Interesting Factoid: Wasting Money On Movies
The sessions today are very interesting and educational, but primarily technical, making detailed recaps and updates difficult. However, there have been several interesting “factoids,” including this one, which we thought you’d all appreciate:
Did you know that when you pay to watch a two hour movie, you’re really only getting one hour of video image? It’s true. Half the time you’re in the theater watching a movie, you’re actually looking at a blank screen. Because of how film is recorded, with the shutter closing for each frame, half of the time it’s not exposing anything, which means a black screen. In early movies, which were recorded at 18 frames per second you can see the flickering, but in today’s movies, which are generally recorded at 24 frames or higher, the human eye cannot discern it.
October 17th, 2006 at 10:20 am
Is this a bad thing?
October 17th, 2006 at 10:37 am
that is really weird, I didn’t know that. So that’s why old movies flicker?
October 17th, 2006 at 10:47 am
Abby: The title of the post was more of a joke.
October 21st, 2006 at 7:14 pm
Here’s something I didn’t know for a while:
Undercrank: This term is used to describe the technique of filming something at a lower frame rate than would normally be used (e.g., 24 frames per second in film) in order to make it (when played back at the normal 24 fps) appear to be moving faster. This technique was used in the Raiders of the Lost Ark sequence where Indy slides under the truck and then is dragged along behind. The truck moved at a slower speed in real-life than it appeared to. I think some stunts in various Roy Rogers films used this technique to safely get a character onto a moving vehicle.
Overcrank: The opposite of the above.
Just when film cameras were coming out, there was a crank on the side of the camera. Camera operators would hand-crank it in order to record anything, and if they cranked it slower than normal, you get the term “undercrank” and it’s definition. Same with “Overcrank.”