Hi,
A number of free articles come up when I plugged “film look” into the yahoo search engine, some less technical than others.
A couple things caught my attention.
Normal cam shutter speed is 1/60th of a second; these images get captured on the v-tape at 30 frames per second. One article suggested that if you slow the cam shutter speed to 1/30th of a second that this moves towards a film look because it is closer to the actual film frame exposure time, as captured on the 24 film frames per second, than the normal video exposure time of a 60th.
I kind of agree with this, although subjectivity may be messing with me. For stage work, I often shoot at a 30th so that when I pop from one shot to another (e.g., quick move on the beat, from stage right to stage left), there is really nothing between the shots but a micro blur; no detail in between that might distract or disorient. This intentionally placed lack of precision (functionally an edit!) is a charactistic of a film look (I tell myself), not to mention the color saturation.
Slow mo is a frequent film look effect. One article talked about the need for faster than normal shutter speeds for this to work (1/1000th ?), but noted that high shutter speeds are a bust for normal speed scenes. The article urged trial and error.
The other day I was looking at some footage I shot in ’99 outside of Anchorage of some retired Iditarod dogs and it immediately hit me that I was pretty darn close to a cool film look back then. The camera, Canon’s Hi8 L2 model with wide angle lens. Didn’t know I had it when I had it…
Enjoy your pursuit of the film look!
REGARDS … TOM 8)
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