48p The Hobbit - British and American critics verdict

[AaronChicago]

One word: Pixar

[HurtinMinorKey]

I feel like CG (in film) hasn't really improved since the early 2000s. It still takes a ton of work, much of which I think can't be automated, to match something into it's surrounding.  Living creatures still don't look quite right. 

 

You have to figure that 100 years from now we'll all be watching some crazy high rez, high fps format, that makes us feel like we are actually there.  Something akin to VR but with a narrative.

[PAVP]

I always find it shocking when I see a really new high end TV.  I remember years ago going to a local sears and seeing for the 1st time what a Blu Ray movie looked like on one of these new TV's and I was shocked at how real everything looked.  I stared at it for a very long time and eventually I got used to it, but it still never had the effect on me that a 24p film does.  There's just something about that look I prefer.  It's like the old Analog vs. Digital arguments on the Audio side.  There's a melding together of the elements that makes it more pleasing to our senses.  We don't like it when something just stands out in an unnatural way to cause us to be distracted from the experience. 

 

Now I do think that maybe 48fps could work more with Action movies like Batman, Ironman or Terminator styled movies.  Cold and technical Sci Fi type stuff would seem like a better match.  My guess is that if more and more movies were made this way the public would adjust.  Just don't know if it's a real improvement tho. I never start a project looking for that hyper real aesthetic.  I'm always trying to make it look more like old film.

[vincegortho]

My question is, how many of people who dislike 48fps are really FILMmakers?
The majority of us are using digital, trying to replicate classic cinema with tools that dont look like classic cinema.

It's like eating immitation crab and calling it the real thing.

If the hobbit were shot on film., I'd say: Yeah, sure, let it be 24fps but it's shot digital, which looks nothing like film.
Why not let digital have room to be something else?
Alexa. Red. Blackmagic or 5DmII. Don't fool yourself. Tradition is only an illusion that things are going to be the same.

[Ernesto Mantaras]

 

 

 

Of course I'm suggesting the shutter speed fit for the current projection framerate. 180° aka ¼₈ for 24p, and the look is unaffected despite the actual 48 fps.

 

Been wondering this same thing from day one. I wondered wether they had shot at a 360º shutter in 48p to get 180º shutter in 24p or if it was shot at 180º in 48p and then perhaps they would apply some vector motion blur like RE:Vision's plug-in in post? But of better quality, I hope.

Down here I can watch the HFR version, but I'm hesitant. I don't know if I should watch the 24p version first and then the 48p version. I'm actually considering that 48p could hurt the cinematic experience for me. I know I don't even like 30p, I notice the added fluidity in motion and it bothers me. So the full TV look in the theater could prevent me from diving into the movie.
On the other hand, watching the 24p version first could make me over-analyze the 48p the second time and not get the full experience I could get if I watched the first time.

But all things said, perhaps I'll take the plunge and go for the HFR version and see for myself whether it helps or detracts from the narrative. I really want to form my own opinion.

[Bruno]

I feel like CG (in film) hasn't really improved since the early 2000s.

 

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.

[Bruno]

Of course I'm suggesting the shutter speed fit for the current projection framerate. 180° aka ¼₈ for 24p, and the look is unaffected despite the actual 48 fps.

 

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.

[jgharding]

Boardwalk Empire is a great example of CG all over the place that you just don't spot. I had no clue half of the stuff in that was composited: how it's supposed to be!

[Andrew Reid]

I feel like CG (in film) hasn't really improved since the early 2000s. It still takes a ton of work, much of which I think can't be automated, to match something into it's surrounding.  Living creatures still don't look quite right. 

 

You have to figure that 100 years from now we'll all be watching some crazy high rez, high fps format, that makes us feel like we are actually there.  Something akin to VR but with a narrative.

 

CG looks much better now. But I still hate the way CG characters move. It is all too linear and placed, too staged. Those swooping keyframed movements on all character animation is so tired now.

[HurtinMinorKey]

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 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.

[Axel]

I wrote: Of course I'm suggesting the shutter speed fit for the current projection framerate. 180° aka ¼₈ for 24p, and the look is unaffected despite the actual 48 fps.

 

 

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.

 

It was shot at 270°, 48 fps.

No, I meant that you can project 48 fps with actually 48 motion phases, for hyperrealistic, constant movements ('flowmotion', haha) that don't require motion blur to look fast and if no heroes are exposed as mundane actors with everyday faces. You could shoot 24 fps for the rest - especially, I am convinced, for the [u]very[/u] fast movements like they are seen in Transformers, because in 24 fps things look way faster, [u]if[/u] they are fast:

[img]http://content.gcflearnfree.org/topics/203/motion_blur.jpg[/img]

 

The 24 fps frames would be two identical 48 fps frames in the same DCP.

[Axel]

You have to figure that 100 years from now we'll all be watching some crazy high rez, high fps format, that makes us feel like we are actually there.  Something akin to VR but with a narrative.

 

Why a narrative? Didn't you hear the term 'narrative exhaustion"? The kids of today have an attention span that's measured in seconds. They have no patience to follow a 'narration'. Why should they? Every story has been told, this is getting old. They need to be fed constantly with new things. Not only film as an analog technique is dead, storytelling ceases to attract the masses. 

[HurtinMinorKey]

^I'm not saying non-narrative forms of entertainment will exist also, but I think narratives will always exist too. People like being told what to do, and how to think.

