Frame rates

Frame rates

What is frame rate?

If you understand how film projectors work, you'll know that the individual images that make up a film strip are run through a projector assembly and flash consecutively before an lighted aperture that projects the image up onto the screen, which gives the illusion of motion at high enough speeds. Movie magic! The rate at which these frames are shown is expressed in frames per second (FPS) for traditional celluloid film, and as a "refresh rate" measured in hertz (Hz) for digital films and display monitors. In both cases, that value reflects how fast the still images can flicker, and the faster they can flicker, the more lifelike and realistic the motion appears.

       Read and highlight this explanation

Each individual image or picture in an animation is called a frame. Each frame must be slightly different from the frame before for animation (the illusion of movement) to happen.

The more frames used for an action the slower that action will appear. Using fewer frames would create a faster action. If the difference between the frames is small the movement will be smooth. If the difference is large the movement will either be jerky or animation won’t happen. Generally smooth actions are slow and use lots of frames.

Traditionally animation uses 24 frames for every second. This is recorded as 24 FPS (frames per second). Some modern animators only use 12 frames per second.

·         Fill in this table using a frame rate of 24fps. Make sure you put examples of real animations in the brackets

1 second	24 frames
10 seconds	240 frames
A 30 second animated advert (example: Escape day spa advert )	720 frames
1 minute	1440 frames
A 10 minute children’s animated TV programme ( Moral Stories)	14,400
A 30 minute animated TV programme ( Goofy cartoon )	43,200
A 90 minute animated feature film  ( Gaturro )	129,600

Example of 30 second animated ad - 

 Example of a 10 minute animation -
 Example of a 30 minute children's animation -
 Example of a 90 minute feature film animation (trailer shown below) -

·         Undertake independent research on frame rates. Find out:

o   whether there is a difference between traditional film frame rates and digital film frame rates;
Traditional film rates - 
The rate at which these frames are shown is expressed in frames per second (FPS) for traditional celluloid film, and as a "refresh rate" measured in hertz (Hz) for digital films and display monitors. That is the difference between the two. 

o   how and with what effect filmmakers deviate from the standard frame rates.

·         Provide examples with analysis.