Leaderboard

Grain, anamorphic bokeh, 24/25p, handheld camerawork. All these things actually help me to become involved in the film as a STORY. It's storytelling for God's sake!   I don't read an adventure story to a child like I'd read a news article to my colleague. The latter requires formality and stark realism to present it with proper purpose, the former needs to be told a sense of wonder and otherworldliness in order to achieve the goal: magic!   All these "unrealistic" artifacts that are part of film tradition serve the same purpose as dry ice lighting and music on a magician's stage: they take us out of the ordinary and into a place where we can almost believe the impossible may well be possible...   People appear to be forgetting thousands of years of storytelling culture because of a slightly upgraded silicon chip.

  This is a good point. The whole point of HFR and 3D is to make the story telling more immersive. If it doesn't and looks worse aesthetically, then serious questions should be asked of the industry's technological direction.   Like the magic trick, art isn't explicitly real, it is allegory and so the camera work should also have hidden meaning and not put everything on display in equal detail whether it is a prop or an actor. Peter Jackson is a great craftsman and story teller but I'm beginning to doubt that he's made a piece of art here.

I don't want to judge why I tend to agree with the critics who are having a hard time with it, because I may see it and change my mind.  I'm sure it's something that everyone will have to get used to...  If for the last 100 years we'd all been watching 48fps and suddenly somebody slows it down to 24, we'd probably have the same reaction...  It's different.  You're messing with a key ingredient in a huge part of our culture.   When all of this talk about the Hobbit being shot at double the frame rate started going around, the first thing I saw in my head was a Middle Earth home video that just looked cheesy as hell.  Just another ploy to "change" things...which I'm all for innovation, but part of what I think makes 24fps work in cinema is how slow it is.  Really, go up just 6 frames to 30, and it takes on a new character.  Part of the magic of that slow frame rate is the disconnection it creates for the viewer...  They watch films to get "lost" in the story.  I'm trying to develop this into words but it's hard to explain why it just "works."    I'm not saying a great story can't be enjoyed at a higher frame rate.  If immersion is the goal, then it should be fine.  Just seems like everyone is saying it's all drawing attention to itself.  It's a bold scenario to try though...  In Indiana where I am, only ONE theater in the whole state is showing it at 48fps...the other 1,000 or so the usual 24.  Which begs the question, what's the damn point? 

Buy and adaptor and use it!

  I don't know. I'm talking about the best from each era. Budget has a lot to do with it, and so does the amount of time spent on it, and style/skill of the artists.  I feel like the T-Rex in Jurassic Park(1993) looks more realistic than any of the hulks.  Golem looks really good in some scenes from LOTR, but the Warg riders look stupid.    I guess what I'm really saying is that given how good things looked 10 years ago, i thought they'd be much closer to having seamless CG characters.

When you watch King Kong or The Lovely Bones, it's quite clear that what PJ needed to make them good films was not 3D, 4K or 48fps...   This is a gimmick, whether it sticks or not. We need to get used to these massive blockbuster films as roller coaster rides, entertainment events, call it what you want, but there's serious films and then there's these. It's not good or bad, it's what it is, and the truth is that the great majority of people go for these ones, and not for The Master or Moonrise Kingdom.   These films employ many thousands of people and make billions, they help move the industry forward, and they help finance smaller and more important/serious films too, they do have their place in the industry, regardless of what they mean to me or any conservative film fan, many of the technologies developed for these films end up making smaller productions possible.   With regards to 48fps, I hope it doesn't stick, because I think it just doesn't look good at all, I'd hate to see filmmaking in general get pushed in that direction. As I said before, 48fps could be easily achieved on film ages ago, and there's a reason why it didn't go there. Someone said it was for budget reasons, well I don't think that's the case in films like these, the film costs are nothing in a production of this size, shooting on super35 at 48fps would probably not be any more expensive than shooting vista vision, and so many big productions have been shot on vista vision, because it did look better! 48fps didn't.   Jackson and Cameron are becoming very technically driven, and in a way even technically obsessed, without necessarily doing it in favor of the story. Using this technology/gimmick/novelty/whatever on a franchise which look was established on traditional film at 24fps not that long ago, might not be the greatest idea...   Btw, I was reading a bunch of reviews the other day and thought it was quite alarming when two different reviewers compared the action sequences to Benny Hill! Don't think that's what they were going for at all, even though the singing in the trailer made me chuckle too.

