I have a client that wants about five minutes of video to look like a 1920's era silent movie.

I've already applied the film filter but the video is still too smooth. Would it look more like 1920 film if I could remove every other frame?

Thanks

Since the frame rate was different for the old movies, have you tried time compressing the clip to a play rate of 1.5?

You could try playing with Playback and Undersample Rate ( Right Click on Event / Properties) - e.g. Undersample .2, Playback 2x.

... also some Black & White or sepia effects

I made my 1st short film to look like a Chaplin-esque type thing (also was affraid to record audio). What worked for me was to approximate undercranking & overcranking. So I'd right click events and slow them down, possibly to around .667. Then I'd use Excalibur and speed them up to around 133-150% It's a good idea to chop up events and change their speed to approximate the speed changes of hand cranking. Also, sometimes cut out a few frames to add that jump you'd see from films of that period.
WARNING: I found undercranking and overcranking previewed and rendered fuzzy unless you set their preview and render settings to 'preview'. Anything higher like 'good' or 'best' results in fuzziness.
Finally, Vegas has a lot of aged film effects to add that sort of thing. But, I found Cinelook looked a good bit more authentic. Cinelook is really expensive.
Anyway, this is a rough summary of what worked for me. For something more complete you might want to check the archives for some post I made b/t May and Dec 2003 as that is when I made my movie.
Good luck!

Several things to consider if you are trying to emulate an old movie:

1. Spot gives the correct average frame rate for old movies. However, one thing everyone fails to mention is that most of us have watched these movies on projectors running at 24 fps, since that is all that has been available for many years. Thus, our impression of old movies is that everyone is walking too fast, etc. If you are going to emulate this effect, then you need to use undersample to remove frames to get down to 16 fps (undersample would be 16/30 = 0.53). Then, to get the "too fast" look, you would then speed up the clip (using the event playback rate) by a factor of 24/16 = 1.5

However, the problem is more complicated, since NTSC video is actually 60 fields per second. If you do the above operations, you will find that the result still looks too smooth.

I don't have time to go beyond this description, but my next step would be to try first rendering to 30 fps progressive and then doing the above, or else substitute "60" for "30" in the first of the above formulas.

2. The other major thing that makes film look like film, and which is especially important with old film, is the gate jitter, i.e., the way the film bounces around in the film gate, thus causing even a static scene to appear to jump around. Vegas' film fX has a jitter setting, and you'll want to set that pretty high.

... and maybe adding a velocity envelope to simulate the uneven frame rate produced by the hand cranking ....

Just a thought.

Cheers!
-Matt

Thanks everyone for your suggestions. I will try the undersample route.

Since it hasn't been shot yet, I wonder of the 15fps progressive of my PD-150 may be better to start with for this effect?

Old film isn't the desired effect - the director wants the film to look like you were sitting in Mann's Chinese Theater in 1920 watching the latest silent film. Not that you're looking at an archive of a 1920 film shown on 2005 gear. I will add some scratch and dust, and maybe a tiny amount of grain. The problem is matching the 16FPS frame-rate on 30FPS screen.

Thanks again,
Steve

I wonder of the 15fps progressive of my PD-150 may be better to start with for this effect?

I would definitely do that. Shoot a sample and then do the suggested things on that sample.

If you are trying to emulate what someone would have seen at that time, you might be able to just render this to DVD using the appropriate template after, of course, applying the film fX you want. As I said before, don't forget the gate jitter. That is far more important in achieving the "look" than is the dust and hair. You might also want to play around with the contrast, since the film stock of that era was pretty contrasty.

There are dozens of other things you can do to emulate film of that era. I highly recommend you rent Woody Allen's "Zelig" which is a faux documentary that is designed to look like is was shot in the 1920s (or before). Of course, he shot this on film, but the effects used to make the film look appropriate (including occasionally "missing" frames -- resulting in a small jump cut) may give you additional ideas.

The Chinese theater didn't open until 1927. Maybe you should make it the Egyptian, which opened in 1922.

