Has anyone else noticed this? It feels like any old film from the past, everyone is walking just a little too quick, things are moving just a bit too fast. Is there a reason for this?
In: Technology
Sometimes it’s scumbag streaming services speeding things up. Not sure why, but I watched Man in the Iron Mask a little while back, and it was almost unwatchable.
Good answers. I’ve also heard that because old cameras were hand crank cameras when the director or operator got excited they would crank it faster so it looked faster
Now, if you’re talking about plot and scene changes, old films are a little too sloooowwwww
If these films were shot on a hand cranked camera, there was no consistency in the amount of time between frame captures, because…well, it was done by hand.
In order to have a “perfect” 24fps movie, each frame needs to be captured .04 seconds apart. Motorized cameras and digital cameras have no issue doing this. But imagine a crank operator’s
hand gets tired, and he starts cranking frames .08 seconds apart. Because time is moving forward but frames aren’t keeping pace, the film will appear to speed up.
Of course, humans aren’t machines, so the math wasn’t quite that simple. Crank operators did their best, but would at times slow down (under crank) or speed up (over crank). This technically affected frames per second, but there was no way of recording how fast or slow the crank operator was going.
Tl;dr: these films were recorded at variable frame rate, without any record of exactly how they should be played back, because the technology for that sort of thing wasn’t invented yet.
Because the film was all manually advanced rather than a motor nowadays.
The camera operator would be cranking a wheel a varying speeds and thus it could be fast or slow. Depending on their arm and operator.
Video cameras take multiple pictures a second and present them one after another to simulate motion. It’s like a flipbook, but with pictures!
The modern standard is 24-30 pictures taken in one second. So seeing 30 pictures a second is what your eye is “accustomed” to. Most if not all of the movies and tv shows you watch are in 30 frames per second, so you are presented with 30 pictures, one after another, in one second to simulate motion, like a flip book.
Old cameras only took 12-15 pictures a second. So when you watch those old videos with your eye that is accustomed to 30 pictures in one second, anything less than that seems like it’s moving “faster” because there are less pictures being presented in sequence.
30 pictures in one second to simulate motion
vs
15 pictures in one second to simulate motion
Less pictures per second means more dramatic difference in movement between pictures, which makes it look like everything is moving faster.
It’s not moving faster, you’re just seeing less.
If it’s old hand cranked film, they probably cranked a little slow so they can save money on film…
Because people playing them back are ignorant of how they need to have a lower frame-rate. Like, it was common to film at 16 frames per second. For the speed to be correct, you need to project it at 16 frames per second. But today 16 frames per second isn’t the norm, so ignorant people just play it too fast.
Also alot were hand cranked so the video playback is the speed of which the videographer cranked the film.
When reading the subject, I thought you meant the plots or dialogue was faster. And I wanted to know what the hell you were watching.
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