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The Hobbit: Why 48FPS Makes Film Less Magical

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Re: The Hobbit: Why 48FPS Makes Film Less Magical

#91

Post by jws »

rquirk wrote: post #37

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…

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.

Re: The Hobbit: Why 48FPS Makes Film Less Magical

#92

Post by JshWright »

rquirk wrote: post #37

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…

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)

Re: The Hobbit: Why 48FPS Makes Film Less Magical

#93

Post by berkut »

drucken wrote: post #76
[deleted] wrote: post #73

[deleted]

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 imme…

Where does it say he watched 3DHFR twice?

Also, given that he says he couldn't hear dialogue very well in the 3DHFR version makes me think he either sat in a bad seat or the cinema had issues.

Did he sit in the same seat for all showings?

His stuff about motion blur is complete rubbish as well. They (Weta) had to add motion blur in post because the shutter speed meant they didn't get much of that on recorded footage. (They also had issues matching the motion blur on HDR shoots they did where they did multiple simultaneous exposure bracketing). Any CG out of PRMan will also have been rendered out to match that exact same shutter speed (48 fps at 270 deg). So I really can't understand how he can think that watching the 2D version - which he himself admits has half as much motion blur as it should do - gave a better impression of motion. It might look less "cinema-ry", but that doesn't seem to be his point.

Re: The Hobbit: Why 48FPS Makes Film Less Magical

#94

Post by bennyg »

MrScruff wrote: post #84
4ad wrote: post #58

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 r…

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.

Exactly. I hate when it tries to be too real, so I take the exact opposite position as the parent. It's a movie, not reality.

And they look like soap operas.

Re: The Hobbit: Why 48FPS Makes Film Less Magical

#95

Post by _rs »

marknutter wrote: post #88

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 b…

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.

Re: The Hobbit: Why 48FPS Makes Film Less Magical

#96

Post by Flenser »

jws wrote: post #91
rquirk wrote: post #37

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…

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. • Decen…

It looks like the anchors (is there a better word for these?) for your your footnotes are missing.

Re: The Hobbit: Why 48FPS Makes Film Less Magical

#97

Post by bajsejohannes »

marknutter wrote: post #88

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 b…

I remember seeing this a lot after Saving Private Ryan: For action scenes film makers would actually lower the frame rate to convey a sense of chaos.

Re: The Hobbit: Why 48FPS Makes Film Less Magical

#98

Post by [deleted] »

MrScruff wrote: post #84
4ad wrote: post #58

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 r…

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.

[deleted]

Re: The Hobbit: Why 48FPS Makes Film Less Magical

#99

Post by pretoriusB »

JshWright wrote: post #87
Jabbles wrote: post #55

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 on…

The point of The Hobbit wasn't defeating Smaug, it was the adventure along the way...

What adventure? Leaving one place and going to another, with so ho-hum episodes in between?
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