After I saw The Hobbit at 48fps, I'm having a hard time watching 24fps movies. Yesterday I watched The Shining by Kubrik. It was jittery, and that's a slow film. HFR is superior to 24fps in every conceivable way. I suppose color and sound were not considered "cinematic" back in the day just like HFR now.
3D on the other hand... I wish it would die. You have to converge at a distance and focus at another, and that's really hard for some people. There are a huge number of cues[1] that are important in depth perception, but 3D movies make use only of parallax confusing the brain. The depth of field is usually shallow, and that's great for 2D, but catastrophic for 3D. In real life, objects that I make an explicit effort to focus to are not blurry, but in 3D they are.
Another annoying aspect of 3D movies is that they artificially augment the parallax to make the 3D effect more extreme. That's equivalent to objects being really close. Apart from strain on the eyes, that's really annoying for wide outdoor shots, where things should effectively be at infinity. It's like you are looking at a miniature, not at a vast valley.
HFR is superior to 24fps in every conceivable way.
Film makers have a wide variety of creative tools available to them to help them tell a story, of which HFR is one. We're talking about art, not a technical quest to reproduce reality as closely as possible.
I had the same feeling about 3D until I saw "Life of Pi" in 3D. They managed to provide imagery that wouldn't have been possible in a two-dimensional format. As with all other "tools" 3D can be used poorly, and it can be used well. As the technology matures, I have a feeling we'll see it skew more towards the latter.
Another annoying aspect of 3D movies is that when you watch the non 3D version it usually is apparent the gimmicky shots only made because of the 3D version.
One very sore point I have with this film is just that.
Not to mention that in true 3D you would be able to look anywhere you wanted in the picture instead of what's in focus. 3D will (hopefully!) go down as one of the most ridiculous fads ever conceived.
I don't want to be a hater of something everyone around seems to love, but I really didn't enjoy the experience of Hobbit 3D HFR, it was like seeing a God of War game at times, and I felt no connection to the characters, and no emotion at all.
And I really like the LoTR saga, having seen it several times.
I saw it last night in HFR 3D. It's actually the first proper feature film I've seen in 3D and I enjoyed it a lot.
There definitely were moments where it looked like you were looking at actors on a set. The fidelity was so good that it was obvious the characters were wearing prosthetics and makeup. However there were plenty of scenes where the increased detail and clarity were a huge advantage, especially some of the CGI scenes. The flight of the eagles was gorgeous and the feeling of actually being there you got from the combination of HFR and 3D added a lot to the experience.
It very much is a question of trade-offs. I'm very glad I saw it in HFR 3D because for a lot of the scenes it gives you an experience you couldn't get any other way, but if I were to see it in a cinema again I'd go for 2D, and I look forward to seeing it on TV at home. I'll quite happily watch the next film in HFR 3D.
I really liked the 48fps version too. It has so many advantages over 24fps, especially in 3D. I would quite like to see a 48fps 3D version if only for the increased brightness but that doesn't appear to be a thing yet :( I guess they had to cut it down from the already ridiculous number of variations though.
Odd, my experience was exactly the opposite. For me, 3D HFR was a totally immersive experience. It felt like the action was happening right in front of me, on a stage.
Bear in mind, I cannot stand those TVs that double the frame rate to make everything look like a cheap soap opera. I've heard this comparison, or ones like it, in almost every negative review I've read. In my opinion, this is false comparison.
Imagine if soap operas were filmed in colour, and proper films shot in black and white. Then a film maker comes along and releases a colour film. Suddenly everyone says it looks like a cheap soap opera. To me this is the psychological effect that is hindering the acceptance of HFR and thus the negative reviews.
Ten years from now our children will scoff at our luddism.
What's interesting to me (for background, before I ended up programming I trained in traditional film/animation) is that a lot of the 24/48fps discussion on HN tends to be around technical concerns, whereas a lot of film developments come out of artistic needs.
HFR is really interesting when contextualized in the history of cinema: frame rate was never a problem until directors started changing how they shot action scenes in the 1980s. It was realised that if you made the action fast and blurry you could get away with a lot more: what from a wide shot would look like a slow moving car chase could become a very dramatic action scene.
I think this is being reflected in a lot of the reviews coming out for The Hobbit (I haven't seen it yet): it seems a lot of people don't mind it during action sequences, but it becomes distracting during dialog and less frenetic moments. And this makes sense: why should dialog scenes be in 48fps? There's no technical or artistic reason for them to be.
