the greenscreen is sharp.” As I mentioned, the borders of the subject need to be fully sharp. How that happens is with DOF that places the subject in sharp focus and by reducing motion blur.

https://www.santucci-cinematographer.com

[Todd Terry]

Yep, and I stand by it.

I can spot something as high as 1/125th a mile away. And it looks awful… to me.

At 24fps anything over 1/60th starts being quite noticeable to me. Once you hit about 1/120th, it doesn’t matter if you go any higher, the juddery look appears about the same.

But plenty of people must be fine with it, otherwise you wouldn’t see narrow shutters so widely used (obviously, on purpose as an aesthetic choice).

But me?… not a fan. At all.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com