> Interesting to note that the Lumiere cinematographe (hand-cranked both as > camera and projector) was intended to run at 16fps - but who was timing > that?
The operator! It is amazing how consistent you can be counting cadence while turning the crank. And 16 fps on an eight-frames-per-crank-turn camera is pretty comfortable, while 24 fps is difficult. A lot of those older films were not run at constant speed and some came with directions about increasing or decreasing projection speed at various scenes. The projectionist may or may not actually be paying attention to this, or he may be running everything a little bit slow to make up for the program today being a bit short. The original Nosferatu is very interesting, because if you run it at a consistent 16 fps the motion looks accurate but the film is very slow and the pacing is all wrong. If you run it at 20 fps, the pacing is much better and it becomes a far more exciting film, but the motion looks a bit sped-up. What is correct? Nobody really knows since all of the original editing notes and projection information was destroyed as part of the settlement of the lawsuit. --scott -- Frameworks mailing list [email protected] https://mail.film-gallery.org/mailman/listinfo/frameworks_film-gallery.org