[Bruno]

It was shot at 270°, 48 fps.

 

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.

[hmcindie]

And still there are loads and loads and loads of people... who watch films with motion interpolation turned on with their LCD's. AVSForum is full of people who say stuff like this:

 

"Outside of AVS forums, I've actually experienced the opposite. In fact the first time my wife ever saw a 120hz lcd with frame interpolation active she said "that doesn't look like TV, that looks like real life. It's weird!" Go figure."

 

and stuff like:

 

"I really was surprised at just how bad "pure" 24p looks without any kind of interpolation after a year of watching films with it on."

[jgharding]

HAHAHAHA

 

[img]http://d24w6bsrhbeh9d.cloudfront.net/photo/6050494_700b.jpg[/img]

[Xavier Plagaro Mussard]

I saw the film monday night at a press projection in Rome, 4K HFR 3D, the way the film is meant to be seen if we believe in Peter Jackson. 

 

The film is in the same mood, if only a bit less formal and with some comic bits, of the LOTR. If you liked the Trilogy, you will like The Hobbit. Really.

 

About the HFR I have mixed feelings. I spent yesterday reading most critics about the film, and I remembered why I never read movie critics. Most spoil the film and most are really useless. Being a critic doesn't mean you have to point ONLY to defects in a movie. Most of course are really anti-HFR, which made me try to "defend" it. But the truth is that, imho, there is little to defend. The 48fps resolve a lot of problems, but in 2012, it also takes you out of the movie a lot of times. The first 15 minutes are spent trying to adjust, but you never adjust 100% in the whole movie. 

 

I was expecting to be more "surrounded" by the movie at HFR, instead it didn't produce this effect to me. It didn't produce the sensation that I was in the "movie set", either. It really works well in outer scenes, works bad on indoor/close up scenes. The movie is really well done and the CGI really works. But the 48fps it's a big big change, one that I am not sure we will ever adjust to.

[Per Lichtman]

The comments about attentionspans, video games and frame rates are pretty much universally missing the point.

 

At Thanksgiving I was talking to my 18 year old brother about video games, movies, etc. He had never been educated on the frame rates involved with various formats but he made a comment about how much he disliked watching movies on his friend's TV - using several disparaging analogies, etc. When he described the phenomenon, I was able to piece together that his friend's TV had motion-smoothing and explained how that worked. It was like a lightbulb went off for him and he could understand what was going on. He was glad to know such settings could be disabled.

 

Someone that spends more of their time playing high frame-rate video games is not inherently going to like higher frame-rate movie formats. He likes them in his games in part because they reduce the input and response latency (something I've discussed in several previous posts as being unique to interactive media and a non-issue in cinema).

As far as attention-span, I can tell you that before he ever turned 7 years old, I used to watch artistic computer animation compilations with him (the kind that had essentially no dialogue to the tune of two sentences in 45 minutes) and he would watch intently, ask one contextual question during the viewing and be fully engaged the rest of the time.

Some people in each generation will have taste and some will not. The same goes for people that enjoy a given form of entertainment.

As far as computer animation in movies, let's not forget just how far the boundaries were pushed by Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within in regards to realistic human figures as compared to all the other CG movies around that time. It took a while for everyone else to catch up and if you look at what some of those animators have been doing recently compared to "The Hulk" examples, it's a pretty stark contrast. Just because CG makes extensive use of technology does not mean that the artists stop being one of the biggest differentiating factors. :)

[Axel]

The comments about attentionspans, video games and frame rates are pretty much universally missing the point.

 

You got me wrong. I don't say that the next generation won't be able to immerse themselves completely in something, be it a PC game, their facebook second life or what have you. I know for me that I can get quite obsessed with the intricacies of filmmaking (self-evident, no?), among other addictions. 

 

There is no arguing that modern cinema knows everything about sensations for the senses (the first and major mission of cinema) and what is paradoxically called 'virtual reality'. Film consumers of today expect to be overwhelmed. Not - never! - by a controversial story. On the contrary, everybody wishes not to be surprised or challenged, neither emotionally nor intellectually. The second duty of cinema had always been to allow utopias and dystopias, giving the supressed fears and wishes a voice.

 

What is getting lost is the willingness to question ones own view. I know that this is of course a cultural phenomenon, but I'm prepared to answer that cinema is still the flag of our western societies' culture. The wind of change that blew away a lot of stubbornness and prudery and contradicted the demands to obey to the rules of the sixties and seventies (when people actually read books, novels! - [u]new[/u] stories.) has calmed down. 

 

On this background, the problem of a cinematic framerate looks rather irrelevant. And it is. With a new, fresh look only independant filmmakers can provide, HFR could well be the mark of a new cinema, where the 'postponement of disbelief' is left to the genre old hands and the provocation of disbelief is introduced.

[HurtinMinorKey]

I was expecting to be more "surrounded" by the movie at HFR, instead it didn't produce this effect to me. It didn't produce the sensation that I was in the "movie set", either. It really works well in outer scenes, works bad on indoor/close up scenes. The movie is really well done and the CGI really works. But the 48fps it's a big big change, one that I am not sure we will ever adjust to.

 

This makes sense. The more realistic(high rez-high fps) the viewing format, the more we expect natural points of view. Extreme closeups probably seem really out of place.

 

I'm still going to see it in this format. I kinda expect the movie to be trash anyway, so I'm really only going to see it for the tech.