The film look with interlaced cameras: Doctor Who & Dirty Jobs
 

If you have watched the new series of the BBC's Doctor Who or the newest episodes of Dirty Jobs on the Discovery channel, you may be aware that both of these programs are shot with interlaced video, and then given a "film look" in post production. The thing that amazes me (especially with Doctor Who) is that they look like they were genuinely shot on film, and not merely altered to look like film. Heck, they look more like real film than when shooting with natively progressive video IMO. They lack the strobing the 24p video gives you. My question is: how do they make it look so convincing? What software are they using?

How do you know they aren't shooting progressive?

On Dirty Jobs, you can see the cameras they are using. On Doctor Who, I've spoken to members of the production team. They shoot interlaced video and then give it a film look in post production. And it looks fantastic.

they're probably shooting 60i or 50i and then converting to a kind of 24 with pulldown in editing. I've done this by basically making a 24p project in Vegas and bringing in the 60i footage. Output as a 24 quicktime, then bring that file into a 60i project and export. I'm no editor, but that gave me a pretty decent 24 with pulldown.

Without the "strobe" of native 24p video? That would be nice.

Doctor Who is a British show, I wouldn't be surprised if they just deinterlace the 50i and the production value gives it the rest of the film look they need.

Doesn't deinterlacing reduce the quality of the image, though?

There is no way of going from 60i to 24p without loosing some quality.

Dr. Who is shot on DIGIBETA. Sony came out a few years back( 2 i believe ) with this camera in 24P mode. Several years too late imo to save the format as a production camera, however is full 4:2:2 . with very little compression, so that probably helps with the richness of the colors.

Camera
 

The Quality of the footage from Doctor Who is great. What camera are they shooting the show with?

I also would like to know what camera is it shot on?
The show has a great distinctive look!

settings
 

I have read somewhere that of course the camera settings are a "trade secret". But none the less a camera that shows that quality, is definitely something to strive for. The shows are in my opinion just as good as HD.

Am I the only person who doesn't think Dr Who looks particularly filmic. I watch Dr Who all the time (my son is a massive fan) and whenever I'm watching it I always think to myself "why don't they apply a little filmlook to the footage?". The ITV-DrWho-wannabe-show Primeval looks more filmic(too bad it's badly written). But that's just my opinion. Maybe my eyes are crooked or my TV is broken.

camera
 

The Camera is a DigiBeta

I humbly have to disagree.

Although the footage is not entirely film like in appearance, it definitely does not look like video. Since this is shot by a DigBeta camera (Comes with a high price tag) it gives the operator many camera available options.

I am most impressed by the clarity and color saturation/separation it resembles HD to me, that's just me.

Definitely Digibeta. The producers say that they don't shoot in HD because they would not be able to maintain the special effects schedule if producing in HD. Though why they don't shoot in HD and then downcovert, keeping the FX files around for upscaling later when HD is more widespread (and processing power cheaper by the gigahertz.) I don't know.

I have to say it screams de-interlaced video to me. The edge sharpening around the frequent areas of bleached out over exposure is obvious, and the DoPs on the show love very heavy back lighting, hard light and strong theatrical gels on the key and fill lights not things SD video has ever handled well. I think they should have left it 50i, like the old show!

An interesting film/HD comparison on British TV are the twinned shows Moving Wallpaper and Echo Beach. The former is shot on Super16 for gritty hand-held look, and the latter on HD for a high budget glossy look.

Primeval looks more filmy because it's Super16.