FAB Facts: The Genius Solution to Filming SHADO's TV Screens in UFO
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 ส.ค. 2022
- Filming TV screens is always a tricky business, you usually end up with a strobing effect in the shot because of the refresh rates of monitors. However, team member Terry Curtis came up with a great solution during the production of UFO.
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![Spectrum Patrol Car [Captain Scarlet]: Century 21 Tech Talk [3.2] | Hosted by Jeff Tracy](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/3AT1Im-Br2w/mqdefault.jpg)
An explanation i hadn't given any thought but am amazed not only by the solution but how the show would have been terribly distracting had they not solved this problem. It was great foresight by the creators to realize this, too.
I loved UFO, but I have to admit that I never noticed they'd cracked the strobe effect problem. I was probably too distracted by the purple haired moon chicks.
The miniature working TV screens on the comm locks in Space 1999 are still amazing - as to how they did that back in the 70s
Those they actually used regular Sony portable TV sets from Japan, just with all the electronics off screen in a big box, and with a carefully hidden cable connecting them. For those where you did not see the screen, they simply had a dummy case with a battery and torch inside, and a rotating shadow wheel, to give a moving shadow on the purported viewer's face instead. There was a modelmaker who made cases to fit them, and for some of the flat screens you also had a simple solution in using a mirror and a projection TV set, run at very high brightness to compensate for studio lighting, and thus a really short CRT life.
IIRC, some animated shows from the 1970s would actually edit in a rolling strobe effect on "monitors", presumably to make it look more like live action.
The technique was known as ‘genlock’, and in the early 80s the BBC insisted that the new BBC Micro must have genlock capability so that it could be easily filmed for the Computer Literacy Project, which also meant a Beeb could cheaply produce rather BASIC (ho ho) graphics for programmes like The Adventure Game. Thanks Terry!
Thanks for bringing this up. The BBC Micro was used to generate quite a lot of on-screen graphics, as was the Archimedes that followed.
Gen lock works for video but quartz locking film cameras is harder. We used a phase shifter but that really only works if there’s only one monitor. If there are more they will probably be out of sync.
How quaint it was and was always very expensive. Very. Now we just green screen and composite it in post. God bless the GPU.
Some film cameras had synchro motor inputs which can facilitate frame phase input the controll circuits which can controll gen-lock systems as well . I have seen a movie camera blimp housing with a synchro input opening .
Disney animation was done with some elabarate synchro motor controll systems I have personally seen and would like to restore and use .
I know how to make multiple cameras , VCR , projectors , old Targa video boards , detonators , audio and robots gen-lock and synchronize .
Never noticed the screens as I was too engrossed looking at Gabrielle Drake and Ayshea Brough!
UFO and Space:1999 were BOTH years ahead of their time when it came to TV Monitors! #FabFacts
Yes you got that right. Space1999 and UFO are great shows
"You tell him he's a miserable sod". Somehow I didn't expect to hear _that_ on this show! 🤣
Going to guess they sort of "borrowed" a few of the spare 405 line converters the BBC had made to allow the compatible broadcast of the current PAL with the old 405 line standard, and then adjusted the memory readout rate to be 24FPS, so the film would get a full scan frame exposed, with the flyback occurring in the interframe period between the film frames, where the TV set and the camera were both getting ready for the next image, in their own ways.
The last of those scan converters were only recently turned off, in 1985, when the last ones were finally turned off. Nearly 50 years of operation, and the estimate was at turn off there were around 6 viewers still watching them, as often a fault would go unreported for months, till somebody actually checked the transmitter site. Translators worked with racks of transistors, as they were designed, built and in service long before you had integrated circuits, and long before you even had computers that did not occupy entire floors of buildings.
very smart folks, thanks for posting
I love the 2" quad tape reels @ ;55
Hahah its called genlock guys. Been around since the early days of television
Well done Terry! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
I was at the RTS lecture when Gerry explained how it was done on Space Precinct.
Space 1999 was my favourite tv series, I always wondered how they stopped the crt screens flickering on the programme. Thanks for the info.
Love your work
I'm *guessing* that the American equipment would have been synced to NTSC at 30 fps whereas the UFO monitors would have been PAL at 25 fps. Anyone know?