I'd be really interested in watching a cut of The Hobbit which moves between 24 and 48 fps for dialog/action: people are happy to accept aspect ratio shifts (like moving from full-frame IMAX to CinemaScope in the Dark Knight, etc, and more artistically moving to Academy for a particular scene in Life of Pi), perhaps they'd be willing to accept frame rate shifts too?
Certainly captures a lot of my experience with The Hobbit. I saw it in HD/HFR, and I'm planning on going back to see it in 2D just so I can enjoy the Movie. I was distracted, and distressed at the experience - my entire "suspension of disbelief" was never engaged, and I constantly felt like I was watching a TV Show - one exception being where the Orcs where chasing everyone down inside the mountain, when I felt like I was watching a video game.
Like the OP, I applaud Peter Jackson's experiment - without courage like this, you won't be able to advance the technology of the art. But, in this case, it just didn't work for me. I'm interesting in hearing what other's thought.
I think this is interesting. Like yourself, and the author of the article, I applaud Peter Jackson for having the courage to try, and reserve judgement until I have the chance to see it myself next week. That said, I still think it's very much an open question whether people's responses to this are due to the intrinsic nature of 48fps or just due to how alien it feels.
Personally, I can't see how anything that replicates reality better can be intrinsically bad. When I was a very young child and watching films for the first time I remember being distracted by its artifice: the depth of field, the way camera perspectives changed, and the motion blur, though I couldn't have put a name to these back then.
I think the bad reaction to 48 fps is largely for three reasons: legacy associations, with home video and the like, a lack of experience making films at 48 fps (could Peter Jackson have made a better 48 fps film had the industry had more experience doing it? probably), and sheer alienation (if every single film you've ever seen is 24 fps, and you've acquired a suspension of disbelief for 24 fps, then you're going to lose that at 48 fps). I think this last point is worth emphasising: I don't think we innately are capable of a suspension of disbelief for film. I think it's something we learn over time, like I did as a child, and it's something we haven't yet done for 48 fps.
So I'm optimistic. And sad too, because perhaps next week I won't enjoy The Hobbit as much as I should. I think back to Technicolor films and how crappy they looked at the time compared to how beautiful black and white films looked (and continue to look) at the same time. Yet here we are now, and we'd never go back these days.
But who knows. Maybe I'm wrong and there's something intrinsically bad about too-fast a frame rate. Perhaps, as the author alludes, filmmaking is as much a decision of what information to lose as it is what to keep. But I can't help but ask the question: the author says that certain scenes looked like a video game to him, but I ask what would it look like if you'd never played games in your life? If you lacked that association...? Maybe it'd be something a little bit magical.
I saw it in 2D because I didn't want to wait until next weekend for a seat in the local IMAX and I have to say that I was very pleasantly surprised - I was delighted by the whole film and looking forward to the next episode in pretty much the same expectant way that I used to look forward to the next LotR episode.
I did see the movie in 2D (the parallax effect in 3D movies distract and give me headache).
My experience was that for the first half hour, I felt that some scenes were there just to please the 3D movie. A tree that goes into the screen, a big rock on top of the characters to give perspective, a bird that goes to the depth of view...
Also, the first part (will avoid spoilers), all the CGI was noticeable, and also felt the gamma filters were way too high (fake HDR ?).
For the rest of the movie I did not feel it, so I either forgot about it and decided to enjoy the movie, or maybe they did stop using the tricks.
At the risk of drawing this thread off-topic, I saw it in 24FPS and didn't think much of it. No amount of HD or FPS can make up for a mediocre film, in the same way that fantastic graphics don't make a good game.
(Spoilers ahead.)
Bilbo and the dwarves were caricatures - overdoing their roles as a surprised hobbit and a fat, funny disney character with a single personality. (Seriously - there's a fat one, a stupid one, an Irish one, an old one etc...)
That would be ok, since The Hobbit is a children's book, but this is certainly not a children's film. I did not like the mixture of comedy and seriousness that was attempted. Whereas LOTR (which I really enjoyed) had moments of Merry and Pippin being funny, these dwarves never seemed to stop taking everything as a joke (obviously apart from Mr. Serious Dwarf). Some bits were genuinely funny (dwarves with Elrond), but they're in obviously safe environments.
If the overarching plot is to kill a dragon, there are some difficulties when trying to stretch it out into 9 hours of films. Sauron had a command structure and it was perfectly possible to kill mini-bosses (Saruman) and get some feel that you're doing something useful. A dragon has no such web of power, so the various evils they vanquish in the film appear disconnected and irrelevant to the main plot.
Gandalf has seemingly random amounts of power at any given time. I guess this also cropped up in LOTR, but it was much more obvious here.
