Actually, watch “Scrubs” Season 4 Episode 14 for a good demonstration of the difference. It’s titled “My Life in Four Cameras.” You can see a huge difference between this episode and any other (obviously, intentionally).
I was going to respond to this thread with a link to a thread discussing it back in 2004…oh yeah. Never mind.
Oh, you poor pathetic zombies of days gone by. Here in The Future we have YouTube.
The 30 Rock episode that was broadcast live included a joke about its different 3-camera (vs. its usual 1-camera) “look”:
Liz: Hey, you wanted to see me?
Jack: Does it seem weird in here to you? Everything looks like a Mexican soap opera.
Great ep.
Moved from GQ to Cafe Society.
Note that this thread was started in 2004.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
How can a viewer tell if the show they’re watching a 3- or 1-camera show?
If the camera angles are very static and always seem to be coming from about the same spots (almost like they were filming a play) it’s 3-camera.
If it looks more like a movie, with the camera going wherever it needs to, it’s 1-camera.
I don’t know if I’ve explained it well, but its very easy to spot once you know the difference.
Compare the look of a classic “filmed before a studio audience” sitcom like Cheers to the look of something more contemporary like Community or 30 Rock - once you notice it’s pretty easy to distinguish the (if I had to put it into words) “stagey” look to the lighting of the former compared to the more “even” look of the latter.
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The episodes shot on videotape rather than film appeared in the second season - then they switched back. There were 5 episodes shot this way.
I think the biggest thing, for me, visually, is that TV shows like sitcoms tend to have a completely uniform depth of field, i.e. absolutely everything is in focus. You never see a shallow depth of field with a subject isolated from a blurred background. Whereas you will see the latter all the time in movies and high-end TV like HBO shows.
I know I’m responding to someone from 2004, but for anyone who was curious, this camerais one of the first video cameras that is indistinguishable from film.
IMO the key difference in the ‘look’ of video vs film is the frame rate. There is a specific threshold above which the human eye doesn’t really ‘render’ motion blur for normal human movements. Coincidentally film’s 24fps is just below it, video’s 30fps is just above. The reason I say this is because I can instantly tell by someone merely moving their arm whether something is film or video. Though this may vary from person to person so maybe it’s just me!
All the references in the zombie part that mention Britcoms is because a lot of them shot indoor scenes on video but outdoor scenes on film, and would often have jump cuts immediately between the two (Python always did this). In the 70s and early 80s video equipment was ill-suited for outdoor use (not portable, not weather proof, needed a lot of power etc.) plus the weather in the UK is notoriously damp.
More and more (probably most now) TV shows (and movies) are shot on digital HD video but they still shoot at 24fps specifically because it makes it look identical to film but still has all the advantages of videotape (no slow chemical development mainly). You can still shoot them at 30fps and look like videotape, but I can’t think of a single TV show that does this (I guess SNL still does because it has to look ‘live’).
Also in regards to 1-camera vs 3-camera: 1-camera never has a live audience for obvious reasons (it would be like watching a movie set). Although with today’s HD video cameras being so comparatively inexpensive shows that were previously done ‘1-camera’ are now being done with simultaneous multiple cameras to speed production.
One other thing I didn’t see mentioned yet: one of the reasons the video look is less common now is because some shows have “filmizing” done as a postprocessing effect. It’s basically a handful of effects (fake grain, tweaked levels, framerate tweaking) that make the output look more like film. It’s not perfect and won’t fool people who really know what to look for, but it makes the effect of shooting on video less glaring.
Filmlook™ was probably the first to do this. Thing is, because of what I said above about everyone switching to HD digital video, proprietary processes like these are kind of obsolete now. HD video has most of those effects available ‘built-in’ (grain, sepia, frame rate etc.). Even consumer HD camcorders have them!