Bruno

  I agree that it's all upside down with their system, unfortunately 2012 was the best year ever for Hollywood, so regardless of how wrong it is, it's definitely working for them.   http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118063558

  The "audience" argument is very relative, as it can be great but it can also completely ruin the experience.   As for bashing popcorn movies, speaking for myself, even though I'd rather have 10 Moonrise Kingdoms a year than a Battleship as I said before, my problem is not with the popcorn movies, my problem is with BAD popcorn movies.   There's something people seem to have forgotten when defending popcorn movies, which is the fact that POCORN MOVIES DON'T HAVE TO BE BAD MOVIES.   In order to enjoy a blockbuster movie these days you need to check your brain at the door and not ever question or even think about anything you've seen. You're just expected to drool and go "wow" multiple times and then forget all about it. And repeat. Every single big movie I've watched lately has had massive plot holes, ridiculous characters and silly repetitive stories, and most people act like that's ok "it's just a popcorn movie". Well it's not ok!   The first Indiana Jones movies were great, so was Big Trouble in Little China, or Back To The Future... These were all popcorn movies, good ones too. Back To The Future is extremely clever, I don't see anything like it in present day blockbusters, instead I see the same ideas from the highest grossing films being recycled over and over again, that's what producers want in their movies, the same exact sequences they saw in movies that made a lot of money.   Pirates of the Caribbean was a great popcorn movie, a huge surprise to me, but then the sequels were just awful. Why? Because they didn't have anything else to say. They weren't driven by a new idea to advance the saga, they were driven by the money made by the first movie.   I just watched the trailer for GI Joe 2, not that I was expecting it to be remotely good, but seriously, why bother? Every single shot in there has been done several times before just in the last few years. You could cut that exact same trailer using only stuff from other recent blockbusters.   The case with The Hobbit and so many others nowadays is that it's just a technical showcase, 48fps and 4k were driving the making of the film, the story wasn't. Back in the day, they were inventing new techniques and tools in order to tell the story of Star Wars, these days it's the other way round, story is not driving these movies at all, it probably even gets in their way.

  Totally agree, he might have felt some studio pressure in the first LOTS movies, but not after that, and then he just lost it. Like Zemeckis and Cameron before him, he got obsessed with the technical side of things, which didn't necessarily have to be a bad thing if done right. David Fincher can be extremely technical, but he's always done it in favor of the story he's telling, that's not the case with Zemeckis' mocap adventures or Peter Jackson's 48fps madness.

Especially when it's not any cheaper than just animating it, there's just no good reason to do it. Mocap is fine for VFX work, CG crowds, digital doubles etc, but that's about it.

  It's terrible, Tintin could have been so good if it was keyframe animated instead of mocap, it's just plain odd and weird looking. But Peter Jackson will be directing Tintin 2, so maybe you can have crappy mocap, 48/60fps, 3D and 4k in the same film next? Ouch.

"Regular cinema goers want Drive, Moonrise Kingdom, Skyfall, Cloud Atlas, The Master. Let the consumerist masses stay at home and watch their crap."   I wish that was true, but the truth is that the consumerist masses are the ones going to the cinema the most, and watching the crappiest movies around. And that's why they keep making them, that's what drives the industry. Beasts of the Southern Wild made 11 million while Battleship made 300 (and it was considered a massive failure). It's a shame Drive or Moonrise Kingdom can only cost 15 million when Battleship gets a budget of 200 million, on the other hand, they're perfect just like that, I just wish studios would fund 10 Moonrise Kingdoms instead of one Battleship.   Proven directors still need to struggle to get budgets of 30 million dollars while they give huge 200 million dollar franchises to upcoming directors, it's not about filmmaking, it's just plain old moneymaking.

  Trust me, real pros ARE discussing it as much as everyone else if not more...

  Yes, that's the day films will be stripped off any soul they might still have left. I'm sure that's gonna happen, but only as an exercise, nothing more than that. For every good CG performance there's at least a bunch of actors and hundreds of animators behind it, mocap cleanup is almost as hard and time consuming as doing keyframe animation. Trust me, there's no "automatic" anything in mocap, no matter what you see in the behind the scenes documentaries. :) Nothing will ever be as simple or easy as shooting a good actor with a camera.

  Ok, so the 24fps would be equivalent to something like a 135 degrees shutter, not 180 but not as fast as 90 either, might not look too weird.

  But you're talking about projection, right? The film was probably shot 180 at 48fps, which translates to 90 degrees shutter at 24fps, half the motion blur you normally see in a movie.

  Well, Benjamin Button would never have looked like that in the early 2000s... look at the 3 CG Hulks so far, there's quite an evolution there. Creatures and humans are hard though, and I agree they're still not 100% convincing, but they've come a LONG way, and when it comes to CG sets and environments, I doubt you even know you're watching CG in so many situations.

  I think there's 2 different things here... one thing is the CG or sets not holding up to 4k resolution, and another thing is the 48fps video-ish motion look. I wouldn't be quick to blame it on the sets or set builders. I've been on sets where I knew the stone walls were actually plastic, but even from only a couple inches distance they still looked like stone to me, until I touched them. They're pretty good at it, that's for sure. And as for 4k, we've seen it before on IMAX movies and it never looked weird. I'm pretty sure it's all down to the frame rate.