> If the overarching plot is to kill a dragon, there are some difficulties when trying to stretch it out into 9 hours of films.
From what I've gathered the dragon will be dealt with in the second movie (hence the name), while the third movie will deal with the aftermath, as well as being padded with content from the LOTR appendix. Personally I think the first movie will make more sense in light of the sequels, though that of course doesn't really defend the somewhat lackluster nature of it.
"Only last winter an extensive poll of film fans showed them relatively unsatisfied with sound pictures and desirous of once more seeing silent pictures."
I have just been, for the first time, to see and hear a picture talk. "A little late in the day," my up-to-date readers will remark, with a patronizing and contemptuous smile. "This is 1930; there isn't much news in talkies now. But better late than never."
Better late than never? Ah, no! There, my friends, you're wrong. This is one of those cases where it is most decidedly better never than late, better never than early, better never than on the stroke of time....
I bet I could find similar reaction to the introduction of color movies, colour television, GUIs for personal computers, etc. (did anybody ever critique Gutenberg for 'form over function' on his bibles?)
In all cases, we had to discover how and when to properly use new technologies. This will not be different.
Also, I expect we will eventually go beyond 48 Hz, as 48 Hz is slightly below human perception thresholds. http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Flicker_fusion gives limits around 60Hz. Those are for bright lights, large areas, and peripheral. You will not normally see that with old-syle television sets and won't see it in most homes, either, but in cinemas, one can easily get there.
I think you'll be far more likely to see a split, in the same way today we have films shot in CinemaScope (2.35:1) and widescreen (1.85:1). The complement, rather than replace, one another.
48 FPS is probably analogous to 3D, rather than talkies. When the talkies came along there was a rapid transition: the big five studios were exclusively shooting talkies about two years after the Jazz Singer was released. Whereas 3D is more prevalent today, but some film-makers choose not to use it. There is not quite the same demand by the audience.
I mentioned this earlier, but I'd love to see a screening of The Hobbit with 24fps for dialog and 48fps for action.
I imagine that in 5-10 years all films will be higher resolution and 48fps. The youth of tomorrow will look back at the low-res, fuzzy films of today the same way we look at black and white flicks from the past, "Did people really like this crud?!".
The Hobbit - good or bad, it doesn't matter - is really just the first of the next generation. It means makeup artists and prop creators have to step up the quality based on complaints like those in TFA, but that's technology for you.
And the movie industry needs this. There are only so many stories to tell. If the back catalog was still first tier entertainment there wouldn't be nearly as many new movies.
Timeline:
• Silent movies: Tell all the stories.
• Sound!: Tell al the stories again, no one will watch a silent movie.
• Color: Tell all the stories again.
• Style change: Never look like a play. Look "real". Tell all the stories again.
• Decent CGI: Tell all the stories using special effects again.
• High frame rate? 3D? HD?: If one of these hits the industry is set for the next decade.
␄
[1] This is where I came in. Movies from before the '70s have either a video sitcom or musical theater look that does not engage me as "real".
[2] My 18 year old daughter can't really engage in a movie filmed before about 2000 if it has special effects. They are just too campy looking to her. She can tolerate some cinematography from the mid '90s, but before that it looks cheap and fake to her.
> The youth of tomorrow will look back at the low-res, fuzzy films of today the same way we look at black and white flicks from the past, "Did people really like this crud?!".
Speak for yourself... there is a certain art form in black and white movies that can never be reproduced in color (for example, great use of shadows). Many people enjoy watching the great classic masterpieces. It's a shame more movies are not made this way.
Much like a local news anchor that really should retire with the advent of the evening news in HD... (I suspect every market has at least one of those)
This is a well-written article, but it seems to me like a lot of words to say, "The association with other high-frame-rate media made me uncomfortable and the movie harder to sit back and lazily process." The author says as much in several places, but then does not seem to think that that should be considered in their points about "magic," immersion, and art. I found very little relevant evidence (even given that the premise is subjective and somewhat abstract), and they make foggy points like this with no real assertion:
> In the opening hour of The Hobbit shown in 3D HFR – I don’t recall hearing a single sigh, or laugh. Not one.
Okay? Correlation does not imply causation. Maybe the audience of the 3D HFR show was more Tolkien and/or cinema fans that were taking the movie less lightheartedly, or were more introverted. And what does this even mean to say? The related point further on saying that the movie is too comedic - and in the wrong places - doesn't serve his premise any better.
I hadn't read much from the perspective of those against HFR, but if this is the only real argument, I think it's time to start pushing. There's no reason not to have all the visual information we can, and lower technology-imposed limitations. If filmmakers actually think that stuttering and blurs improve a movie, they can still add them! That's no reason to limit the technology, though.
