Like Hard-Boiled by John woo for instance. The characters move quickly and recklessly across different points in the screen. The same is for other movies before 2000s. Is it cinematography or did the actors used to move really fast?
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It does not have to be sped up to look sped up. The trick is in the camera. If recorded at 24fps you have 1/24th of a second to expose each frame. This is a lot of time and moving objects may get blurry but it also smooths out the motion. Normally I think they expose each frame at 50% duty cycle meaning the camera registers each frame for 1/48th of a second and keeps the shutter closed for the same length of time. Imagine a time graph where ‘O’ means shutter open and ‘x’ means closed. For 50% four frames would look like this: OOxx,OOxx,OOxx,OOxx. Kung fu movies use lower duty cycle, like 25% or less. This means that each frame is exposed for a shorter amount of time, the image is sharper (less time for the motion to blur it out) and there is a bigger jump in object position between frames making the video look sped up and the motion jittery. So for 25% it would look like this: OxxxOxxxOxxxOxxx. This is also why at 48fps, so ‘soap opera’ framerate everything looks smooth and slow because the camera would work like this: OxOxOxOx. Short exposure like in a kung fu movie making everything sharp but registered twice as often so less jeeky and more natural.
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