hey y'all

been a while since i posted & its good to be back! glad the community is still bubbling nicely!

I'm working with a client who wants to make a chaplinesque B&W silent comedy of 1920s/30s

he likes the jerky aesthetic of the films shot during that period, wants his film to have the same look. we'll prolly be shooting on DV but we do have some money to play with. I'm just wondering if anyone's seen/done something similar and has any suggestions?

My initial thought was to rent a panasonic varicam & undercrank, so we're shooting everyting at about 20fps, then speed it up later.

i was also thinking of renting a 16mm cam for the day &, shooting at 18fps & telecineing footage

but now I think the best & easiest way to do this is to shoot DV as normal, monitor in B&W, and then speed up the footage by about 10% once its on the computer.

Then use some film fx type plugins, especdially one that will jerk the frames around as welll as just grain them up

any suggestions?? any ideas welcome

thanks :)

H

you can do a pretty good DV mimic of old film with graeme nattress' FCP plug-ins. i was messing with them last night to experiment with this exact effect. they offer a great deal of image control.

www.nattress.com

It's important to remember that while the "jerkiness" of the incorrect speed of old film is real, much of the jerky "look" comes from over-acting. Acting in that period was rooted in the contrivances of stage acting. Much of the sharp, direct motions, like a keystone cop grabbing his helmet and holding out his hand and yelling "stop!" would have looked jerky in person, on set as well.

Additionally, take a look at when this effect is badly done (intentionally so) like in the home movie sequences of the Red Green Show on canadian TV. There is something just off with them.... the reason is that they just color the vid and speed it up. You will need to be sure to change your curves to drop out lots of black detail and burn the highlights.

2 cents!

DJ

Im not exactly sure of the look. But could it maybe be mimicked by just turning the shutter speed up alot on a minidv cam? I know that gives a slight "jerkiness" effect to and extent.

thanks for the info guys I'll defo check out graeme nattress' FCP plugins

as we'll be shooting mainly outdoors, we'll definitely be using a high shutter speed to get a crisp effect. I think we'll also be shooting in Frame mode as I've only had good experiences with it and it will definitely give a more filmic quality.

rocknroll :)

Um...don't use a high shutter speed. You need to keep it at 48 or 60 (depending on the frame mode). If you really want to do the silent picture look, a high shutter will absolutely 100% destory this effect. It will look just like modern, digital video that's been color corrected/changed. Old motion picture cameras were not perfect and the film even less so. You need edge blur from filmic shutter to give you the desired look.

This is not 2 cents. This is a fact.