I wonder..

[QQ]

What really is the real magic difference between movies and live shows (non-movie scenes)?

Let me explain.
There really has to be something in the movies - it's sooooo easy to tell which video is a movie, and which is live show. Take for example commercial of The Bourne Identity: first scene, where they show how they are filming the movie (eg, the non-movie scene), and seconds later its already scenes from the movie - they are sooooo different! I dont know what it is - the colors? some effect? I have no clue, but its so easy to tell which part is non-movie, and which is excerpt from the movie.

I'm not really sure if you understand what I'm talking about, but to me its really obvious that there is this difference..

Any ideas about what it is?

p.s. if you still fail to see what I mean, I can try again :)

[mpucoder]

The biggest difference, according to the "making of The Matrix", is grain. Film is grainy, and the eye can detect that. Many scenes in The Matrix were computer generated or enhanced, and a key factor to making it match the rest was adding grain.

btw - there are many British sitcoms shown here, and I notice a trend with them to use video cameras for interior shots (in studios), but film cameras for exterior shots. It gets annoying after awhile.

[Doom9]

aren't you two talking about something different?
The way I see it Qq is refering to making of versus the movie itself (to make it more visual for everybody I picked this as an example).
Movies are often optimized to reach a certain visual effect, for instance filters on lenses (Three Kings is a good example of using filters to get a desired film effect). Often, the material used to shoot making ofs and such is of lower quality and that material isn't as intensively processed as the movie itself.

@mpucoder: I'm looking forward to fully digital movies.. no more stupid film grain which uses a lot of bitrate and looks bad (grain bothers me even in the theater.. it looks unnatural, not like you'd see the world around you).

[QQ]

I'm really not all that great at all the video stuff :)

I just know that there is an obvious difference between say, actual movie scene, and recording of how it was filmed. Or news report and the movie. Or whatever;) When it becomes a part of a movie, it somehow changes - and I have no idea what is it :)

[((( atom )))]

funny.. i thought about that often, myself.

i also think production and postproduction makes a lot. also when you watch a making of, the camera-handling is rather "amateur", e.g. shaky and stuff. no body actually works out nice camera-moves or lighting, wich is another key. also the actual scene makes a lot. making of's,wich are really the best example, also show things, that movies simply don't: you have people from the stuff running around, not dressed or made up, and there mostly is a lot of stuff in the picture, that is not arranged in any way to look good.

as doom9 mentioned he is even bothered by the noise in cinemas, i totally agree. i am often pissed of with the actual pretty bad overall-quality movies come up with. since i am in germany here, i can almost be sure the movie made a long way and quite some copying-processes before it even gets to my eye. i'd like to see a master of a film once. i guess it ´would be outstanding.

[Didée]

It's mainly the "progressive vs. true-interlaced" effect, I think.

We're all watching lots of film content, and so we are used to how it looks. Indeed, these 25 or 29.97 fps are not really fluid.
When watching true interlaced content with 50 or 59.94 fields/s, the "character" or "taste" is completely different. The latter is really fluid. It seems much more "alive" than film content.
Take a DVD with true interlaced content, and convert it to progressive frames. You will immediately notice that effect.

BTW, that's the reason why, in half a year of trying over and over again, I did not succeed in making a reasonable rip of Michael Flatley's "Lord of the Dance". I don't want to put a show of "only" 90 minutes onto 2 CDs - but with current weapons, I see no way to put it onto 1 CD with full temporal information, so that it is watchable on a CRT.

Of course, there's much more. Lenses, lense coats, shutter-speeds and -degrees, digital studio cameras, ... much stuff a professional could talk hours and hours about.

[DJ Bobo]

I disagree with you guys, a movie without grain isn't a movie for me and doesn't look any good. The grain makes it somehow charming.
A picture without grain is too digital for my taste. I always say to myself: it's too clean, it feels unnatural to me (may be you guys are too used to cities, I lived a long time outside town, and I'm used to see naked nature, and nature has its own grain if you understand what I mean ;))

Anyway, about interlaced and progressive. I must say, I hate & like interlaced at the same time. I hate because it is interlaced and no good for any progressive scan display. I like because the motion is perfect. You can judge especially on scolling text, you can hardly read it when it is scrolled at 24 or 25fps. On TV, it is smoooooooth!

The solution would be of course 50fps progressive for PAL and 59,94fps progressive for NTSC. This would combine the best from 2 worlds: full resolution + perfect motion.

24fps progressive was indeed never enough for smooth motion: panning scenes in anime are just not smooth enough although pure 24fps, and in hollywood movies motion blur is used whenever there is motion to reduce the stutter effect... ;)