The Cinematic Look

In another thread we went off at a bit of a tangent regarding The 180 deg Rule and the resulting Cinematic look this bestows.

I remain a bit confused by this, not in the rule but by what it achieves.

Could someone explain what is the essence of the Cinematc look? What are the giveaways that someone has, or hasn't, followed this rule.

I can appreciate the potential advantages of the rule - slowest shutter speed allowing greatest light gathering an minimum noise in any given situation. But shooting fast moving action I would be concerned that this would just result in a lot of blurred images. I can also appreciate that a fast shutter speed could introduce a strobe like effect, particularly at 24 fps. Does this rule exist just because of these physical restrictions?

The 180° rule isn't about the shutter speed, it is about continuity and orientation.
http://en.wikipedia.or​g/wiki/180_degree_rule

:o What a twit - I knew that, that's what comes of getting old

In my (slim) defence the comment in the other thread extended into the blending associated with the rotating shutter of an old time film camera (180deg exposed 180deg covered) and to reproduce this we should shoot at 1/60 for 30 fps, 1/50 for 25 fps, 1/120 for 60 fps. Does this rule have a name?

What ever it might be called, how can you tell if video has been shot to this convention or not?

John Sims wrote in post #13492157
What ever it might be called, how can you tell if video has been shot to this convention or not?

I'm pretty sure it's called the 180 degree shutter, not the 180* rule (which is something completely different dealing with continuity editing).

Easiest way to tell is look at how much motion exists between frames. If each frame is very sharp and has no blurring (even though a lot of motion is taking place onscreen) it was shot with a shutter faster than the 180* guideline (i.e. less space open on the disk). If each frame is very blurry (more-so than you would expect with the amount of motion taking place) then it was shot with a shutter slower than the 180* guideline (i.e. more space open on the disk).

I hope that makes sense...

Makes perfect sense David. Thank you for that.

macroimage wrote in post #13492091
The 180° rule isn't about the shutter speed, it is about continuity and orientation.
http://en.wikipedia.or​g/wiki/180_degree_rule

I think someone "crossed the line" with this post...










Sorry, couldn't resist... carry on.

ChasWG wrote in post #13492640
I think someone "crossed the line" with this post...

Sorry, couldn't resist... carry on.

Aahhhh ha ha ha See what you did there.

Just upping my post count...

I am interested in this thread quite a bit. A great question and hopefully there will be some great content that we can all learn from. I understand the basics of the 180* shutter rule, but I want to see this expanded upon some more. How far can you push this before you really start to get some horrid looking footage?

Let's say I'm shooting at 60fps, normally I would shoot at 1/125th shutter, but what happens to the video if I push it to 1/250th or even 1/500th? Does it still hold up? Does it still look as good as the original setting of 1/125th? Will it become too jittery to use? And how to render that so that you get a simularly smooth effect as 60fps @ 1/125th and then rendered to 24fps? It's probably just the same as I've always done, but maybe not...

Well, horrid is a point of personal preference, seeing as war flicks typically use fast shutter speeds (over 1/250th) to create a sense of emergency and disorientation, so it really depends on your scene and intended look. Using a 180 deg shutter is really like using the rule of thirds, you can use it as a starting point, but it might not be optimal to shoot everything this way.

The so called 'cinematic look" is not just shutter speed or a shallow dof or anything like that, but a large collection of variables that come together to create immersion. This is in the lighting, art design, scene depth, editing, and even sound. The camera's technical merits might be nice, but if isn't rigged and manipulated like a movie camera, and is used to record boring subject matter that didn't have any forethought put into it, your footage is going to look like a home video, whether you're using a 60D with kit lens or an ALEXA with master primes.

If you want to go for the real cinematic look, start looking beyond the camera, and stop panning.

What! No panning!?!!!

John Sims wrote in post #13496852
What! No panning!?!!!

Zooming and panning is for news gatherers
Cinematographers actually move the camera around in space, using dollies, cranes, tracks and stabilizers.

Some examples - does a person usually zoom his eyes to get a better look at something? No, they move closer, and the camera should behave the same. Did you know humans close their eyes when turning their head? Our vision has a lot of persistence, and blinking clears our vision of what we last saw, movies never linger too long on a take either.

There are many things people do subconsciously to "edit" what they see similar to a movie, and inversely, there are many movie tricks used to make things look believable and interesting for us.

Knowing about these things also solves a lot of technical difficulties with cameras. CMOS skew getting on your nerves? 24p looks choppy and causes strobing? Not the camera's fault!
By following a number of rules, cinematographers often shoot fast action at such low frame rates and maintain a viewable image by controlling how things move through the frame, how the camera moves, and how to distract the viewer's attention from these faults... though having no skew is still nice.

Some solid points there.

I certainly go along with the coment that we look AT things and then look AT something else, we don't pan across things and, obviously, can't zoom our eyes. Even when scanning a shelf of groceries (for example) we will do a number of quick static looks rather than slide our view across the shelf.

I shot a wedding on a beach using the 180deg (shutter) rule and F2.8 for medium DOF control.

The footage is outstanding, very Hollywood.

Had to use Fixed and vari-NDs to allow 50th sec and F2.8 @ the same time in broad daylight.

And most improtantly, the sharpness control is all the way over to the left (permanently on my 60D) and, if using L glass, contrast -1 or -2 (depends on lens) and colour -1.

Default (middle) shapness looks horrible.

Camcorders look nothing like this.

Sounds cool - gi' us some demos Guv'

Kolor-Pikker wrote in post #13502289
Zooming and panning is for news gatherers
Cinematographers actually move the camera around in space, using dollies, cranes, tracks and stabilizers.

This is not true. Most of the greatest directors including Hitchcock, Kubrick, Spielberg, Scorsese, DePalma etc. all used zooms and pans as a form of film grammer in their visual storytelling in addtion to moving the camera.