This is an interesting overview of high frame rate filmmaking. I have a lot of experience with high speed shooting, having helped bring the Phantom cameras to the cinema production world. In my early days working with the Phantom I developed some software for converting the Phantom’s raw files for finishing and color correction since there weren’t any good tools back then. One of the things I built into the software as part of some experiments I was doing was the ability to selectively merge and omit frames from the conversion so that it was possible to shoot at a high frame rate but convert to a lower frame rate in a programatic way and to be able to control the amount of motion blur in the images. Around this time I heard that Doug Trumbull was wanting to resurrect ShowScan as a digital format as was considering the 65mm Phantom 65 camera to do it with. When I met him I let him know that he was going to need my software to do what he wanted and I ended up working with him for the duration of the project. One of the things that Doug wanted to do was to be able to selectively use different frame rates in a project - not just between different shots but actually within the frame. The idea is that the whole film would live in a 120fps container and different fragments could be at 24, 30, 60 or 120 within the frame. We did a lot of testing and experimenting, and produced a few short films — enough to learn that the use of high speed projection in a dramatic film would end up being used pretty modestly to not lose the actual feel of watching a movie. Ultimately nobody wanted to pay to do a major project in the formar. Maybe if we had kept at it a little longer Jim Cameron would have considered it, though I can’t image Jim and Doug working on a film together!
For those who are fascinated by storytelling and technology, I think you'll enjoy this video essay I put together over the past month about our relationship with frame rates, and the challenges filmmakers have faced with trying to push beyond 24 as the standard, often to negative if not mixed results... It's wild to think that we've spent almost 100 years with movies at that same framerate, and it's interesting to think of how they may change, and what that might mean emotionally for us as audiences. This is my first attempt at a YouTube video essay and I hope you enjoy!