Remember, by the way, that in their initial release, films of that period looked BETTER than B&W films of today. The film had more lattitude and less grain. It was also orthochromatic, so the color blue showed up as white (to varying degrees). This made people with blue eyes look very strange. So if you want it to be fairly accurate, don't overdo it with the grain and contrast. The original prints had much less of both than what we usually see today (thought there are some spectacular prints available still, both on film and DVD).

As for hand-cranking being responsible for the varying frame rates, that's not quite true. Cameramen were amazing at keeping the FPS right on the money, but as an artistic choice different scenes might be filmed at different speeds. Occasionally they'd intentionally vary the rate within a single shot.

Lastly, the rate that the films were shot is pretty much irrelevant because what matters is what rate they were projected. Almost all films of that period were intended to be shown at least a couple of frames faster than they were shot, but theaters might speed them up a little bit more to squeeze more showings in. Cameramen ended up shooting at slightly higher frame rates to counter this but naturally the projectionists kept right up.

If you shoot at 15fps and speed it up to about 19fps (1.26% faster), render it out at that frame rate, then drop it onto an NTSC timeline it should look fine.

Fred

> Edison wanted to have the slowest framerate possible due to processing costs.

Spot, actually the earliest Edison films were around 48fps. It was cost, weight, spool size, processing, wear on equipment, etc. that drove the rate down from there.

By the time of sound, most dramas were being shot in the 24fps range anyway.

Fred

I shot my short on a pd150 and experimented with the progressive mode. DON"T DO IT!!! After several tests I found progressive looked fuzzy on both lcd and external monitors. It will ruin your shot if you do it.
Honestly, I probably spent way too much time making my silent short, but I can definitely tell you that the undercranking then overcranking as described will get you what you want. Just play with the settings I gave you. But, you DEFINITELY do want to try to approximate the sped up look that was explained with the 16fps material later projected at 24fps. Very few people know that the original material did not look sped up when it was first shown and this is a dead give away for this period now, so I consider the sped up look an absolute must! There was even a Twilight Zone on today with Buster Keaton travel into the futrue, then back to 1890. The only real way to distinguish the periods was the sped up look. So, omit it at your peril!
I wish I could just open my old project and give you my exact settings, but unfortunately my raid drive with all those Veg files and material died last week. Again, you can do a search under my name and find it here I'm sure. That sped up look coupled with a good aged film look and some sepia tone will get you there. Vegas has a lot of that, including the very necessary jitter and a decent flicker. Again, Cinelook can do it nearly perfectly. Consistant flicker (Vegas is more randomized), great jitter, and really believable grain and other film artifacts (like scratches, etc).
Another good thing to do is add a projector sound in the background. I bought mine from sounddogs.com and it wasn't too expensive. It still impresses people today to watch the movie in 5.1 and have the projector sound played only in the rear 2 speakers. I was trying as best I could to approximate that theater experience with a noisey projector playing behind you. Still blows my mind that 2 years ago Vegas had Dolby 5.1 and most NLEs still lack it.
Anyway, good luck!!

Spot, actually the earliest Edison films were around 48fps

Didn't know that. However, on the loc.gov site, I recall reading a statement by someone connected to Edison, saying it was all about all the costs involved, but the biggest one was processing. I could be wrong, it's been a long time I ago I thought I remembered that. I didn't know anything was that high. I knew they used a double bladed gate so it would approximate 48, but didn't realize the films themselves were 48. Thanks for the catch/heads up.

musman wrote:
> Very few people know that the original material did not look sped up
> when it was first shown

They WERE shown faster even back then. For example, one of Keaton's films (either Sherlock Jr. or Seven Chances, maybe both) were supposed to be run at 25fps. The way the frame rates were calculated was by reel. Each reel had its own run time for the projectionist (who wouldn't necessarily follow it, of course).

But the earlier the film, the more sped up it will look at 24fps (except the early Edison tests). During most of the 00's and teens the shooting speeds and requested projection speeds were in the low to mid teens (Griffith used very slow frame rates, often around 12fps). It's really in the 20's that frame rates got up into the 18-22fps range for shooting, which means that watching them at 24fps is correct (depending on the film).

