Can they make live tv "film look"?

September 21, 2023 10:42 AM

As i understand, most things that look like film are actually done with digital cameras now. Can they make live tv look like film? Live tv example here. Same game highlights "filmed" here. If this has been done, what are examples?
posted by sandmanwv to Media & Arts (16 answers total)

My guess, as someone with no real training, is that a lot of the difference in the two examples is editing. If that's true, one of the biggest obstacles is that editors have the benefit of hindsight and can choose different shots, in a particular order, to make something look more epic. Especially in live sports, you're constrained by the need to actually show the play as it happens. Even if you get a great shot, you won't be able to cut to it until the play is over, and it'll probably have to be a smash cut, with another smash cut back to the next play a couple seconds later.

I've often thought that there's a lot of space in football especially to explore additional cameras than the Eye of God, but considering only like 3 games a year are broadcast with an All-22 view (there's at least one camera shooting All-22 at every game above the high school level, and most high school games), it would seem that demand is not actually very high.
posted by kevinbelt at 10:58 AM on September 21, 2023

The short answer is yes, adding effects to live video in-flight is easy and has been for a really long time, certainly from before digital TV. For example, your weatherman hasn't been standing in front of a monitor on a huge screen all this time, it's just a green screen plus an overlay. Color correction, video effects of basically any kind, it's all pretty much a long-solved problem.
posted by mhoye at 11:23 AM on September 21, 2023

Best answer: If you're talking about "film look", the difference isn't the editing. A lot of it has to do with:

• Frame rate: Live TV in the US is generally shot at 30 frames per second. Movies (even those shot digitally) are generally shot at 24. They look very different, and our brains associate the slower frame rate with movies, and the high frame rate with looking more like real life.

• Cameras/Lenses: TV news and sports are generally shot with small apertures so that pretty much everything is in focus. Movies are often shot with bigger apertures so that things in the background are at least slightly out of focus.

For a while, the musical guests on the Graham Norton show were being shot on different cameras at a different frame rate than the rest of the show. Check out this clip of Mumford and Sons. It starts with a wide shot that looks like the rest of the show, and then as soon as they show the band, it's got a movie look to it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1wPc1S6rT4
posted by jonathanhughes at 11:28 AM on September 21, 2023 [14 favorites]

here a short video essay on the new on-field camera angle broadcasters have been using. It has different attributes than the normal cameras used for broadcasting like jonathanhughes mentioned above and the contrast between the two looks is quite noticeable.
posted by mmascolino at 11:48 AM on September 21, 2023 [3 favorites]

It's really going to annoy me if we go backwards to blurry backgrounds again. That doesn't look better.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:59 AM on September 21, 2023

Neither of your examples look like they were shot on 35. What makes you think those clips look like film?
posted by Ideefixe at 12:09 PM on September 21, 2023

The 35mm issue is basically irrelevant at this point. The vast majority of films released in the last ten or so years were not shot on film, but they still look like "films" because of the frame rate, shallow depth of field, and maybe some added film grain.
posted by jonathanhughes at 12:48 PM on September 21, 2023

It's really going to annoy me if we go backwards to blurry backgrounds again. That doesn't look better.

The goal in filmmaking is to use images to evoke emotions, not simply to present as much visual information as possible. Sometimes, shallow focus, or a lower frame rate, or black and white, or some other technique, may be the filmmakers' chosen approach to evoking certain emotions. More resolution, more focus, and more frames per second are not always the best choice.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 12:49 PM on September 21, 2023 [11 favorites]

The goal in filmmaking is to use images to evoke emotions, not simply to present as much visual information as possible.

I'm good with that in movies and film, but not in sports or live events like the examples shown here.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:12 PM on September 21, 2023

Yes, it can be done to a certain extent, with some limitations. Here is an article from American Cinematographer about how the visual language of film has been entering the world of televised sports in recent years.

The types of cameras and super-telephoto lenses used for the main shots in a lot of sports broadcasts make the film look difficult at the present time, however.
posted by theory at 2:36 PM on September 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

To my eye the biggest difference between those two clips (besides editing) is lighting. The "live TV" clip has flat lighting over the entire field, faint diffuse shadows, and is optimized so you can clearly make out all of the objects in play.

The "film look" clip has varied lighting, more highlights and shadows, more contrast. There are more varied camera angles and some handheld shots, and a lot of it is in slow motion. It's optimized to convey emotion.
posted by credulous at 2:41 PM on September 21, 2023

Relevant Wikipedia article: Film look.

This was much more common in Europe than the US, because PAL's 25 fps was much closer to film's 24 fps than NTSC's 30.
posted by neckro23 at 2:56 PM on September 21, 2023

jonathanhughes
Shot on 35mm
Killers of the Flower Moon, Maestro, Poor Things, Oppenheimer
Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Inception, The Fabelmans, LaLa Land, Little Women, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Licorice Pizza, West Side Story…
posted by Ideefixe at 7:36 PM on September 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Looking briefly at the example you provided, I think they are doing a few things to make it look more filmic (though it's still very different from what you'd consider classical film style):

• Fake shallow depth of field (added in post, presumably)
• Lots of slow motion (almost to a ridiculous degree)
• Dramatic voiceover recorded and mixed in a way that sounds more like a documentary than live commentary (listen to the difference between the narration VO and the live commentary VO in there)
• Dramatic music, matched to the action
• Edited to tell the story rather than to show something happening in real time
• Much tighter shots versus the wide shots you'd normally see for broadcast
• They've also done something with the live sound, maybe re-recorded it or at least cleaned it up a lot

Only some of that can be done with live TV, of course.
posted by ssg at 8:38 PM on September 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Other people are doing a nice job unpacking the question. I will be chaotic and add that using NFL clips as your example is interesting/ironic given the history of NFL Films and its longstanding loyalty to 16mm. It's a rich topic if you wanted to explore the context for the tech described in mmascolino and theory's links. "NFL Films Retains Its Name as It Goes Digital," NYT (archive.ph)

So for the question of can it look "like film" -- sure, and in so many less obvious ways, these games already are what they are because of film.
posted by birds at 10:44 PM on September 21, 2023

The UFC does this for walkouts. Aside from the fact they've cropped this video for the YouTube Short aspect ratio, this is how the walk from the ring looked live. They switch back to a standard live sports 60fps after the walkouts are over.
posted by Jairus at 10:10 AM on September 22, 2023