Spot on ! Could have had adjustable line Freq.
Yeah, two different TV standards because of differences in power line frequency. But ocean or power line, there's no keeping us from Thunderbirds!
The film cameras would have been 24fps and for American TV used a 3:2 pull down when converted to 29.97fps NTSC. So the TV screens would have to be running at 24Hz to match the film cameras.
By the late 1970s the gen lock equipment was still too expensive for low budget films but you could film at 25fps with a camera which had crystal-sync. This would render the bar on the TV thin and stationary. By switching the film camera on and off a couple or so times you would hit the point at which the bar was off screen.
...and let's not get into the flicker and horrible colour biases of fluorescent lighting of the time.
Camera shutter speed adjustment works for me.
You would get the same thing in still photography as well. The trick there was to run the camera at 1/15th of a second or slower to give the TV time to run through a complete scan cycle while the shutter was open.
Obviously not practical for motion picture or video, but I did manage to use that bit of knowledge in the '90's before screen capture was a common thing to make slides for several local companies for presentations and paid off one of my student loans doing it.
Robert: Did you find the still photograph of the screen was equally illuminated all over? Or did you get uneven scan artifacts from inaccuracies of the (leaf) shutter speed compared with rated speed? These would manifest as brighter bands at top or bottom (slow shutter = double exposure) or an area appearing "darker" at top/bottom (fast shutter = single interlace only recording).
It was because TV scan rates were much more accurate than typical mechanical shutter speeds, that we used to use a TV screen as a timing device to do shutter speed testing. With focal plane type shutters, which expose sequentially of course, we could even read REAL achieved speeds off the image scan diagonal angle created, and did this using nothing more than a school protractor.
I forget the precise details now, but I am thinking the method itself was something our studio probably got from the good old 'Amateur Photographer' magazine!!
@@effyleven I never had any issues with the scan line at 1/15th. 1/30th and I'd start to get them. Usually, especially for a client, I'd mount on a tripod and make sure the screen filled the frame, then take the shot. This pretty much always resulted in an even exposure and spacing.
@@KensaiProductions You are right. Problems from partial scans, or partial areas of screen from double scans, well, they go away if the shutter Is slow enough. Thing is, at 1/30th (1/25) and 1/15th and slower are not action-stopping, so any movement of onscreen subject matter becomes critical. .. that is, we're trying to pick the moment when nobody is moving about!
@@effyleven LOL, most of what I was shooting back then was static images on computer monitors (CRT's). VCRs weren't good enough to pause and shoot very well then either so I never really dealt too much with motion.
American TV show producers in the 1970s made use of one company's TV-sync system to have a television in-shot on the set without "rolling". It used a complicated system with 16mm film being scanned and the signal sent to the TV and this could be synchronised with the camera filming the scene to prevent scan bars and scrolling. They only had a couple of TV sets that could accept and display the modified non-standard signal from their telecine unit so if you ever study some TV series from that time you'll see the same model of TV in different sitcoms, thrillers, cop and detective series which was hired in along with a technician and the telecine unit for the shooting.
I just started watching UFO the day this video was uploaded
Hilarious subtitle error at 2:45; "superimposed" displayed as "super pony"!!
Good spot! # ‘Saddle-up and ride your pony’.
UFO is on legend shortly. Great news about the #secret service soundtrack release (featured in UFo and space 1999) informative fact.
The genius of Don Fagan.
But couldn't fix the fact that by Century-21 (now) all TV was in colour, and could be carried in your pocket, using hi-def cameras the size a shirt button.
Notes: shirt buttons remain same size as previous centuries, having been size and function optimised around 1650 AD.
0:52 *THANKS*! Now I'll have to check my DVD to see that! (Looks OK to me) For my computer animation experiments
in the early 1980s I used long exposures to avoid the blanking lines.
Wow! Tiny TVs? How big? 3.5"?
On UFO, they were only able to achieve this in black and white, not color. Always seemed strange that such a high-tech show would still be viewing black and white monitors in the future!
I've always preferred live TV screens (especially if phased locked to the cameras) rather than superimposed screen images. The latter never look remotely convincing.
