Filmizing
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Filmizing (a.k.a. Filmlook) is a generic and informal term referring to a process which makes videotape productions appear as if they were shot on film. This process is usually electronic, although filmizing can sometimes occur as an un-intentional by-product of some optical techniques such as telerecording.
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[edit] Differences between video and film
- Frame rate (24 frames per second for film, 50 or 60 fields per second for SDTV video)
- Photo-chemical color-timing/grading possible
- Shallow depth of field for film (due to higher format / sensor size), nearly everything in focus for video
- Smaller Shutter angle (180° - 270° for film, often ~350° for video)
- Exposure latitude: film captures a wide a range of light intensities - about 11 F-stops, while video often captures only about 6.
[edit] Frame rate
50Hz interlaced video (usually used with most forms of PAL and SECAM) can be relatively easily processed to give 25 progressive frames per second, which the framerate that the PAL/SECAM telecine process also uses. Every two video fields can be "blended" together, every other field can be decimated and the remaining fields can be shown for double the length (this noticeably reduces vertical resolution), or a motion estimation process can be applied to achieve one frame out of every two fields. This technique is sometimes called Field-removed video or FRV. Some modern PAL video cameras do offer the ability to produce 25 frame-per-second progressive video, negating the requirement of post-processing the video to get a temporal similarity to film.
On the other hand, it is much more complicated to convert 60Hz interlaced video (used with NTSC and PAL-M) to a framerate resembling that of film. Doing the same as PAL/SECAM filmizing will yield 30 frame-per-second video, which is significantly faster than film. Two out of every five fields could be dropped (and 3:2 Pulldown can be applied to the remaining fields), but any motion after this process will look very uneven. Sophisticated computer motion estimation and field blending is usually used to convert NTSC video to 24 frames-per-second - something which could not have been done until recently, and still does not yield as realistic results as PAL filmizing conversion.
Many computer editing programs can de-interlace video to give it more of a film look. Interlacing results in the horizontal scan lines that have come to define the "video" look. An interlaced frame is actually the combination of 2 fields -- an upper and a lower. By de-interlacing, the frame resembles that of a film frame. The catch is that most editing programs achieve de-interlacing by deleting one of the fields. The result gives half the vertical resolution of the original frame, and sometimes adds a jagged effect to the picture.
[edit] Grading
The footage may also be graded to have more of a "filmic look". In America, this process is often referred to by the trademarked process called "FilmLook", Magic Bullet or the more generic "Cine Look".
[edit] Depth of field
There are solutions which add the typical shallow depth of field often associated with 35mm film productions, but they have to be done during production, not in post. These solutions consist of regular 35 mm lenses and of an adapter which allow these lenses to be used on regular video cameras. These adapters project the image by the 35 mm lens onto a ground glass, which is in turn filmed by the camera itself. See depth-of-field adapter.
[edit] Filmized productions
Many modern TV productions outside North America use the filmizing process, as television shows elsewhere (unlike their American counterparts) frequently are not given a budget significant enough to allow filming, which costs significantly more than modern video recordings. Also, it is easier to effectively 'filmize' most PAL/SECAM video (used in most countries outside North America and Japan) than it is to do the same with NTSC recordings. Productions that have been filmized include:
- Red Dwarf VII
- Red Dwarf Remastered
- The League of Gentlemen
- The 2005 revival of Doctor Who
- The Office
- Spaced
- Night and Day
- Home and Away
- Arrested Development
- Undressed
- Hall of Mirrors, The Movie
- Hollyoaks
- Brookside
- Coast
[edit] Limitations
Footage that has been shot with the knowledge that it will be subsequently electronically filmized is usually shot in a very different way, with film-style lighting and framing. Regardless, there have been several attempts to process ordinary videotape to look like film, usually with little success. Notable examples include Red Dwarf Remastered - digitally remastered versions of the first three series of Red Dwarf. As well as being filmized, the episodes had been cropped to widescreen and had all their special effects remade. It was released on VHS in the mid-1990s and was panned by critics and fans alike. However, this was more due to the special effects and script changes rather than the filmized look itself.[citation needed]
BBC hospital drama-soap Casualty also flirted briefly with the filmizing process in the mid-1990s, but it was quickly dropped after viewer complaints that the show "looked wrong". The same happened with Emmerdale where it was used for 7 episodes in October 2002 before being quietly dropped.
Ironically, the fantasy series Neverwhere was a video-based production which suffered as a result of having been shot and lit with filmization in mind. The decision to filmize was later reversed, resulting in a negative response to the film-style lighting which came across poorly on the unprocessed video footage.
Filmizing success stories include The League of Gentlemen, Spaced and The Office, all of which can fool most people into believing they were shot on film. The Fox show Arrested Development used an elaborate post-production process to adjust colors and brightness levels to match those of film stock.
[edit] The future
HDTV offers the ability to natively transmit progressive scan video to the home, meaning many filmizing techniques will become obsolete.