For the record, my experience was similar. It was hard to shake the "home movie" feeling as I was watching it, and suspension of disbelief was a little harder. However, I recognized this as a personal limitation, and I was able to enjoy the visuals and the experience regardless. I don't think that seeing more movies like this could be anything but an improvement.
I saw it at the weekend, and I guess I am in a minority judging by reviews, but I honestly didn't think the HFR was that bad. (Maybe my opinion will change when I re-watch in 2d?)
Firstly, I normally come away from a 3D film with my eyes feeling extremely strained, but the Hobbit was the first film where this wasn't the case, which was a refreshing change.
There were a couple scenes, particularly at the start, that somehow felt weird as described in the article thanks to the HFR, but to say it stopped people laughing at the jokes seems pretty extreme, that wasn't the case with the audience I was sat in.
In other scenes, the benefits were clear:
Panning landscape style shots were judder free. You could actually see what was happening in action scenes, rather than the usual mess of blur. (Made worse in many films by their insistence on making things more "exciting" by going into shaky-cam mode)
Ultimately, I think what we will settle on is a variable frame rate set-up, where talking heads, indoor scenes with little action can be shown in 24fps to prevent the "soap opera" look that people hate, and action/high motion scenes can reap the benefits of 48fps.
I think that sometimes, the fact that the medium you are using is not perfect/too realistic makes your imagination do a lot of the work, and that makes it easier to be immersed in the experience you are having.
That is why I jump into immersion really quickly when playing Mario or even more so reading a book, but a game like Skyrim has a really hard time hooking me in.
I think realism may in some cases be a kind of a red herring when striving for immersion.
For example, I, as a programmer, can be completely immersed in what I am doing without my text editor being "realistic" (whatever a realistic text editor could be :) ).
I think that the state of "flow" and the immersion in some kind of experience (movie, game, book) go hand-in-hand.
So I hear a lot of people saying that they really enjoyed the higher frame rate during the action scenes, but not so much during the quiet scenes. Would it be feasible for directors to switch between the frame rates as needed? For action scenes, let it roll at 48fps but for all other scenes, simply chop out half the frames and display one duplicate frame per frame to simulate 24fps. I wonder if the transition would be too jolting.. perhaps you could ease into it by ratcheting down the frame rate over a period of a few seconds. At any rate, it seems like you might get the best of both worlds.
I watched some of King Kong on an HDTV that does the interpolated 48fps. It switched between 48 and 24 fps depending on scene when it could. The switching was quite irritating, going from very smooth motion to now-apparent jittery "normal" motion. Jolting indeed.
This is exactly what Freddie Wong is talking about doing for Season 2 of VGHS (a web series) - HFR for the "video game" scenes and regular for the rest of them. I think it will work very well.
Almost every aspect of your post is wrong (regarding the author and the post) or irrelevant (regarding the content).
The author is a filmmaker and was comparing film formats. He watched the Hobbit multiple times on the same night at a state of the art cinema. He watched the (same) film in this film format order: 3DHFR, 3D, 2D, 3DHFR.
Therefore, the content could technically have been any film and the elements of immersion compared were across the same content.
It is shame there was no 2DHFR format to compare though.
My experience is the opposite of the author’s. The only really different thing I noticed while watching The Hobbit in 3D at 48fps was that panning shots weren’t distractingly jittery. The film was enjoyable and didn’t feel fake or unconvincing. I can only guess that, being younger than Vincent, my familiarity with 2D is simply less ingrained than his.
I think this is one of those "problems" where the only rational response is to deal with it and get over it. If movies had always been shown at 48 FPS and somebody came along in 2012 arguing that they should instead be projected at 24 for a more "cinematic" look, they'd be laughed out of town.
Good grief, it's a significant change to the way movies are made and displayed, and movies are huge part of the entertainment culture. It's got a fascinating technological component which HN tends to love, and a fascinating artistic component as well. Further, the implementation seems to be pretty divisive, though the tech-savvy HN crowd seems more forgiving/accepting of the technology than the public at large.
I think it's OK if we discuss it for a little while.
Considering he's focusing on the fact that it's a 48FPS movie when watching it, a second time no less, doesn't that kind of detract from the conclusion that it's a bad thing?
I thought it was pretty magical for a movie to flow like this, I felt the 3D was well focused and in many cases hard to notice (As it should be), and not just a layer slapped on.
All in all I'd rather watch it in 3DHFR first, and 2D later, to make a fair judgement on whether it's a good thing.
