silent film look

grock wrote on 2/23/2005, 8:13 AM
I want to film a commercial that has silent film look
I know I can add the film looks affect to make it look old but how do I make it look it look jerky. Do I make the actors kind act act like there in a silent movie or do I set frame rate down on my project setting to like about 15 frames or more or less or do I just experiment?
Thanks

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 2/23/2005, 8:18 AM
Try the Undersample rate in properties using values around 0.2 to 0.5 and disable resmapling. It may also help to speed up the clip slightly.
Jay Gladwell wrote on 2/23/2005, 8:19 AM

Camera speeds in the silent era, generally speaking, varied from 14 to 18 fps. You'll probably just have to experiment to find what suits your needs.

Jimmy_W wrote on 2/23/2005, 8:21 AM
Also use the film effect plug. Set it to flicker or jittter and add some grain. Not to be confused with magic Bullet. I hope this what you was referring to.
Jimmy
Jessariah67 wrote on 2/23/2005, 8:23 AM
You could also make hard cuts in the middle of the action, taking out a few frames each time to add to the "jerkiness."
grock wrote on 2/23/2005, 8:51 AM
Thanks I will give that a try
busterkeaton wrote on 2/23/2005, 3:02 PM
You probably want to paly with the contrast too.
Serena wrote on 2/23/2005, 5:22 PM
The "silent film look" you're after needs to be described a little more clearly. If it's just the speeded up effect of showing material filmed at 16 fps at 24fps then you just have to compress the video on the timeline (cntrl+drag). If you're seeking the visual look of early films, then the film stock was orthochromatic which was very insensitive to red (adjust with color curves). Makeup was designed to compensate for this (yellow, if I remember correctly), so faces took on a rather white bland look with heavy eye-makeup and dark lips. The lighting used was often mercury vapour lamps and arcs (as well as sunlight). The early camera stock was grainy and images often showed vignetting. Acting tended strongly to the melodramatic, with exception under directors such as Griffith. News material, which you might have in mind, was usually poorly shot and processed.
But if the period you have in mind was the 20s, then films were better in all technical aspects and often were shot at higher frame rates (sometimes to counteract projectionists winding faster to get more shows in the day). A good print of those films will show few of the effects I suspect you have in mind.
musman wrote on 2/23/2005, 8:27 PM
I made a shot film a couple of years ago called "Don't Make Eye Contact" and spent ages trying to get this look right. For the motion you need to first undercrank or lower the speed of the clip then you need to speed the clip back up again. Do this by right clicking the event, and under Properties adjusting the undersampling rate to something like .667. This will add some choppiness and slow things down to around 20 "fps" though it really means interlaced fields. Then apply a velosity envelope to the clip to somewhere b/t 133% to 170%. Now you'll have a choppy sped up look that is very similar to silent films. I played with these settings even w/in the same event to get closer to a varying frame rate as you would get in a silent film.
NOTE: There is an odd bug when you do this under and overcranking that you'll need to render in PREVIEW QUALITY. Tried this a million times and rendering or previewing in good or best will cause blurriness. Asked about it here several times but I never got an aswer why and preview looked fine.
ALSO NOTE: When you apply the velosity envelope it is best to use it in Excalibur so your in and out points do not change.
Taking out a few frames here and there as advised above is also a good plan. Play witht he different particles and film effects in Vegas such as gate weaving and you should be there. I ended up using a redish sepia rather than straight black and white. Still, I wasn't really satisfied with what Vegas gave me as far as the particles and gate weave so I ended up using Cinelook in AE. Now that was a mess, but I learned a lot. Found I had to render uncompressed from Vegas to use it in AE. WIsh I had figured that out earlier and also that I knew about frameserving then.
There are some still pics here that give you a broad idea of what it looked like when I got done.

http://www.dtbdfilms.com/page4.html

The Newport Beach film festival used to have my trailer onine somewhere and apparently it was up even a few months ago, but it's probably gone by now.
This was my first film and first editing project of any kind and I had been keeping my formula a bit to myself as it took me 6 months of trial and error to figure everything out, especially AE Cinelook stuff. But the movie is nearly 2 years old now and this is a place for sharing information, so best of luck to you.