I made reference to the jello cam phenomenon in HDSLR cameras a while back when I was sounding off the camera stabilization options on my christmas list. I didn’t want to get sidetracked too far by talking about the problem specifically but I saw this nice video describing it today and thought I’d lay the issue to rest. There are a lot of sample videos online of it happening but I like his little tree diagram a lot. Very effective. He thinks manufacturers are working to increase the refresh rate to combat jello which is awesome. It won’t help my current camera but assuming I don’t leave this one in a Chicago taxi (RIP 30d) as I did with my last camera, I could upgrade at some point in the future for a lot less than my initial buy-in. Fingers crossed. Wow, I have bad luck with cameras.
I find hand held footage in movies generally obnoxious to begin with, add in jello and we’re talking disaster. All the more reason I want to be able to stabilize my footage. Ridley Scott is a huge fan of shaking the camera violently during action sequences. Look at the first action sequence in the movie Gladiator. I get it, we’re in the action. Can I please see what’s going on now? Seems better on the small screen but on the silver one (or even the flat one), it’s nasty. At least he’s not adding insult to injury with jello. I would assume Gladiator was shot on film so jello is not a factor.
On a positive not, one thing I dig about Ridley Scott that I consider to be somewhat of a trademark of his is the use of high frame rates in action sequences. Check out 2:46 of that video specifically where the dirt flies and you can see it scatter really clearly. I’ve seen trailers for other movies, like Hannibal where I saw that effect and assumed it was a Ridley Scott movie before I knew it was…. and it was. Err, I’m guessing the effect is due to the sequence being filmed at a higher frame rate. I dunno. Oh man, speaking of higher frame rates, I’ll maybe go on a rant about the new 120 and 240hz TVs at some point. Prepare yourselves!