I still anticipate the return to monochrome screens in the future.
Of course, it was likely done in the original show because small color CRTs were hard to come by. If I were trying to rationalize it, I'd point out a B&W signal uses about 1/3 the bandwidth, which might be significant if you need to save it.
I think the rolling lines effect was called "heterodyning," if I remember my A level physics classes.
Space Precinct is under appreciated.
good
Was there ever a 3 3/4 inch color Trinitron portable TV that wasn't blocky? (Not the KV-4100)
I ask because I saw (and touched) one in the early 1980s but due to meddling by Time Travelers they no longer used to exist.
Great video even though I couldn't get rid of your subtitles
I dimly recall Dr No had all those scanners (CRT screens) all over this huge control room and all were strobing.
They all knew that flat screens would be the future, so it was smart to mount them all embedded in walls
Never knew there was a an issue when watching, to me a to screen was just that, so if blurry, then that’s that.
I never knew in Ufo 🛸 that they had a problem with;”a rolling screen,on the video monitor?I guess,it’s something you don’t think 🤔 about?
Stanley Kubrick used rear projection for all the monitor screens shown in the film 2001
If you watch TH-cam videos of US Police chase there is a vaguely similar effect watching the images from the dash cams all the vehicles in front their rear lights appear to be strobing this must also be down to a similar reason to which you described
Car manufacturers dim the LED lights by pulse width modulation, but, to save cost, chose a low frequency around 120Hz, so yes there is a beat with the camera. Also an annoying flicker when driving at night, which is why the more modern ones went higher in frequency, mostly because it made filtering the noise easier, and faster power devices came available as well. Plus made the control electronics smaller, and easier to integrate into a single package that has both the microcontroller and power devices all in a common package.
Well spotted. Quite similar explanation, it's the LED lights having a similar "refresh rate", the LED aren't lit continuously. we cannot see this in real life, but they flicker on screen.
I loved the screens from The Hitchhiker’s Guide but that was animated like a cartoon. Pity there are no such displays in real life.
If you haven’t seen it already, check-out Rude Boy’s UFO re-dub. A work of genius. 🛸😂
The other way to get rid of the rolling bar is to speed up the camera to 25fps. Hard Days Night was done this way. The scene was the Beatles playing in a TV studio with lots of real monitors. Of course you had to sort out the sound speed which was a bit of a nightmare.
Not to do with frame rate as it affects video cameras too running at 25fps -the camera shutter must be closed at the same time as the TV screen is about to change to the next frame..
@@Efferpheasants Yes, and in the movie the film cameras were locked to the video. All running at 25/ 50.
But, of course the film was projected at 24fps, hence the issue with sound. The new HD transfers are quire interesting as they have re dubbed the sound at the correct pitch, there are tell tail fade outs where you can hear the original sound.
😊
I just want to know in Shado UFO how they did the rainbow screens.
Would not have worked with us equipment in the uk, because of the different frame rate.
Genlock :)
The game Xcom inspired by the UFO tv series, too bad nobody made skin mods to put Comander Striker and staff to replace the Xcom staffs.
☝️
Who was looking at the monitors I was just seeing the beautiful woman in the purple wigs ..
Please answer a question I've always wanted to know, why was it necessary for the women only on Moonbase, in UFO to wear Purple Wigs as part of their uniforms, uniforms is understandable but Wigs of any kind or colour totally unnecessary.🤔
That's been answered a 1/2 a million times.
I enjoy watching your videos. However, I find the permanent sub titles irritating, is it possible to omit them?
2:35 PURPLE HAIR - 50 years ahead of its time. These days in America women have all colors of hair - Blue, Green and PURPLE !
..and in this day and age the men too... and any other identifiable genders ! Lol
So the genius solution was a machine and the Americans had a bigger machine to do the same thing. I wonder how the machines worked and what was genius about them though.
2:46, error with the suptitles "super pony" isnt a word, it should be superimposing
. . but so much funnier. . . could have even been a G.A. spin-off, Super-Pony
No it’s 2 words, and was the proposed prequel to Super car.
@@100tinsoldiers , wasn't that Super Donkey though?😀