Video as Film

I've been experimenting with techniques to make miniDV video look more like film. I've got Cinelook and I'm going to try out Magic Bullet. The process takes a long time, though. It makes MPEG2 encoding seem fast in comparison. I've got something encoding almost 24 hours a day it seems.

The big trick seems to be the temporal difference between 30fps (60 fields interlaced) and 24 fps (whole progressive frames). 24fps seems to be just on the borderline of perception of still frames versus motion, giving it a not-quite-real look. Slower sampling equals more motion blur, and then there is the grain and color response of the respective film stocks.

I spent a lot of time trying to find out what type of film stocks were used in Wong Kar-Wai films. Best I can work out from various interview with DP Christopher Doyle:

• As Tears Go By - Agfa?
• Days of Being Wild - Agfa? 320T pushed 2 stops/4 filters
• Ashes of Time - Agfa?
• Chungking Express - Agfa XT 320
• Fallen Angels - Fuji 250T?
• Happy Together - Fuji 250T
• In The Mood For Love - Kodak?

And that's to say nothing of the other tricks WKW employs. For now, though, I'd settle on giving the Time Is My Crisis video a little polish.