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This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
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Author
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Topic: Dolby SR-D or SDDS at 16 fps?
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 01-23-2003 05:53 AM
Not only does the intended projection speed differ between silent films, but some purists believe that the speed should be varied between an individual shot or scene. When Kevin Brownlow presents roadshow screenings of his Napoléon restoration he frequently makes ongoing speed adjustments. A digital system which not only encoded, say, two-channel sound outside the full-gate frame area (i.e. Dolby or SDDS), but also contained speed data which was then used by the processor to send signals to a variac could potentially automate the whole process.
This would potentially make silent films presented reasonably well available to a much wider audience than is able to see them at present. The leading silent film pianists, e.g. Neil Brand or Phil Carli, are amazing to hear but seriously expensive to hire. There are also not that many of them (in a recent radio interview, Brand estimated that there were probably around 50 people who made their living out of accompanying silent films in the world). But as Karen points out, we are talking special venues with an inherently limited audience, so whether it would be economic to develop such a system I really don't know.
As for running soundtracks 'wild', this was done at the NFT when they ran a Buster Keaton season in the early '90s. The sound came from a VHS hi-fi track. A monitor displaying the video was placed next to one displaying a CCTV image of the cinema screen in the box, and an operator continually adjusted the projector speed to match the video. It worked very well, but was obviously a bit labour intensive.
[ 01-23-2003, 11:14 AM: Message edited by: Leo Enticknap ]
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Joe Beres
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 606
From: Minneapolis, MN, USA
Registered: Nov 2000
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posted 01-23-2003 09:29 AM
William Hooper said:
quote:
For the love of Mike, please don't run them at 16 or 18 fps. It was even expected at the time that in projection speed would be slightly faster than taking speed, & the slight speed increase was part of the "art" of movies.
This brings up an excellent point. The academics I have worked with in the past have always insisted upon a particular frame rate, determined by the period, and region, in which the film was created, i.e. a film from the US made in 1910 would be shown at 16fps, period. More often than not though, as William stated, the films were projected faster than they were shot. I showed Fritz Lang's Die Nibelungen a couple years ago, and a pianist came in from Germany. (He reworked the original orchestral score for piano, it was absolutely amazing) He had actually worked with Murnau and Lang in the past and talked with each of them about projection speeds of their silent films, and neither took any issue with their films having been projected faster than they were shot. Rather than try to mimic the speed in which a film was shot, shouldn't we try to mimic the way the film was initially presented? That would make much more sense to me, both as a projectionist and as an audience member. Despite what many academics think, to me, it would seem much more "historically accurate" to present a film at the frame rate it would have initially been shown at.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, it is wonderful to see a silent film accompanied live, but as Leo said, it is fairly rare (outside of Pordenone, Italy, perhaps) to be able to see a film with some of the best accompaniment. After seeing Die Nibelungen, I had a much better sense of what the possibilities could be. I don't mean to get down on the musicians I have worked with, but the best are pretty tough to beat. Sometimes, it would be great to hear the scores, improvised or otherwise, that those individuals and orchestras have played.
(Leo, do you know if that radio interview is available on the 'net anywhere?)
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William Hooper
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1879
From: Mobile, AL USA
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 01-24-2003 01:47 AM
Scott Norwood mentioned that he will be working a sci-fi festival at which they'll be running the Kino 35mm print of the recent Metropolis restoration. That film runs at 24fps, is *recommended* to run at 24fps. Additionally, the Kino print apparently has an orchestral accompaniment on the soundtrack for theaters not using live accompaniment. So apparently it's not full-frame (I can't imagine Kino sending out the print with no optical track when it would be most likely to play many older theaters).
Maybe Scott can check to see if it's 1:1.37 (meaning it's lost information at the top or bottom) or windowboxed.
Joe:
University folks run on power differential, in that they must be unquestioned in academia to be influential with their peers or students. They can never, after making a blanket statement, back down. They make a lot up, & a lot is based on an observation of only 1 instance.
So you'd need to arm yourself with more authoritative sources than academics who just dabble in silent movies.
Print the stuff from Brownlow on David Pierce's site.