The current crop of DVD's (the ones done by reputable companies like Kino, Warners, Image, etc.) are transferred at correct frame rates (when they're known) and then pulldown is used to get them to NTSC (just like if the films were shot at 24fps).

The easiest way to verify that silent films were MEANT to be run slightly fast is to look look at the silent films that were released during the sound period. For example, Chaplin's City Lights and Modern Times. These were shot well into the sound era, so they were shot with motorized 24fps projection in mind. And they're sped up. It was definitely intended. (There are plenty of other examples too, but Chaplins are the most well known.)

Fred

Some scenes were sped up where this lent the desired "look" to the scene (eg Keystone Cops). Most "modern" (ie 1930+) action films are similarly undercranked where it suits; highly noticeable in horse action stuff in westerns (and probably current car chases). It isn't true to say that silent films were always undercranked relative to projection speeds. Seems a bit daft to recreate "silent" film as usually bastedised by "modern" projectionists. If you actually look at silent films projected at correct speed you'll observe that there is much that distinguishes "silent" from "sound" and it's not speeded up action, grain, scratches and gate jitter. It's the lack of synchronised sound so that actors had to convey things through visual cues. Acting styles have changed anyway, so to look like a silent film you have to emulate the characteristics and techniques of that era. The silent film technical defects that have been mentioned mostly refer to worn prints and indeed were suffered by very early films (say, before 1910) but maltese-cross pull down mechanisms were in very early projectors and production cameras (even hand wound) had quality mechanisms.
Obviously when you're making a video you can do it how you wish, so I guess my comments are about trying to set down the facts. Sort of "you can say that 2+2=5, but that's not how it is".

And of course, having said all of this, you're probably better off mimicking what *today's* audiences think of in regard to silent film. It's not accurate but it will "seem right."

Serena-- You mention that it's not true to day that silent films were always projected faster than they were photographed. Give or take the odd scene here and there, they WERE projected faster (according to the surviving cue sheets and other distribution materials). I'm not saying they were all shot at around 16fps and projected at 24fps, I'm saying it was normal for films to be intended to be shown 2-5fps faster than they were shot. And of course the projectionists commonly sped them up a little more. Dramas were, naturally, not intended to be sped up quite as much as comedies.

"And of course, having said all of this, you're probably better off mimicking what *today's* audiences think of in regard to silent film. It's not accurate but it will "seem right."

Exactly. If you're doing a silent film, you have to go with what people associate with silent films. Again, the Twilight Zone, which was rarely known to be comical, sped up all their scenes of Buster Keaton in 1890. They had to. It's the only way to immediately convey to an audiene that they're watching a silent film.
So, you can argue how authentic the look is, but you really can't argue whether it's necessary to sell a silent film look.

I gave the director a sample of the effect today, so we'll see what he says.

I shot the test in the default 30i than I downsampled .5, and used the film plug in to add a little grain, dust, scratches and jitter. (Less than the default in all parameters). I also made the image a little sepia-toned.

The downsample had the most convincing effect on the appearance. And the use of a projector sound was a nice touch. I even found some old piano music for the demo.

I'll let you know what the director decides later this week.

"So, you can argue how authentic the look is, but you really can't argue whether it's necessary to sell a silent film look"

Yes, I agree that context is important in how you do it, and had hoped my reply conveyed my acknowledgment of that. Also agree that projectionists (whose main interest was the number of houses in a day) tended to overcrank and audiences were amused by unnatural movement (so comedy was intended to be faster than natural). Obviously that was not the case with drama and romance.

