What's the name for this picture processing effect?

Just stumbled on Young Musician of the Year on BBC4. The performance clips use a technique that gives a slight softening of the picture, for want of a better expression. Saw it used on event footage in Today at the (Commonwealth) Games recently too. Feel I should know the name for it... it's not quite filmised, or is it?

There are three real options for doing this :

1. DVE - there are some quite nice soft-blur effects that are subtle enough to get away with - but they don't all 'kick off' on highlights like physical filters do.
2. Some cameras have a 'soft' filter along with a star filter in one of their filter wheels (Philips cameras do, not sure about Sony)
3. Put a Lee 1 or Lee 2 in the camera between the lens and the camera block.

1. is easiest if you need it as an effect 'mid song'. 2 is better if you want it for all cameras but not all the time. 3 is often used if the entire show has the effect (or you can dedicate cameras to have the effect and those not to have the effect)

I've had a look on iPlayer, and it's showing as 25p rather than 50i (apart from, possibly, the graphics stings), but I don't see anything else jumping out at me.

Thanks David and Noggin - having a brief look on iPlayer before bed, I can't spot the effect myself either; but it was certainly apparent on TV earlier! Odd.

You didn't have it on SD by mistake, did you?

Adding a 25p film-effect, which Sport do to a lot of their montages, along with a heavy grade, shouldn't make them look much softer (though you can add a softening effect should you wish), but will make the sport more juddery.

If you are shooting a show 25p - like Young Musician may have been - then you will be running your cameras in 25psf almost certainly (so not film-effecting in post, but shooting in a film-like manner) Again no reason for those to look softer (technically - if you ignore interlace compatibility - you can shoot sharper in 25p than in 50i)

With regards to 2, in my experience the camera purchaser will decide what filters they want to have fitted to their camera and in our case we supplied the filters to be fitted to the Sonys for fitment at their factory in Wales. It was very very very important to ensure the paperwork and actual filters tallied at all times so that nothing got mixed up - there was a lot of potential for that!!

I think each camera had 4 filters filters - 3 for special optical effects and one filter that was actually 'clear' (rather then 'nothing' as of course it is important to keep the optical path/parameters the same between filters even if one was ostensibly 'clear').

I need to correct my post. On reflection the Sony cameras were supplied with Sony’s idea of what optical effects they should have. But, they were taken out and replaced by our selection (which was different) whilst the cameras were being acceptance tested at their factory in Wales. Hence the need to keep a very close eye on the paperwork. The original filters were given back to us carefully wrapped up etc and locked away safely back on-site somewhere since they were included in the original purchase price.

Do you know which effect the Vicar of Dibley used? That programme always looked like someone had put Vaseline on the lens - and it differed in intensity from episode to episode. Particularly noticeable when you looked at the edges of clothes or any lighting.

Quite noticeable in this clip:

That was probably either 3. or a Pro-mist or Super-mist filter. I think - though may be wrong - that they went in front of the lens (and were only practical on smaller non-box lenses used on light-weight cameras - which were used on Dibley which was shot by BBC OBs ISTR using lightweight cameras.)

This technique was used widely by BBC OBs when they shot drama as their drama vehicles were almost universally based around Sony or Ikegami lightweight tubed cameras, then Sony CCD cameras (with a small amount of LDK CCDs used briefly for a trial - see below). The technique was used a lot on Children's drama, which continue to be shot by BBC OBs well into the 90s. Whilst adult drama had the budget for film shoots, children's drama didn't. They eventually moved to camcorder working - but running with an OB truck allowed for multi-camera shoots (which are quicker in some cases, and reduce the time a young cast has to spend working (which is a legal issue), and also allows for consistency of shot-matching reducing the time spent grading (or TARIF-ing as it was called) in the edit. OB trucks could watch previous takes back to colour-match (or recall stills on a still store like Aston Wallet)


Some of Dibley was - I believe - shot in the BBC COM^3 modified truck that had 16:9 switchable LDKs for a while (which was able to shoot 16:9 component quality pictures using modified PAL analogue equipment). However I don't think Dibley took advantage of this and ISTR it was shot 4:3 using conventional PAL.

COM^3 = COMposite-COMpatible COMponent http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/publications/rdreport_1994_17

(COM^3 was an approach considered for extending the life of PAL analogue studios and OB trucks whilst allowing component quality to be delivered, avoiding the need for analogue component working - which was a lot trickier as it relied triple cabling. However SDI offered far more advantages than analogue component and was the obvious direction of travel)

I imagine that includes the stuff I grew up watching like The Demon Headmaster, The Queen's Nose and Aquilla? All videotaped dramas, but mostly on location. Still all had quite high production standards though even if they budgets weren't that high.

The Demon headmaster is also (at last) out on DVD next month too.

It would depend how late they were using it - I think the first widescreen episodes were the seasonal specials broadcast over Christmas 1999 (and New Year's Day 2000).

It was entirely possible to use the COM^3 truck in 4:3 mode - you just switched the 16:9 cameras in to 4:3, or booked 4:3 cameras for the truck for that show.