  But won't the 24fps version come with only half the motion blur it should have? It will still look quite sharp and slightly weird, in a different way.

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.

It became a trilogy a few weeks ago :)

Honestly this one smelled from a long distance. 48fps was enough to keep me away, but having a Hobbit book made into three 3 hour movies, that's just too much for me, I can tell you straight away they'll be boring, especially the middle one, but still I hope I'm wrong, or it's such a waste. I'm not against new technologies for the sake of it, but seriously, did it have to be tested in a film this big? Probably yes, as a smaller production would never have the power to convince theaters to display it in 48fpa and 4k. But still I can't help but see it as such a waste. These films are VFX heavy, and VFX houses already struggle with the render times required to complete projects of this scale at 2k resolution. These films will require 8x the rendering power, as each frame is 4x bigger and there's twice as many. That's huge! And then you can double that for stereo, we're talking about 16x the rendering times of the VFX work on LOTR, and all the work needs to be more detailed so it holds up well in such detail, that's no easy feat, and apparently such a waste now that the reviews confirm what seemed so obvious all along. Just turn smoothmotion on on your TVs, it renders any film horrible, and that's what I expect from this. I don't disregard the technology though, as it could be great for video games, etc, but there's one reason film stayed at 24fps. Many people associate it with digital and the future, but the fact is that we could have had 48fps on film many years ago if it looked any better, I guess in the end blockbusters will always be looking for some kind of gimmick to get people out of their sofas.

I don't think a step up ring should cause vignetting at all, I mean, if your lens thread is smaller than the filter. The other way round could cause vignetting though. What can cause vignetting however is the variable ND filter, depending on how good it is and how high you use it. In that first review they suggest using bigger sizes than you might need to avoid extreme vignetting, this could be something to have in mind.   Marumi does have a vari ND filter, and it's marked Vari ND2 - ND400, or something like that, if it doesn't say so, it's probably not it.   IMO I'd save on the step up ring, not on the ND filter.

[url="http://youtu.be/GMJomyOBrvY"]http://youtu.be/GMJomyOBrvY[/url]

This review came out this week, might be helpful. [url="http://www.dslrnewsshooter.com/2012/12/06/genustech-eclipse-fader-nd-filter-sets-new-standard-all-for-165-us/"]http://www.dslrnewsshooter.com/2012/12/06/genustech-eclipse-fader-nd-filter-sets-new-standard-all-for-165-us/[/url]

  Digital Bolex would fall on the "rogue company" bracket, but it does take time and it's not easy to just come out of nowhere and still look like a credible option, especially at a low price. In this regard, BMD and GoPro would have clear advantages, as their companies are already well setup and running, and they have most of the technology and structure in place.   What BMD did with the BMCC camera was extremely clever and seems almost obvious when you think about it, they had most of the image acquisition technique in place, both hardware and software, that's a huge advantage, they basically just had to attach a sensor to it (I know it's not that simple, but they were in a better place than any rogue company to do it, even if also using off the shelf technology). The problems they are running into now are unfortunate, and replacing the sensors is probably not even an option at this point, but once they overcome this glitch, they'll be in a very unique situation compared to companies that developed their own sensors and spent millions doing so.   If Canon had done the same exact camera but developed their own sensor, it probably would have to cost twice the price, but should we care about that? Not really. If off the shelf sensors can compete and give you a cheaper way of building cameras than maybe the big companies should rethink their strategies.   Interesting times indeed.

What a waste! A global shutter and not even one fast moving train shot??? :)

Not that it matters anymore, everyone else got it but you (what a surprise), but I did comment on both parts of the post, as they both served the same point, just go back and read it carefully this time, and don't bother replying. Please?

You can see it here in the title card right at the beginning (very subtle, you might have to make it HD and full screen to notice it), that's using Final Cut's "Earthquake" filter.   [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpcNvHmjx4Y"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpcNvHmjx4Y[/url]

Hi, that effect on film might be caused both by the camera's film gate and by the projector at theaters. In more recent films it's less noticeable, film equipment has come a long way, and they probably have tools to stabilize all that during modern telecine processes, plus projection is digital in most places now.   Many of the "film look" plugins out there will give you some sort of film gate jitter options. It's close to a "shake" or "handheld" post effect, but for this purpose you would want to use it with high frequency and really low amplitude, which means having it shaking really fast, but for no more than a couple pixels wide. In Final Cut you can achieve this with its "Earthquake" effect, I'm pretty sure Premiere will have something similar, and if it has a motion blur option, it should make it feel even more like real film gate jitter, it will increase your render times though.

  First of all, you spent an entire thread claiming that no one notices rolling shutter at all, and that it's not an important factor on a camera... now it suddenly makes the images total garbage. Get it together man. And for your information, IS on a lens stabilizes the images before it gets to the sensor, so it helps reducing rolling shutter artifacts, it's not the same as shooting and stabilizing in post.   You might not be aware of this, but using a shoulder rig is also considered handheld style, don't take my word for it though, ask anyone who knows what they're talking about, since for you I don't.   The thing is, you made up your mind on how you think the industry and cameras work with your own delusional ideas, and you won't listen to anyone else, you just accuse everyone who disagrees with you of not knowing anything about cameras, having no idea what they do for a living. Good luck with that.