Why Films Look Cheap on a New TV, and the One Setting to Turn Off

Why films run at 24 frames a second

A film is a sequence of still pictures shown fast enough that your eye reads it as movement. How fast is a choice.

In the silent era there was no fixed answer. Cameras were often hand-cranked and films ran somewhere around 16 to 18 frames a second, which is part of why old footage looks slightly hurried when played on modern equipment.

Sound forced a decision. The soundtrack was printed along the edge of the film, so the film had to move at a constant, agreed speed or the audio would not play correctly. The industry settled on 24 frames a second by the end of the 1920s. It was fast enough to carry acceptable sound and slow enough not to waste expensive film stock.

It has barely changed since. Almost every film you have ever watched was shot at that rate, and the slight flicker and blur of it is a large part of what people mean when they say something looks cinematic.

What your television does about it

Modern televisions can refresh far more often than 24 times a second. That leaves a gap between what the film provides and what the screen can display.

Rather than simply hold each frame longer, most televisions generate new ones. The set compares two real frames, works out how things moved between them, and invents an image for the middle. Then it shows real, invented, real, invented, and so on.

This is called motion interpolation. Nothing in those invented frames came from the film. They are the television’s guess.

On sport and on video it can genuinely help, and that is why manufacturers switch it on. On film it removes exactly the quality that made it look like film.

Why it makes everything look cheap

The nickname is the soap opera effect, and the reason is historical.

Daytime serials were shot on video rather than film, at a much higher frame rate, because video was cheaper. Audiences learned the difference without ever being told. Very smooth motion meant a low budget studio production. The slight strobe of 24 frames meant a film.

So when a television smooths a film out, your eye reads it as a cheap studio recording. Expensive lighting and set work suddenly look staged. Actors look like people walking around a room, because the motion signal that said film has been removed.

It also produces genuine mistakes. Where the guess is difficult — fast motion, something passing in front of something else — you get brief smearing or wobble around the edges. Once you notice it, it is very distracting.

How to turn it off

The setting exists on nearly every modern television. Each brand gives it a different name, which is the main reason people never find it.

Look in the picture settings for anything about motion, smoothing or clarity, and switch it off. If the setting has separate sliders for blur and judder, setting both to zero has the same effect.

The shortcut: Filmmaker Mode

Many recent televisions include a picture setting called Filmmaker Mode. It was created specifically to deal with this problem, with backing from directors who were tired of their work being altered in people’s homes.

It switches motion smoothing off, leaves the picture at the film’s own frame rate, and turns off the other processing that showroom modes pile on — oversharpening, boosted colour, and so on.

If your set has it, that one selection does everything this article is about. If it does not, turning off motion smoothing gets you most of the way.

It is worth knowing this became a public argument in 2018, when Tom Cruise recorded a message with director Christopher McQuarrie asking viewers to switch the setting off. Filmmaker Mode arrived on televisions shortly afterwards.

One honest catch

With smoothing off, you may notice slight stutter in slow camera moves, particularly a steady pan across a wide landscape.

That is real, and it is not your television failing. It is what 24 frames a second actually looks like. The same stutter is there in the cinema, and directors know it — which is why they usually pan slowly.

You are choosing between a film that occasionally judders and a film that constantly looks like video. Most people, once they have seen both, prefer the judder.

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