You want to see a return to outdoor scenes shot on ropey 16mm film and then cutting in a hideously clashing way with video for studio shots?
No, not using 16mm film, using filmic, and only as an experiment. For some reason, film makes it feel like outdoors to me, where video makes it feel like indoors.
At university we used to watch Blake's 7 videos through a mixing desk with strobe effect on to emulate film - it instantly increased the PPC! (perceived production cost )
I think somebody should try and make a programme as they did in the 70s and 80s. Use filmic on outdoor scenes and normal video on indoor scenes. See how it works.
You want to see a return to outdoor scenes shot on ropey 16mm film and then cutting in a hideously clashing way with video for studio shots?
But when this was a commonly used production technique - during the sixties through to the eighties - it somehow didn't appear 'hideously clashing' at all. It was so common that I think it was subconsciously accepted by audiences - somehow you expected outdoor scenes to appear grainy and filmic, and indoor ones to have that clean 'video' look - it just seemed to be the natural way of things, and I don't think anyone thought anything of it.
At university we used to watch Blake's 7 videos through a mixing desk with strobe effect on to emulate film - it instantly increased the PPC! (perceived production cost )
David
Speaking of Blake's 7. I remember seeing very early "filmising" techniques used in Blake's 7 where they had clearly no extra budget to film outdoors and so used blue screen in a studio with an outdoor backdrop and tried to filmise it. It was very noticeable that they even mentioned it in the commentaries on the DVD.
But when this was a commonly used production technique - during the sixties through to the eighties - it somehow didn't appear 'hideously clashing' at all. It was so common that I think it was subconsciously accepted by audiences - somehow you expected outdoor scenes to appear grainy and filmic, and indoor ones to have that clean 'video' look - it just seemed to be the natural way of things, and I don't think anyone thought anything of it.
Yes, commonly used due to necessity. Have you seen the size of a Quad VTR? If you have, then you can understand why film was used on location. Once portable VT equipment came in, shooting on film went out. It looks very dated now.
But when this was a commonly used production technique - during the sixties through to the eighties - it somehow didn't appear 'hideously clashing' at all. It was so common that I think it was subconsciously accepted by audiences - somehow you expected outdoor scenes to appear grainy and filmic, and indoor ones to have that clean 'video' look - it just seemed to be the natural way of things, and I don't think anyone thought anything of it.
Yes, commonly used due to necessity. Have you seen the size of a Quad VTR? If you have, then you can understand why film was used on location. Once portable VT equipment came in, shooting on film went out. It looks very dated now.
Though 2" and 1" Portable VTRs did exist, AND full-size VTRs were housed in OB VT vans (and in the case of 1" VTRs production trucks), to allow location recording on video in the 70s. Dr Who episodes as far back as the Tom Baker era were shot on 2" VT on-location, and by the Sylvester McCoy era entire series were shot entirely on 1" VT on-location (with no studio involvement at all ISTR)
The BBC shot a LOT of drama on video in the 70s and 80s (particularly the 80s) and a lot of it was recorded on 1" on-location. The Beeb had two multi-camera OB vehicles that pretty much did drama full-time at one point, and they also had single or two camera trucks used for Childrens' drama until the 90s. (Stuff like Narnia, Five Children and It, Box of Delights, Children of Green Knowe etc. were all shot on 1" VT on location)
There was a large and a small portable 1" VTR (the small VPR 5 was little bigger than a Nagra 1/4" audio recorder, though this is hardly surprising as Nagra made it in association with Ampex) - but most stuff was still recorded on full-size machines in the truck.
Stuff shot this way actually had some advantages. Because there was a vision engineer colour balancing and exposing the camera in a dark truck (which also held the VTR), there was far less need for colour correction in the edit, and if you were working multi-camera, you got through scenes pretty quickly, and editing back at base became a job of stitching together scenes, not cutting the whole show shot, by shot, as the vision mixer had already cut the scene for you. The down-side was that lighting for multiple camera angles requires more of a compromise, and the lenses and camera mountings for video cameras were not designed for drama production, so were sometimes a bit rougher on camera moves...
I think somebody should try and make a programme as they did in the 70s and 80s. Use filmic on outdoor scenes and normal video on indoor scenes. See how it works.
You want to see a return to outdoor scenes shot on ropey 16mm film and then cutting in a hideously clashing way with video for studio shots?
But when this was a commonly used production technique - during the sixties through to the eighties - it somehow didn't appear 'hideously clashing' at all. It was so common that I think it was subconsciously accepted by audiences - somehow you expected outdoor scenes to appear grainy and filmic, and indoor ones to have that clean 'video' look - it just seemed to be the natural way of things, and I don't think anyone thought anything of it.
This is true. It doesn't clash at all with me, because I've watched so many old shows that I'm used to it. Which is why it surprised me in SFX recently to read someone laughing at the technique - they obviously don't watch enough old telly
What I find interesting is the difference in *quality* of film on old shows. I was watching a Reggie Perrin yesterday - some of the location work looked absolutely marvellous... and then the end scene looked so washed out and grotty. Amazing how technical standards can vary so much within one episode...
)