I agree that in the start I was a bit focused on the looks of it all, but after a few minutes it added to my immersion rather than detract from it.
Isn't it possible that the reason you're distracted by this new way of doing things, is because it is in fact new, and different from other movies? If everything looked like this, we can focus on the right things instead.
tl;dr version: movie critics are now experiencing what audiophiles once did, and are longing for the days of pleasant distortion. (Can't come up with an analogue of "euphonic" this early in the day.) Yes, it's true that directors took advantage of the limitations--but now they can learn to take advantage of what HFR provides, and eventually audiences will learn the new conventions.
Reminds me: during the transition from 8 bit color images to 24 bit color images in early 90s, some were complaining that 24 bit images looked worse than 8 bit images.
I agree. After watching Avatar, I was arguing that this 3D thing will be over really soon because no one would want to wear those cumbersome glasses and tolerate the eye-strain. But then I got used to it and it doesn't bother me at all.
It's quite possible the 3D film-making is going to see more advances both in the theater and during filming.
I take fault in the post's back & forth collusion of 48/3D being responsible for the bad story & acting. It seemed like Jackson directed on the same level he left off with from the previous series, but the cast wasn't in the same place and weren't operating from that level of experience and familiarity with their characters. They ended up just "acting".
The 48p/3D was memorizing. I think it will take another 2 years to work out the kinks and a decade or more to really explore what can be done with it.
The immersion was amazing. I was flinching every time something flew at the screen. I can't say I ever did that for Avatar.
Furthermore, the audience and myself were all gasping and laughing etc unlike what the author states with his anecdotal 'proof,' clouded by preconceived notions and order bias.
I think in general, more realism is a challenge for the director. I've seen many HD movies and television shows where it feels like I'm really on the set, rather than really in the place the movie is set in.
Anyway, I haven't seen the Hobbit or any HFR movie. But I do think that while extra realism in the filming process will ultimately be a boon to the art form, currently there are a lot of challenges. The realism just makes me feel like I'm on a set with a bunch of costumed actors and props rather than in the film's universe with its characters.
Realism currently makes the suspension of disbelief harder rather than easier. But when they finally figure out how to overcome that, watch out, because it will be awesome.
This is exactly what watching The Hobbit in HFR felt like to me. It was something of a cross between a play and a video game. There were some scene that felt more cinematic, but especially scenes without much camera movement felt like watching actors on a set.
Like the author, this pretty much ruined the movie for me, but I'm not prepared to totally write off HFR. I think directors will just need to learn how to properly adjust filming techniques to keep HFR feeling like a movie, similarly to how they had to learn to incorporate green screens without having an obvious separation between the actors and the CGI (which a lot of directors still get wrong).
[+] [-] 4ad|13 years ago|reply
3D on the other hand... I wish it would die. You have to converge at a distance and focus at another, and that's really hard for some people. There are a huge number of cues[1] that are important in depth perception, but 3D movies make use only of parallax confusing the brain. The depth of field is usually shallow, and that's great for 2D, but catastrophic for 3D. In real life, objects that I make an explicit effort to focus to are not blurry, but in 3D they are.
Another annoying aspect of 3D movies is that they artificially augment the parallax to make the 3D effect more extreme. That's equivalent to objects being really close. Apart from strain on the eyes, that's really annoying for wide outdoor shots, where things should effectively be at infinity. It's like you are looking at a miniature, not at a vast valley.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_perception
[+] [-] MrScruff|13 years ago|reply
Film makers have a wide variety of creative tools available to them to help them tell a story, of which HFR is one. We're talking about art, not a technical quest to reproduce reality as closely as possible.
[+] [-] valuegram|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Shivetya|13 years ago|reply
One very sore point I have with this film is just that.
[+] [-] andrewmu|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flyinRyan|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swah|13 years ago|reply
And I really like the LoTR saga, having seen it several times.
[+] [-] simonh|13 years ago|reply
There definitely were moments where it looked like you were looking at actors on a set. The fidelity was so good that it was obvious the characters were wearing prosthetics and makeup. However there were plenty of scenes where the increased detail and clarity were a huge advantage, especially some of the CGI scenes. The flight of the eagles was gorgeous and the feeling of actually being there you got from the combination of HFR and 3D added a lot to the experience.
It very much is a question of trade-offs. I'm very glad I saw it in HFR 3D because for a lot of the scenes it gives you an experience you couldn't get any other way, but if I were to see it in a cinema again I'd go for 2D, and I look forward to seeing it on TV at home. I'll quite happily watch the next film in HFR 3D.