A question: if you were projecting a silent film would you do so at silent speed (18fps) or at 24fps because you think that's what your audience expects? That they expect the romantic leads to be jumping about like cats on hot bricks? I always use 18fps because I have an aversion to perpetuating myths and I find then that audiences express a new appreciation of the silent film. Buster Keaton's "The General" is far better shown at 18fps and surprisingly people don't notice that the usual piano soundtrack has changed key.
In a few years there'll be questions on how to make video look like they had before the turn of the century. I guess people will be saying "well it was interlaced so you have to put jaggy vertical edges on anything that moves and burn out all the highlights and the colours were garish and bright things like lights left ghostly trails across the image". Hopefully there'll be someone then to say "it wasn't like that".
Now there are a lot of people who've never used movie film and their impression of the medium tends to be slewed by bad examples. Like poor video transfers from 8mm. I never cared much for that gauge but the projected images were always streets ahead of the video examples we see. The stuff I shot on good equipment was notably better than analogue video, but people who've seen only bad video copies recreate substandard gauges by applying uneven lighting, fuzzy definition, scratches and dirt.
Any good print that isn't rock steady in the gate calls for projector maintenance, which might be the reason we now see some wavering of the image in film theatres (projectors soon to be replaced by video).
An interesting question here is why am I carrying on about this? Guess it's my science background. Talk out ignorance where-ever it's perceived. Trouble is that "perceived" is the operative word in this context, so the response can well be "yeah I know all that, but that's not what I'm saying!".

A question: if you were projecting a silent film would you do so at silent speed (18fps) or at 24fps because you think that's what your audience expects?

This is, to me, a fascinating question. I do lots of restoration on audio (78 rpm, old tapes, dictation discs) and of course old film and video. Is the goal to make it look (or sound) like it did when it was new? Or, make it as close as possible to what we like to see today?

For me, the answer is usually that I want it to be "comfortable" and fun. By this I mean that the audience shouldn't have to try to hard to enjoy the material. Thus, I don't mind being fairly aggressive during restoration, as long as the video doesn't start to show digital artifacts, or the sound start to sound hollow or artificial.

Making something look or sound "authentic" is somewhat of a "long hair" aesthetic. It reminds me of some of my friends who insist that you should only listen to Handel's music played on original period instruments. Well, I have plenty of those recordings, and I am sure they sound much closer to what people actually heard four hundred years ago. And this can be interesting. However, the sound quality is nowhere as rich or full as what can be produced with modern instruments. Thus, the modern instruments are more "comfortable" to listen to. Since most audio and video is designed as an entertainment experience, the audience generally should not be asked to work too hard to appreciate what is being presented.

In the same vein, if I had a choice of listening to a 78 rpm record played on a Victrola or, instead, listening to the same record played on a modern turntable, with a truncated needle, through an Owl preamp, I'd much rather listen to the better sound, even though the Victrola would produce the sound that people actually heard when the record was first released.

John, I take your point, but I'm not convinced by your analogy. I wasn't advocating showing silent films on old machines with lime-light lamphouses. Now if you were advocating playing old 78s at 33 1/3rpm, that would be right on the nose. Cleaning up and restoring old film negs or prints prior to striking new prints is a valuable activity. That is loving work undertaken at great expense by film archivists and lets us appreciate the quality of the original work. As indeed you do with audio material. The great work done by Robert Parker in revitalising early jazz recordings (into digital stereo) gave us a greater appreciation of how those musicians really sounded. I don't believe he played around with the tempo or phrasing. The only wonder in old wax cylinder recordings of Caruso is their uniqueness, but cleaned up, processed and transferred we can appreciate something of Caruso's voice. I don't have an appropriate reverance for those original instrument recitals, either. But I think you might like to hear Mozart close to the way the composer intended, rather than as interpretted by Rolling Stones or Peter Sellers (as interesting as that might be).

I hope your answer was 18fps (assuming that to be closer to the maker's original intention than 24).

Sounds good, but you did add velosity envelopes as well, right? Otherwise it would just be a slow motion film. If so, did you encounter the same issues I had that lead to my rendering (and previewing) at preview quality to avoid the blur that 'good' or 'best' created?

If I was in your position, I'd rent, borrow, or buy an old 16mm (or perhaps a 35) camera, shoot at 18 fps, then project it with a 5 blade shutter... (or maybe not) and shoot that with a good video camera at a moderate shutter speed. Then I'd push up the blues, drop the reds, and convert to B&W. Probably cost under $500.00.