Also, Brownlow's book "The Parades' Gone By", which is a survey of the silent film era, mentions how when sound movies came in, everyone noted that things slowed down. It was not due to just restricted camera movement & tortured elocution for sound, but because the films in the silent era were projected faster than they were taken. That's noted in Brownlow's book.
Also print the stuff from SMPE from David Pierce's site. You will note that its RP for projection speed is FASTER than the RP for taking speed.
In the silent era, it was expected by the filmmakers & by the audience that the projection speed would be faster than the taking speed. By what degree was up to the operator, working from notes furnished by the filmmaker when available. Otherwise, they ran it by eye: zippy chases & comedy, but not unbelievably fast. Guidance for operators as to speed when running films in the silent era can be found in the book Motion Picture Handbook for Managers and Operators by F. H. Richardson. It sometimes shows up on eBay.
You're the projectionist, you know your craft, you do the actual work to find out how something works, the folks who dabble have no stake & don't work in a world where something either works or it doesn't & thus they can just argue about whether something is right.
By the way, another source for this silent/sound speed confusion seems to be silent/sound speed switches on 16mm projectors. Those switches apply only to 16mm films, not "silent movies". "Silent" meant amateur format, home movie cameras, they had no sound & ran at 18 fps. But you could buy 16mm prints of theatrical movies, which are of course 24 fps so you'd have to switch the 16mm projector speed. Silent: 16mm home movies. Sound: 16mm print downs of 24 fps 35mm movies.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 01-24-2003 04:42 AM
quote:
University folks run on power differential, in that they must be unquestioned in academia to be influential with their peers or students. They can never, after making a blanket statement, back down. They make a lot up, & a lot is based on an observation of only 1 instance.
Some university folks are guilty of this, but I think it's a little bit unfair as a generalisation. Far from defending dubious blanket statements, most academics working in non-science subjects try to avoid making them at all, because they know that blanket statements are hostages to fortune. That having been said, a little knowledge can certainly turn out to be a dangerous thing when humanities academics start trying to write about film technology, and I guess we've all seen instances of this.
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William Hooper
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1879
From: Mobile, AL USA
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 01-27-2003 01:20 AM
Leo wrote:
quote:
That having been said, a little knowledge can certainly turn out to be a dangerous thing when humanities academics start trying to write about film technology, and I guess we've all seen instances of this.
Their writing doesn't bother me as much as the instances I've encountered where they've presented themselves as consultants or "free" unbidden advisors in theater projects, getting a spiff on their bio while screwing a theater up for years. After spending a pile on the physical plant, public non-profits can't admit it when they discovered they've gotten advice from people who had NO real clue but were quite assured that they did, nor can the facilities find money for another HUGE outlaw to repair the problems. I will admit that the statement was inaccurate as a blanket statement, but I will assert that it is completely safe as statistically representative.
We've all seen civilians giving weird, erroneous explanations to their friends of how film projection works. Let me tell ya, when a unversity prof gets in there to show folks around, it's an ASTOUNDING flow of spontaneously synthesized information. It's a performance that's fascinating, like people speaking in tongues. And the strangest thing is, that their egos have become so huge from being unchallenged in classrooms & needing to defend their statements at all costs academically, that they really do believe every thing they say...even though they are making it up on the spot!
Michael wrote:
quote:
It has been said here that early films were filmed at 16fps, but projected at different speeds. But, since the cameras were hand-cranked, how can you say they were filmed at this or that framerate? When were motor-driven cameras and projectors introduced? They must have had a defined framerate then.
The framerate was not locked, but dynamic. "Around 16 fps" is a baseline. Cameramen, even if cranking at what they believed to be 16fps for their baseline, would undercrank or overcrank if they felt it was appropriate for the scene. Film speed, before sound required that it be locked, was a film making tool to be used just as variously as exposure & composition.
I think some of the material on Brownlow's site mentions that cameras & projectors had tachometers available. Motorized cameras were available also, but cameramen did not like them because 1) they were bulkier 2) they restricted the tool of varying taking speeds.
The FIRST movie cameras were driven by motors; Edison's cameras built by W. K. L. Dickinson & used for all the Edison pictures. Edison was Mr. Electricity, & of course used motors. Those things were monsters. The Lumieres' small, mobile, handcranked cameras were the revolution. The nifty things also doubled as projectors.
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