catonic nice name your gonna love the hobbit. made for zombies just like you. you will love counting gandalfs nasal hairs probably turn you on. go see analogue shot inception at an imax cinema then go see this 300 million dollar tellytubbies shite. if this plastic turd is the cinemas future then the bean counters need to die. this is showboating a high end techno advert meant to impress the new generation hipster yes men director shitters the trickle down effect it is about about turning a movie around in a 3 MONTH cycle that is why hollywood wants film dead. film costs more and it is slower. this new zealand vomit fest is meant to be the van helsing nail in films heart the stuff i have seen looked like rotten bbc actuality. your belief is the scientists just need to tweek a few nobs and everything will be ok. fuck you and fuck corrupt hollywood. paul thomas anderson managed to shoot the master on 65mm by cutting his shooting ratio way down and dumping his cgi and post budgets. clearly film makers decent ones great ones need choice the small willing talented ones should be allowed to shoot film if they want to. when you watch a well shot movie like inception you do not think this looks old fashioned and sub standard you go wow immersive but analogue film gives you a step away from reality. it is just fucking sexy and if it was good enough for welles or kubrick i will take them over the little fat kiwi turd,who seems to have 37 more cameras than kubrick or tarkovsky and none of the fucking talent. when you look at the hobbit clips you ask where did the 300 million go and what the fuck are they gonna do with the 38 reds they got for free as they will soon be obsolete when the next upgrade comes. filmakers need many choices,the majority will not be able to afford analogue film some will. film is dead not because it is a substandard medium it is indeed superior in many ways that arri understand but will not admit and jannard will not compute. film is nearly dead cos of the corrupt morons and the bean counters. when tarrantino,nolan and paul thomas anderson are having to put up a fight to shoot on film you then understand something is rotten and satanic in hollywood rape land. at least david lynch was honest he went to video cos it was cheaper yet a lot of his sexy perfume commercials where still shot on 35mm film. fuck jackson and fuck lucas and that king of the world 3d twat that made titanic. catatonic do not forget your sick bucket for the movies when you go see the gay plastic little folks of middle earth. as your puking your guts into  bucket and wiping the tears away you can revel in how immersive jacksons digital movie is.

I would assume the production value of the sets, make up and costumes is very high on this film if not among the best of the industry. And we all now how good weta is at cgi. So I guess if there is anything to blame on the "tv look" it has everything to do with the frame rate and nothing else.   Also I'm not sure it is something "we will get used to". Because I don't think tv will lower frame rates or lose oversharp hd pictures anytime soon so anything that looks like that will look like tv to us.   I need to see it for myself to make judgment but just because it's new doesn't mean it is better. Have to give credit to Peter Jackson for trying new things and trying to make the craft evolve though.

Actually, no, it's not that different.  In fact the threshold where it stops making much of a difference is in the 48fps-60fps range, at that point the human brain is processing the incoming visual information as if it were watching something that's actually happening, live.  This isn't the case with 24fps cinema at a 1/48th-1/50th shutter speed.   This isn't merely an issue of culture or what we're used to or economics.  This involves fundamental ways the human brain and our vision works together, influencing how we interpret what we're seeing.  It's science and the science has already been done (see: Douglas Trumbull).     There are no surprises to be had here.  None.  Not one *.       *-except maybe why Peter Jackson doesn't know more than your average person about his job, the film industry and stuff involving movie cameras that was figured out in the early 1980s.

