Film and 24fps

[jeremias at sover.net]

        Just finished reading a bushelful of mail and I noticed a few
questions about 24 frames per second and how it related to film, a correct
answer about exposure and film speed was noted, however I did not see
mentioned why 24 fps is the standard used, in fact you can shoot film at 18
frames per second and still retain the illusion of movement if you play it
back at 18 fps. At about 15 or 16 fps however, a jerkiness of motion is
evident and as you move slowly down the scale 14,13,12 etc. you begin to
lose the perception of movement and the brain is no longer fooled into
thinking what it is seeing is "real".
        The 24 fps is not exactly arbitrary however,all those early movies
where all the people are jumpy and jerky is due to the fact that the camera
operator was turning the hand crank and sometimes exceeded the 15 or 16 fps
mark (which is about the most a human can do consistently). With the advent
of automated mechanical cameras a standard 24 fps was used because that was
about as fast as you could go without ripping the film to shreds. Indeed if
you shoot a film at 52 frames per second and then play it back at 52 frames
per second the motion will seem "normal" however if you shoot the film at
52 fps and then play it back at 24 fps you get slow motion- likewise when
you shoot at 12 fps and play back at 24 you get Benny Hill style fast
motion.
        Anyway this little digression stirs in me the recognition, when I
was reading Vineland in particular, not only of Pynchon's familiarity with
movies on the screen but with his familiarity *behind* as well. The way I
see it he probably spent a bit of time studying filmmaking even picked up a
camera himself, there's more than a passing knowledge of the techniques of
the camera going on here.