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8 views

24 frames per second

Uploaded by

Debanjan Bandyopadhyay
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Downward movement on the time axis indicates the passage of time, while movement on the horizontal axis

indicates a camera movement through space. It is important to note that the space axis represents the speed of

camera movement and the relative distances moved, but it is generalized camera movement, and not movement

in any specific spatial direction. Each frame, then, has a minimum width (along the spatial axis) representing

the amount of space captured in the frame, due to the field of view of the lens and the width of the frame itself,

and a minimum length (along the time axis) due to the amount of exposure time needed to record the

photograph. Here we might note that every photograph represents a span of time, no matter how short the
exposure time is, even though the still photograph itself as an object can never be more than a single image in which

time is frozen. Since film is usually viewed at 24 frames per second, I will regard an image taken by a camera

running at 24 frames per second or more as representing an “instant”, and an exposure longer than that as a “long

exposure”.

A typical static camera shot, then, would be depicted as a vertical run of frames, each lasting a brief instant

of exposure time, and separated by a space that represents the time the shutter is closed during which the film is

transported (for a motion picture camera with a 180 degree shutter the exposure time and the time in between

exposures are, of course, equal). A typical moving camera shot would move spatially as well as through time.

The frames are depicted as slanted because the camera is in motion while each of the frames is being exposed,

resulting in spatial motion blur which appears in the frames. The angle of the slant, which indicates the speed of

the camera move, also indicates the amount of spatial motion blur present in the frames.

We can describe almost any kind of shot we want with this notation [see Fig. 5].

A time-lapse shot using a static camera would have large gaps in time between frames, while a time-lapse shot

in which each frame was made with a long exposure time would appear as a series of elongated frames in

sequence. A slow-motion shot, which requires the camera to be run at more than twenty-four frames per second

with shorter exposure times for the individual frames, would be depicted as a series of tightly grouped frames

with shorter temporal durations.

We can also note the differences between the standard frozen time shot and Muybridge’s sequential

photography. In the frozen time shot, time proceeds normally, and then freezes as the camera appears to move

through space around its subject, with all the frames shot during the same instant of time, until finally the shot

moves forward through time again. The apparent spatial movement is, of course, due to multiple cameras rather
than a moving camera, so none of the frames are motion-blurred (although the subject being photographed

might be blurred if it was moving during the exposure of the frames). Nor is there any motion-blur due to

camera movement in the Muybridge set-up, in which each still camera occupies a unique position in both space

and time, resulting in a diagonal pattern.

This notation also allows us to conceive of effects shots that have not been done yet. For example, we can

imagine a shot which involves extreme slow motion instead of frozen time, and in which every frame of the

simulated camera move is made from a long exposure [see Fig. 6].

As the camera appears to move around it, the subject of the shot would appear to move in slow motion, and yet,

due to the long exposure times, the subject would have a great deal of motion-blur, as if it were moving quickly.

If we add real spatial camera movement to the shot, we get a series of small camera moves which work together

to simulate an interframe camera move, and frames that overlap each other both spatially and temporally.

Finally, the notation allows us to design a wide variety of specialized shots, [see Fig. 7]
with frames of varying exposure times and motion blur, and even ones which reuse frames in repeating or

cyclical patterns (the arrows in Fig. 7 indicate the order in which the frames are seen when the shot

appears on- screen). In effect, any sequence of frames that can be laid out on the grid can be made into a

shot.

Because of the two-dimensional nature of the grid, we can look for new possibilities by asking what

happens when the temporal and spatial dimensions are interchanged. For example, a frame elongated

along the time axis represents a temporal long exposure, in which a single frame extends through time but

not through space. What would we get if elongate the frame along the spatial axis instead? We would

have something that we could call a spatial long exposure, in which a single frame extends through space

but remains fixed within a single instant of time [see Fig. 8].

Such a frame would be spatially motion-blurred in a manner similar to a moving camera shot, except that

unlike a moving camera shot, the camera is recording a single instant, and the motion blur that is present

results neither from movement through space or time, but rather from the interpolation and blending of all

the spatial positions represented by the frame. Since any physically moving camera moves through time

as well as space, such a frame could only be interpolated (by the blending of multiple frames). One more

addition must be made to the spatial long exposure, to avoid confusion. Thus far, the width of the frame

(along the space axis) indicates the space represented in the frame, so we will need a way to distinguish

spatial long exposure, which interpolates many positions into a single frame, from a normal frame which

contains a single nodal point. Dayton Taylor2 has suggested representing the interpolated movement of

the nodal point as a nodal line, which could be drawn in the center of the frame [see Fig. 9]. By doing so,

we have an idea of how wide the original frame would have before the interpolation, which we can find

by reducing the width of the frame until the line is a point again.

Spatial long exposures, then, should include a nodal line, the length of which will also indicate the

amount of spatial motion blur present in the frame.

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