A History of Cinematic Frame Rates From Early Film Projection to Today’s State-of-the-Art Cameras

In the latest episode of Filmmaker IQ, host John P. Hess offers up a lesson on frame rate numbers over the course of movie history, beginning with the earliest film projection, up through modern day 4K cameras capable of shooting 120 frames per second.

According to Thomas Edison, the magic number is 46-times per second. At 46 frames-per-second, our persistance of vision kicks in, and we won’t notice the screen going dark between each frame.