[+] [-] __alexs|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 0x0|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] durzagott|13 years ago|reply
Bear in mind, I cannot stand those TVs that double the frame rate to make everything look like a cheap soap opera. I've heard this comparison, or ones like it, in almost every negative review I've read. In my opinion, this is false comparison.
Imagine if soap operas were filmed in colour, and proper films shot in black and white. Then a film maker comes along and releases a colour film. Suddenly everyone says it looks like a cheap soap opera. To me this is the psychological effect that is hindering the acceptance of HFR and thus the negative reviews.
Ten years from now our children will scoff at our luddism.
[+] [-] objclxt|13 years ago|reply
HFR is really interesting when contextualized in the history of cinema: frame rate was never a problem until directors started changing how they shot action scenes in the 1980s. It was realised that if you made the action fast and blurry you could get away with a lot more: what from a wide shot would look like a slow moving car chase could become a very dramatic action scene.
I think this is being reflected in a lot of the reviews coming out for The Hobbit (I haven't seen it yet): it seems a lot of people don't mind it during action sequences, but it becomes distracting during dialog and less frenetic moments. And this makes sense: why should dialog scenes be in 48fps? There's no technical or artistic reason for them to be.
I'd be really interested in watching a cut of The Hobbit which moves between 24 and 48 fps for dialog/action: people are happy to accept aspect ratio shifts (like moving from full-frame IMAX to CinemaScope in the Dark Knight, etc, and more artistically moving to Academy for a particular scene in Life of Pi), perhaps they'd be willing to accept frame rate shifts too?
[+] [-] ghshephard|13 years ago|reply
Like the OP, I applaud Peter Jackson's experiment - without courage like this, you won't be able to advance the technology of the art. But, in this case, it just didn't work for me. I'm interesting in hearing what other's thought.
[+] [-] Osmium|13 years ago|reply
I think this is interesting. Like yourself, and the author of the article, I applaud Peter Jackson for having the courage to try, and reserve judgement until I have the chance to see it myself next week. That said, I still think it's very much an open question whether people's responses to this are due to the intrinsic nature of 48fps or just due to how alien it feels.
Personally, I can't see how anything that replicates reality better can be intrinsically bad. When I was a very young child and watching films for the first time I remember being distracted by its artifice: the depth of field, the way camera perspectives changed, and the motion blur, though I couldn't have put a name to these back then.
I think the bad reaction to 48 fps is largely for three reasons: legacy associations, with home video and the like, a lack of experience making films at 48 fps (could Peter Jackson have made a better 48 fps film had the industry had more experience doing it? probably), and sheer alienation (if every single film you've ever seen is 24 fps, and you've acquired a suspension of disbelief for 24 fps, then you're going to lose that at 48 fps). I think this last point is worth emphasising: I don't think we innately are capable of a suspension of disbelief for film. I think it's something we learn over time, like I did as a child, and it's something we haven't yet done for 48 fps.
So I'm optimistic. And sad too, because perhaps next week I won't enjoy The Hobbit as much as I should. I think back to Technicolor films and how crappy they looked at the time compared to how beautiful black and white films looked (and continue to look) at the same time. Yet here we are now, and we'd never go back these days.
But who knows. Maybe I'm wrong and there's something intrinsically bad about too-fast a frame rate. Perhaps, as the author alludes, filmmaking is as much a decision of what information to lose as it is what to keep. But I can't help but ask the question: the author says that certain scenes looked like a video game to him, but I ask what would it look like if you'd never played games in your life? If you lacked that association...? Maybe it'd be something a little bit magical.
[+] [-] arethuza|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kh_hk|13 years ago|reply
My experience was that for the first half hour, I felt that some scenes were there just to please the 3D movie. A tree that goes into the screen, a big rock on top of the characters to give perspective, a bird that goes to the depth of view...
Also, the first part (will avoid spoilers), all the CGI was noticeable, and also felt the gamma filters were way too high (fake HDR ?).
For the rest of the movie I did not feel it, so I either forgot about it and decided to enjoy the movie, or maybe they did stop using the tricks.
[+] [-] Jabbles|13 years ago|reply
(Spoilers ahead.)
Bilbo and the dwarves were caricatures - overdoing their roles as a surprised hobbit and a fat, funny disney character with a single personality. (Seriously - there's a fat one, a stupid one, an Irish one, an old one etc...)
That would be ok, since The Hobbit is a children's book, but this is certainly not a children's film. I did not like the mixture of comedy and seriousness that was attempted. Whereas LOTR (which I really enjoyed) had moments of Merry and Pippin being funny, these dwarves never seemed to stop taking everything as a joke (obviously apart from Mr. Serious Dwarf). Some bits were genuinely funny (dwarves with Elrond), but they're in obviously safe environments.
