The Bill

Perhaps I'm something of a 'luddite', but I really can't see the point of using an effect that actually looks worse on screen. I thought there was something wrong with my TV at first.

Every internal scene just looked badly lit, as if they were trying to save money on the electricity bill.

Ben Richards has just said on Loose Women that the episodes of The Bill which are with SOCO Leipzeig are being filmed in HD.

ITV HD have the show being broadcast on Saturday from midnight.

In Germany, SOCO Leipzeig is in HD, and the German version of the show has been edited slightly differently to enable more German-language dialogue.

SOCO Leipzeig is also produced by talkbackTHAMES (Freemantle Media).

Maybe filmed in HD, but wont be broadcast in the HD any time in the near future, ZDF does not currently have an HD station.

Judging from the preview for the next episode of The Bill it looks like the filmic effect is here to stay.

Where as I looked at it, and thought that the preview looked like it was being upscaled because it was at the end of that episode.

Thinking about it now you might be right. But I do think the filmic look suits The Bill and people still watched it.

I agree. It looked a lot better actually. It doesn't always work but it definitely suited The Bill.

I love The Bill on ITV 1, Recently I was watching some old clips of The Bill on Youtube & someone added a clean theme on there, Here's the link to it:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=5Z6nXCfCO_s

I was wondering if you have got any The Bill Theme Tunes ? As I am a bit short in that Department.

Please PM me if you have. Thanks

GDC

Nothing to do with being HD per se.

Strictly Come Dancing, Later with Jools, lots of pop concerts and sport events are also shot in HD - but they don't look "filmic" when downconverted to SD.

European 1080 line HD can be shot in either 25 frames per second progressive (1080/25p) or 50 fields per second interlaced currently (1080/50i) (Some countries are using entirely progressive 720/25p and 720/50p - Sweden and Italy mainly - but the same arguments hold true)

If you want the film look you shoot at 25p, if you want the video look you shoot at 50i. 50i captures twice as many images per second so gives far more fluid motion than 25p - which is why sport and entertainment shows with fast moving action and fast moving cameras use 50i.

Standard European SD video is almost always shot 50 fields per second interlaced (576/50i) - and thus has the same "look" as 1080/50i (which is what Strictly, Later... and almost all HD sport is shot in)

Some SD video shot at 576/50i is processed in post-production to give it a 25p look. Originally this meant just discarding every other field and repeating the remaining field to give you something closer to 288/25p - very low resolution and jagged. These days the processing is much better and you can get a pretty good 576/25p result. The best quality appears to be through using Snell and Willcox Alchemist/Platinum or ForA high-end standards converters. Doctor Who is shot 576/50i and converted to 25p for a "film look" using a S&W these days I believe.

If you shoot at 25 frames progressive you get the same frame rate and motion capture characters as film. It is much easier to shoot HD at 25p than SD (where 50i kit is still the norm) - as many HD cameras can be switched between 50i and 25p as required.

Home and Away switched from 576/50i (SD video look interlaced) to 1080/25p (HD film look progressive) when they switched to HD shooting (though they still edited in the 576 line domain for quite a while)

Similarly, Holby shot a block of episodes on HD 1080/50i cameras quite a few years ago as a test, but as the show had a video 576/50i look in SD at the time, they ran the HD cameras in 1080/50i mode - so the motion was the same.

I suspect they chose the film look :

1. Because they were "specials" - so a different look would be acceptable?
2. Because I suspect the ZDF show is normally shot on film?

Memory cheats, but wasn't a filmic effect used on the Bill's Beech in Australia episodes a few years ago?