[Yarik]

1)
I've noticed time and time again, that when you watch a movie, you can actually tell it is a movie. Because it doesn't scream "I made this movie on a cheap digital camera" kind of thing. It has nothing to do with professionalism. It's just the way movies and TV shows look is different than what a regular camera would do. Does anyone know what it is??

2)
Am I a virus? I started using this new google thing called "trends" which allows you to track trends in searches, and after a couple of searches it now says this "Your computer shows aspects of an infected computer. We are sorry for the inconvience but your access will be regainst quickly as possible." What the hell? Since when do I act like a virus??

[balistic]

1) films are shot at 24 frames per second, non-interlaced. Video is usually 29.97 frames per second, interlaced. Your brain can tell the difference.
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brian.prince|light.comp.paint

[eyewoo]

I disagree about the professionalism ... professional cinematographers are composional gurus and movies are highly directed, so what you see is generally quite different - i.e. steady, beautifully composed, and edited professionally to essentially put the visons in your head... they come to life... and rise above the media if they're good ...

[Domino Harvey]

[Sumaleth]

I've often wondered the same thing.

The FPS sounds like a good candidate. Interlaced 29 fps is effectively 58 fps non-interlaced. Higher FPS sounds like it should be "better", but I suppose the difference is in motion blur -- images captured at 24 fps will have a lot more motion blur.

On top of that, real film stock captures a much richer range of colors, particularly in the darker ranges.

Film also has a noise/grain to it which is absent from video/digital-video. It can be artificially added, though perhaps the artificial grain never fully captures whatever it is about film grain that contributes to the look.
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Art Links Archive -- Artists and Tutorials

[Impaler]

Actually, I would guess that it's less about framerate and more about tonal response curves and pixel size. A still made from a video looks different than a still made from film.

Film has a logarithmic response curve, while video has a linear curve. In short, this means that while film and video may have the same dynamic range, video highlights start clipping a couple stops about middle gray. This defect is present in all digital and video cameras, from 1980's camcorders all the way up to today's dslr's (yeah, even the expensive ones) to top-of-the-line digital movie cameras.

What's more, film grain is tiny, microscopic even. It also has the advantage of being pleasantly organic and random. I can, however, quite easily see something one pixel wide on my monitor even from a few feet back. Film grain is uneven and scattershot, but pixels are arranged into a very tidy and neat grid.

Michel Gondry directed a cool video for the Chemical Brothers where a girl kept having these daydreams that would alternate back and forth between reality and fantasy. For each of these leaps, he would switch back and forth between video and film. What's more, he would simulate those old cheesy 80's video effects (like wipe, smear, etc.) on film. Genius.
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QED, sort of.

[[Shizo]]

Hmm, what's the song from that music video, Impaler? I wanna see.

By the way, what about those new digital film cameras? Like the one R.Rodriguez used on Once upon a time in Mexico? There is no grain, and resolution is high.. i guess framerate and lighting plays a major role in making picture look "picturesque"

[Sumaleth]

[insane007]

[Affected]

Interlacing makes a huge difference. At school we had a project that used both 16 mm film and PAL HD (25 fps), and before the HD footage was processed to get rid of the fields, it obviously looked like video, and afterwards it blended in very well. I was surprised how significant the difference was, since before the operation I could just see that it looks video-like, but couldn't point out any single thing about it.

[Lunatique]

[balistic]

X Files was really bad about looking like video. The interlaced 60 fps look was just so cheesy. And it seemed like only certain shots would be interlaced. I guess maybe they did it to deliberately make things jarring, but I didn't care for it.
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brian.prince|light.comp.paint

[Affected]

I still maintain that besides lighting, which is only somewhat related to video tech per se, interlacing is the biggest issue. Film is 24 fps, pal video is 25, I don't think the difference there is that big.

[Impaler]

Characteristic curves of film

That's a pretty deep read, especially if you're not familiar with film sensitometry (and you won't be, unless you're a professional photo lab technician), so just scroll down to that bottom graphic. You read the negative graphs left to right, darkest to brightest, reversal graphs right to left. The "shoulder" of the log graph is the part that interests us in terms of highlight detail. You see how the slope of the curve gradually lessens with increased brightness on black and white negative film? That's film becoming less sensitive to relative amounts of light (reciprocity effect), thus technically allowing more detail in highlights.

Digital/video sensitivity is linear, which means that pure black starts at the origin of the graph (RGB 0 0 0) and goes straight up to pure white (RGB 255 255 255). This is interesting for two reasons. Digital actually has much better shadow sensitivity than film. Look again at those graphs. See the "toe"? That straight line (film base plus fog) is basically wasted exposure because the chemistry isn't reacting to such low levels of light yet (reciprocity again). Digital starts recording information right from the origin. Unfortunately, this linear curve means that it also records more highlight information than RGB is capable of displaying with its measly 255 levels of brightness, which means that it clips where film does not.

So, there you have it. Film tapers off, digital drives right through the curve into the brick wall.

Quick and easy example: http://www.malapropter.com/cigarette/cigarettes-124.jpg

See how the highlight starts clipping on the cigarettes? Film wouldn't look so garish. It isn't just my cheap camera, either. You could find nearly any digital image and point out clipping. The reason that some digital movies look almost like film is just pure cinematography. The poor cinematographer has to keep his light levels and ratios fairly constrained so that you won't see any clipping. That's also why digital cinema hasn't taken off like you would expect; having to work harder to avoid clipping is an unnecessary step that you wouldn't have to take with film.
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QED, sort of.

[Affected]

You're talking about 8 bits per channel, I thought high-end digital film cameras shot at better colour depths?

edit: checking up a bit, the viper, for example, uses 10 or 12 bit colour depth (both were claimed on the internet...)

[Jimmyjimjim]

The BIG thing everyone seems to be overlooking that makes a HUGE difference is LENSES. Beit HD or Film, a low-grade lens will kill the look.

[balistic]

[Jimmyjimjim]