Curious as to what the world has to say…
Open question to… the world? With new cameras entering the market with amazing features such as 60p, 120p, 480p for a reasonable amount of cash, we see more and more slowed down footage. Add in direct sunlight, mist or water and you instantly have a likable short of nothingness. Hearing people asking for “filters” to throw on to their footage to make it look like instagram boggles my mind as well as intrigues me. -What filter did you use?! A question I usually heard about a photoshop work that clearly used no filter. Now, it appears in discussions of motion. Why is that? What happened to the craft? Do we care?
What is beauty really…
What is the beautiful aspect of shooting moving pictures? Since a photograph is a frozen moment in time, a film is many of those photographs in a sequence. To me, capturing a continues moment adds more self satisfaction than a frozen one even though I am a lover of photography. The love I have for film is why I am asking out into thin air; do we have to slow down footage to make it emotional?
Stay at 24p
If as close to real life as possible can be translated into frames it would be roughly 30p so 24p is already slowed down. Is there a major reason to slow it down further? Granted we all say yes, but do we have to say yes all the time? Proof of commercials, vimeos and feature films we see the slowed down effect more and more.
He is an amazing cinematographer
But yet he only shoots RED at 120fps. I am not knocking on this guy, as he is probably amazing at what he does, but I want to believe that there is still love for 24p. Capturing moments at a slower than real life speed with still enough life in it to make it real. Maybe this brings my topic together. Is life really better when it is slowed down. Preferably life in phantom speed of 1000fps.
Easy way out
Maybe it is as simple to say that lack of skill equals higher frame rate? The skill of applying a filter to a photograph is less than none and takes little to no time. Also not very creative in my opinion since you use someone else’s vision applied to your photograph. Collaboration?! Maybe slowed down footage is the easier way out to be creative. You do not have to use as many shots as you would have due to the length of each clip being extended. Win on that end I suppose.
No conclusion
Finding the answer is subjective but asking the question is relevant. Personally I am curious as to why we feel the need to slow everything down.
Personal Challenge
As my own personal challenge I will shoot 24p and only 24p to see how I can evoke a similar emotional response to my stories as the guy who only shoots at 120fps. Am i knocking technology? No, I celebrate it, but I am also mostly curious about the evolution and if in a couple of years we will go to the theater to see a 2h slowed down smash of a window. Leaving this open ended to see what the thin air has to say about the topic.