Comment by DoctorWhoof
8 hours ago
Most of the issues (like "judder") that people have with 24fps are due to viewing it on 60 fps screens, which will sometimes double a frame, sometimes triple it, creating uneven motion. Viewing a well shot film with perfect, expressive motion blur on a proper film screen is surprisingly smooth.
The "soap opera" feel is NOT from bad interpolation that can somehow be done right. It's inherent from the high frame rate. It has nothing to do with "video cameras", and a lot to do with being simply too real, like watching a scene through a window. There's no magic in it.
Films are more like dreams than like real life. That frame rate is essential to them, and its choice, driven by technical constraints of the time when films added sound, was one of happiest accidents in the history of Arts.
> Films are more like dreams than like real life.
Yes! The other happy accident of movies that contribute to the dream-like quality, besides the lower frame rate, is the edit. As Walter Murch says in "In the Blink of an Eye", we don't object to jumps in time or location when we watch a film. As humans we understand what has happened, despite such a thing being impossible in reality. The only time we ever experience jumps in time and location is when we dream.
I would go further and say that a really good film, well edited, induces a dreamlike state in the viewer.
And going even further than that, a popular film being viewed by thousands of people at once is as though those people are dreaming the same dream.
I would say that cuts are something we get used to rather than something that is intrinsically “natural” to us.
I remember when I was very little that it was actually somewhat “confusing”, or at least quite taxing mentally, and I’m pretty sure I see this in my own very little children.
As we grow and “practice” watching plays, TV, movies, read books, our brains adapts and we become completely used to it.
Cuts aren't "natural" but they're part of the language of filmmaking, and most peoples experience of them is consistent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuleshov_effect#:~:text=The%20...
True. Maybe we experience jumps in time and location in our dreams because we've been conditioned to it by films.
> Most of the issues (like "judder") that people have with 24fps are due to viewing it on 60 fps screens
That can be a factor, but I think this effect can be so jarring that many would realize that there's a technical problem behind it.
For me 24 fps is usually just fine, but then if I find myself tracking something with my eyes that wasn't intended to be tracked, then it can look jumpy/snappy. Like watching fast flowing end credits but instead of following the text, keeping the eyes fixed at some point.
> Films are more like dreams than like real life. That frame rate is essential to them, and its choice, driven by technical constraints of the time when films added sound, was one of happiest accidents in the history of Arts.
I wonder though, had the industry started with 60 fps, would people now applaud the 24/30 fps as a nice dream-like effect everyone should incorporate into movies and series alike?
I have a 120 fps TV. Panning shots at 24 fps still give me an instant headache.
Real is good, it’s ergonomic and accessible. Until filmmakers understand that, I’ll have to keep interpolation on at the lowest setting.
It's not just the framerate mismatch, OLED's un-pulsed presentation with almost instant response time greatly reduces the perceived motion smoothness of lower framerate content compared to eg, CRTs or plasma displays
The same happens to me in cinemas at 24 fps, it’s not the display technology that is giving me headaches.
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Variable refresh rate displays are becoming popular in smartphones and PCs, hopefully this won't be a technical issue soon.
24 fps looks like terrible judder to me in the cinema too. I'm not afraid to admit it even if it will ruffle the feathers of the old 24 fps purists. It was always just a compromise between film cost and smoothness. A compromise that isn't relevant any longer with digital medium. But we can't have nice things it seems, because some people can't get over what they're used to.
>It was always just a compromise between film cost and smoothness.
I think the criticisms of The Hobbit when it came out in 48fps showed that it's not just that.
The 48 fps of The Hobbit was glorious. First time I have ever been able to see what is happening on screen instead of just some slide deck mess. There were many other things worth criticizing, but the framerate was not it.
That film had many problems, but the acceptable frame rate was not one of them. Most criticism wasn’t about that.
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Problem is modern OLED tv's, they have no motion blur so its a chopfest at 24hz (or 24fps content at 120hz) when you turn off all motion settings.
Yes, and records sound better than digital audio.
You've just learned to associate good films with this shitty framerate. Also, most established film makers have yet to learn (but probably never will) how to make stuff look good on high frames. It's less forgiving.
It'll probably take the next generation of viewers and directors..