If the overarching plot is to kill a dragon, there are some difficulties when trying to stretch it out into 9 hours of films. Sauron had a command structure and it was perfectly possible to kill mini-bosses (Saruman) and get some feel that you're doing something useful. A dragon has no such web of power, so the various evils they vanquish in the film appear disconnected and irrelevant to the main plot.
Gandalf has seemingly random amounts of power at any given time. I guess this also cropped up in LOTR, but it was much more obvious here.
Graphics for graphics sake. Rock battles?
Gollum was good.
[+] [-] peroo|13 years ago|reply
From what I've gathered the dragon will be dealt with in the second movie (hence the name), while the third movie will deal with the aftermath, as well as being padded with content from the LOTR appendix. Personally I think the first movie will make more sense in light of the sequels, though that of course doesn't really defend the somewhat lackluster nature of it.
[+] [-] shpiel|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JshWright|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Someone|13 years ago|reply
http://www.oldmagazinearticles.com/pdf/Talkie_Town_USA.pdf (apologies for the low quality of the scan):
"Only last winter an extensive poll of film fans showed them relatively unsatisfied with sound pictures and desirous of once more seeing silent pictures."
We also have Aldous Huxley (http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/sound.cfm, about halfway down):
Silence is Golden
I have just been, for the first time, to see and hear a picture talk. "A little late in the day," my up-to-date readers will remark, with a patronizing and contemptuous smile. "This is 1930; there isn't much news in talkies now. But better late than never."
Better late than never? Ah, no! There, my friends, you're wrong. This is one of those cases where it is most decidedly better never than late, better never than early, better never than on the stroke of time....
I bet I could find similar reaction to the introduction of color movies, colour television, GUIs for personal computers, etc. (did anybody ever critique Gutenberg for 'form over function' on his bibles?)
In all cases, we had to discover how and when to properly use new technologies. This will not be different.
Also, I expect we will eventually go beyond 48 Hz, as 48 Hz is slightly below human perception thresholds. http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Flicker_fusion gives limits around 60Hz. Those are for bright lights, large areas, and peripheral. You will not normally see that with old-syle television sets and won't see it in most homes, either, but in cinemas, one can easily get there.
[+] [-] objclxt|13 years ago|reply
48 FPS is probably analogous to 3D, rather than talkies. When the talkies came along there was a rapid transition: the big five studios were exclusively shooting talkies about two years after the Jazz Singer was released. Whereas 3D is more prevalent today, but some film-makers choose not to use it. There is not quite the same demand by the audience.
I mentioned this earlier, but I'd love to see a screening of The Hobbit with 24fps for dialog and 48fps for action.
[+] [-] rquirk|13 years ago|reply
The Hobbit - good or bad, it doesn't matter - is really just the first of the next generation. It means makeup artists and prop creators have to step up the quality based on complaints like those in TFA, but that's technology for you.
[+] [-] jws|13 years ago|reply
Timeline:
• Silent movies: Tell all the stories.
• Sound!: Tell al the stories again, no one will watch a silent movie.
• Color: Tell all the stories again.
• Style change: Never look like a play. Look "real". Tell all the stories again.
• Decent CGI: Tell all the stories using special effects again.
• High frame rate? 3D? HD?: If one of these hits the industry is set for the next decade.
␄
[1] This is where I came in. Movies from before the '70s have either a video sitcom or musical theater look that does not engage me as "real".
[2] My 18 year old daughter can't really engage in a movie filmed before about 2000 if it has special effects. They are just too campy looking to her. She can tolerate some cinematography from the mid '90s, but before that it looks cheap and fake to her.
[+] [-] nvarsj|13 years ago|reply
Speak for yourself... there is a certain art form in black and white movies that can never be reproduced in color (for example, great use of shadows). Many people enjoy watching the great classic masterpieces. It's a shame more movies are not made this way.
[+] [-] JshWright|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jrajav|13 years ago|reply
> In the opening hour of The Hobbit shown in 3D HFR – I don’t recall hearing a single sigh, or laugh. Not one.
Okay? Correlation does not imply causation. Maybe the audience of the 3D HFR show was more Tolkien and/or cinema fans that were taking the movie less lightheartedly, or were more introverted. And what does this even mean to say? The related point further on saying that the movie is too comedic - and in the wrong places - doesn't serve his premise any better.
I hadn't read much from the perspective of those against HFR, but if this is the only real argument, I think it's time to start pushing. There's no reason not to have all the visual information we can, and lower technology-imposed limitations. If filmmakers actually think that stuttering and blurs improve a movie, they can still add them! That's no reason to limit the technology, though.
