OT - But Important

[Colin Anderton]

I know this is a bit OT - but I wonder if you'd indulge me, as I really do want an answer to this question.

I was working with some footage from The Avengers, and it sounds to me like the voices are a little high-pitched.
Surely, the film cameras used at that time were adjusted to film at 25 frames per second, to match the TV broadcast standard.
Weren't they?

I then went on to look at some news footage, and that also appeared to suggest the same thing.

I know things could be a little slack in those days, but did they just run the film fast when broadcast? Surely not!

Colin.

[Colin Anderton]

Just had an idea! Could they have filmed at 24fps so the Americans would more easily be able to convert to their system for broadcast in the States?

Colin.

[RWels]

Can you give us an example? Is it throughout the series or just some filmed inserts? If I have a few minutes I will dig up my dvds and check.

I don't know about the NTSC-compatibility idea... it sounds a bit far fetched.

[Colin Anderton]

No, it's not inserts I'm referring to - it's the programme generally.
I've noticed it on other episodes, but the one I was dealing with on this occasion was "A Surfeit Of H²O".

As you may know, 24fps converts to 30fps by simply adding a duplicate frame every fifth frame (although this causes a jerky motion). 25fps would be more of a problem - particularly back in the Sixties.

Colin.

[Peter Stirling]

Before the use of frame stores and then on into the digital age, the telecines would only run at 25fps so they did just that I think ? ie run 24fps stuff at 25fps. Although they had pitch shifters at their disposal I believe?
As you say it was quite a complicated problem to resolve at the time and leaving it like it was had certain advantages such as nice natural motion
and livening up an otherwise dreary film or programme LOL.
I think film stuff made for VTR programmes was shot at 25fps .. but depending on the operator (luddite entrenched maybe?) or if a camera at that speed was available- hence some of those old inserts may look strobey today if they were shot at 24 fps.

In the end its difficult to say really, as programmes like Star Trek ran for around 50 minutes in the 1972 run (later runs were cut to 45 minutes IIRC) on the non advert BBC. Which you would expect to be much shorter if it was running at the wrong speed?
Certainly to me Star Trek sounds today just as it did in the 1970s, and I cannot see the Americans making a 25fps print just for us ?

However a programme like The Fugitive from the 1960s now sounds very slow to me today so perhaps that was run fast at the time?



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[John Smith]

See Dad's Army episodes for good examples of this, everytime there is a film sequence it will invariably be running too fast in terms of the audio as they always seems to have squeaky voices.

[Steven Sigel]

A lot of filmed material (including the Avengers) was shot at 24fps. When run in the UK, it was transfered at 25fps which would give a 4% speedup .

[RWels]

Somehow I can't find my Avengers DVDs right now, but I suppose it's 24 fps played at 25 after all.

[John Wall]

"North By Northwest" has just been on Channel 4 - without the adverts it was 130 minutes. If I multiply that by 25/24 I get almost 136 minutes which is the duration given by Wikipedia.

[Colin Anderton]

Yes, but North By Northwest was a film made for cinema. They were definitely shot (and run in the cinema) at 24fps. TV stations routinely run them 4% faster than normal.

I was referring to television material. I'd always assumed it was shot at 25fps to match the TV standard. (I'm talking about Britain, of course).

Colin.

[RWels]

Cinema's don't necessarily play at exactly 24 fps. The one where I used to work had two types of projectors. When switched from one to the other, a film would end just a bit earlier than before.