It became a trilogy a few weeks ago :)

    [img]http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lvx9kwcREW1qfl94zo1_500.jpg[/img]

The TV comparison comes up a lot.   "It looks like TV" not cinema. Is this a learned thing or are people really saying "It looks cheap and not artistic"?   If there's an inherent aesthetic flaw here in 48p surely Peter Jackson, with his eye, would have spotted it way before it got on a cinema set.   I do wonder that if the costume and prop departments could raise their game even further, and with the right material, that 48p 4K in 3D could be a winner. I just don't think this epic fantasy production is well suited to it.   All those silly beards...   What about a thriller set in a hyper real-life location where you feel like you are there?   The intention of The Hobbit was to make you feel like you're in Middle Earth. If the result is that you feel like you're on a set, than make the set less like a set and more real.

this looks very good Im going to see it it starts showing at my local cinema this Friday in the Uk.     [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsYn6L5fF9Q"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsYn6L5fF9Q[/url]

ALEXA:   Have a read of this .....good interview here [url="http://www.afcinema.com/Cinematographer-Charlotte-Bruus-Christensen-discusses-her-work-on-Thomas-Vinterberg-s-The-Hunt.html?lang=fr"]http://www.afcinema.com/Cinematographer-Charlotte-Bruus-Christensen-discusses-her-work-on-Thomas-Vinterberg-s-The-Hunt.html?lang=fr[/url]       What camera equipment did you choose ? CBC : As concerns the camera, given the limited number of spotlights and Thomas’ wish to film in an almost documentary-like style, we first thought we would film on 35mm. But we didn’t have the budget for it. The [url="http://www.afcinema.com/Alexa.html"]Alexa[/url] took the place of a 35mm camera, and I had to adapt my style to that device. As far as lenses are concerned, I wanted to film with Cooke S2 lenses, but the sensitivity of the sensor to the colour [url="http://www.afcinema.com/Camera-Red.html"]red[/url] and the lack of uniformity within that series made me change my mind. After a couple of tests, I chose to film with the new Cooke Panchros, a series of lenses that reproduces a soft “vintage” feeling and that only open at 2.8. As I was saying, Thomas Vinterberg is very close to his characters, and the number one priority for me in terms of lighting was enhancing faces and eyes. (Interview conducted by François Reumont for the AFC and translated from French by Alex Raiffe)   NotesCaméra : Arri Alexa Lenses : Cooke Panchro series

I did this for all of the titles in SICK BOY.  Because I was doing experiments with levels of grain and making the 7D footage feel analog without going full-on Planet Terror I wanted the titles to have a legitimate optical house feel, not like something straight out of a DVE which has all the fit and finish of porno production.  What I used as my model was the opening title sequence for The Exorcist.   I do all my finishing in AfterEffects.  You can likely do this in Premiere too but with such a transparent method of going between the two I opt for the better control, better rendering and full suite of motion-graphics, color correction and plug-ins for VFX in AE.   I added some organic looking, subtle motion to my titles by parenting the text clips to two NULL layers.  One of the null layers used a noise expression in just the Y-translate domain.  Very small +/- up-down moves of no more than a pixel or two.  Most values will be less than a pixel but you can make these values bigger or smaller depending on the effect you're going for.  Likewise, there are several different types of noise built into AE for expressions.  I suggest you try a few because they'll give you slighting different results and by applying these animation effects to NULL layers and then parenting your image layers you can try out several types quickly to see what you like and what's appropriate (or compound multiple noise passes!).   The second NULL layer I applied smooth wiggle noise to just the X-translate domain.  Smooth, slightly bigger moves than my jitter, but only side-to-side.  This gives the feel of "gate weave".  For an even more organic look you can parent this NULL to a third NULL with smooth, side-to-side wiggle motion at a frequency of at least 1/2 or 2X that of the first.  The sum of these motions adds a little "chaos" to the mix and even more organic feel *.     * - I used this technique, mixing three SIN waves of different frequencies and amplitudes, to create the smoothly organic, but random looking, traffic paths and bobble while hovering for the flying traffic in the Fifth Element.

A lot of people forget going to After Effects, preferring to grade in Premiere etc, but there are many benefits, such as working in a 32-bit RGB space removing the need for transcoding, and the ability to apply various advanced post techniques. It's not friendly, but it's powerful.