In many of the battle scenes in Saving Private Ryan there is a strobe-looking effect to the video. It works well to emphasize the tension and horror of the situation.
I never examined it frame by frame. Does anyone know what was done to create this effect?
Without seeing it, it's most likely undersampled, perhaps with a strobe on it. There is an article coming out today from DMN with a tip in there on how to do exactly this sort of thing. L. Disney on the DMN forums has done an amazing video with this sort of effect.
I read somewhere that the desire was to duplicate images from hand-wound cameras that typcially ran between 16 and 18 fps. Between undersampling and some of playing with the film-effect plugin, one could probably get close.
It's actually acheived by decreasing the shutter angle on a motion picture camera. Most motion picture cameras utilize a 180 degree shutter or 172.8 degree shutter at 24 fps. Panavision cameras can go down to 1 degree, if that is ever desired. The effect in Saving Private Ryan was done this way. Not sure of the exact shutter angle used, but obviously tighter than 172.8.