For the record, my experience was similar. It was hard to shake the "home movie" feeling as I was watching it, and suspension of disbelief was a little harder. However, I recognized this as a personal limitation, and I was able to enjoy the visuals and the experience regardless. I don't think that seeing more movies like this could be anything but an improvement.
[+] [-] rcknight|13 years ago|reply
Firstly, I normally come away from a 3D film with my eyes feeling extremely strained, but the Hobbit was the first film where this wasn't the case, which was a refreshing change.
There were a couple scenes, particularly at the start, that somehow felt weird as described in the article thanks to the HFR, but to say it stopped people laughing at the jokes seems pretty extreme, that wasn't the case with the audience I was sat in.
In other scenes, the benefits were clear: Panning landscape style shots were judder free. You could actually see what was happening in action scenes, rather than the usual mess of blur. (Made worse in many films by their insistence on making things more "exciting" by going into shaky-cam mode)
Ultimately, I think what we will settle on is a variable frame rate set-up, where talking heads, indoor scenes with little action can be shown in 24fps to prevent the "soap opera" look that people hate, and action/high motion scenes can reap the benefits of 48fps.
[+] [-] JshWright|13 years ago|reply
The 'unwashed masses' seems to be at least indifferent, and in many cases, positive about it.
[+] [-] webjunkie|13 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley
[+] [-] phn|13 years ago|reply
I think that sometimes, the fact that the medium you are using is not perfect/too realistic makes your imagination do a lot of the work, and that makes it easier to be immersed in the experience you are having.
That is why I jump into immersion really quickly when playing Mario or even more so reading a book, but a game like Skyrim has a really hard time hooking me in.
I think realism may in some cases be a kind of a red herring when striving for immersion.
For example, I, as a programmer, can be completely immersed in what I am doing without my text editor being "realistic" (whatever a realistic text editor could be :) ).
I think that the state of "flow" and the immersion in some kind of experience (movie, game, book) go hand-in-hand.
[+] [-] marknutter|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ctdonath|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bajsejohannes|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _rs|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] drucken|13 years ago|reply
The author is a filmmaker and was comparing film formats. He watched the Hobbit multiple times on the same night at a state of the art cinema. He watched the (same) film in this film format order: 3DHFR, 3D, 2D, 3DHFR.
Therefore, the content could technically have been any film and the elements of immersion compared were across the same content.
It is shame there was no 2DHFR format to compare though.
[+] [-] evincarofautumn|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CamperBob2|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HelloMcFly|13 years ago|reply
I think it's OK if we discuss it for a little while.
[+] [-] ColMustard|13 years ago|reply
I thought it was pretty magical for a movie to flow like this, I felt the 3D was well focused and in many cases hard to notice (As it should be), and not just a layer slapped on.
All in all I'd rather watch it in 3DHFR first, and 2D later, to make a fair judgement on whether it's a good thing.
I agree that in the start I was a bit focused on the looks of it all, but after a few minutes it added to my immersion rather than detract from it.
Isn't it possible that the reason you're distracted by this new way of doing things, is because it is in fact new, and different from other movies? If everything looked like this, we can focus on the right things instead.
I thought it was pretty damn magical.
[+] [-] jejones3141|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] z92|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] muhuk|13 years ago|reply
It's quite possible the 3D film-making is going to see more advances both in the theater and during filming.
[+] [-] radley|13 years ago|reply
The 48p/3D was memorizing. I think it will take another 2 years to work out the kinks and a decade or more to really explore what can be done with it.
[+] [-] natmaster|13 years ago|reply
Furthermore, the audience and myself were all gasping and laughing etc unlike what the author states with his anecdotal 'proof,' clouded by preconceived notions and order bias.
[+] [-] drcube|13 years ago|reply
Anyway, I haven't seen the Hobbit or any HFR movie. But I do think that while extra realism in the filming process will ultimately be a boon to the art form, currently there are a lot of challenges. The realism just makes me feel like I'm on a set with a bunch of costumed actors and props rather than in the film's universe with its characters.
Realism currently makes the suspension of disbelief harder rather than easier. But when they finally figure out how to overcome that, watch out, because it will be awesome.
[+] [-] NullXorVoid|13 years ago|reply
Like the author, this pretty much ruined the movie for me, but I'm not prepared to totally write off HFR. I think directors will just need to learn how to properly adjust filming techniques to keep HFR feeling like a movie, similarly to how they had to learn to incorporate green screens without having an obvious separation between the actors and the CGI (which a lot of directors still get wrong).