What Effect was used in Saving Private Ryan?

[Unregistered]

How did they get their explosions scenes so crisp? almost like they disabled motion blending, or maybe something w/ progressive scan.

I'd really like to know how they did it, but I don't know enough terminology
to really describe whats going on... its similar to the effect used in the dance scenes in Chicago, if anyone saw that.

Any info is appreciated... Thank you

Maybe its called a stob effect?

[Unregistered]

Hi - well i have a book on cinematography - in a chapter about the guy who shot 'Private Ryan' - in which he says that he altered the shutter speed of the film camera so that no motion blur was captured and so everything came out really crisp, and jerky - to increase the intensity of the fight scenes. Same effect seen in the movie 'Gladiator'.

You can probably get the same effect on a DV camera by using a higher shutter speed than normal - experiment!

Hope that helps. :)

[sage_j]

I shot some skiing footage last winter (shooting while skiing filming other skiiers and boarders) with a pd-150. We boosted the shutter speed as high as it would go - I think it was 1/10000 - of course, not quite same effect as film, but you definitely get that crispy, jerky look that you see in a lot of fight and action scenes these days.

We also found that over exposing a little bit helped the footage look better when broadcast, but this may have had something to do with all the snow.

sage

[Josh]

Yes- high shutter speed is the staccato, stroby look.

[Siriusdoggy]

It was more than just shutter speed to create that effect. I read an article with Steven Spielberg about the effect. He wanted to recreate that old war footage "look" so he took an old war camera apart and duplicated the shutter speed and mirror angle in an Arri. that along with shooting it all handheld helped to create that "real-war" look. remember now days almost everything is on sticks, dolly or steady-cam.

[Kelly]

not only is the shutter speed faster, but the shutter angle itself is changed to 45 degrees. In the developement process of the film they used a technique called "Bleach Bypass" basically that leaves some of the silver on the film resulting in a desaturated look.

info from "movies and Meaning" 2nd edition by Stephen Prince