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Pain of the New: The Hobbit at 48 fps

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Re: Pain of the New: The Hobbit at 48 fps

#191

Post by erlkonig »

I found the 48 fps aspect of the Hobbit to be the most significant improvement to realism since 3D. The lighting looked a bit stylized in some scenes, but since I interpreted it that way (and hadn't seen the slow, jumpy version first), it didn't trouble me, and otherwise the whole film was a wonderful smooth glide that provided the best suspension of disbelief I've had in a long time.

I'm really puzzled by people clinging by habit to slow FPS as making a film more epic - even more so by the tendency in anime to use an even slower frame rate. Both are now just obsolete cultural idioms, much like an audiophile who only believes in his high fidelity experience if he can hear the snap and pop of dust in the record groove. Baffling.

Re: Pain of the New: The Hobbit at 48 fps

#192

Post by kisstheblade »

Could somebody explain how framerate can affect resolution and lighting? Ie. if the scene is static (no movement), how can there be a difference like is described here? If there is movement then the blur can ofcourse affect the effective "clarity" / resolution but why the lighting?

Re: Pain of the New: The Hobbit at 48 fps

#193

Post by baby »

I don't get all the fuss around it but I'm reassured to read such a blog. I was really scared at first that directors would drop the >24fps because of the reception of The Hobbit.

In my mind The Hobbit was a persistant slap in the face, like everyone else I had to adapt, I felt like it was going fastforward the first minutes of the movie. But once I got used to it, it was like I was in the movie. I usually have a problem with action movies because of the lag that I can see. I've noticed I can see it really well due to me twitching my fps when playing FPS competitively. The Hobbit was different, I don't think I can go back to 24fps movies. Maybe for normal movies but not for CGI or action movies that requires a high FPS so it displays in a smooth way.

And now the bad thing I'm thinking about is that I'll have to buy a new TV so I can watch that kind of movie again. I thought that full HD and 3D were just some small evolutions, but HFR is a revolution.

Re: Pain of the New: The Hobbit at 48 fps

#194

Post by baby »

pud wrote: post #16

Humans like flaws. When CDs first came out, people argued that they sounded "cold," even though they're near-perfect recreations of the music that was recorded. People like the hiss and compression of records and tapes. This is also the same reason why people like Instagram filters. Normal iPhone pics are too good. Let's fuzz em up a bit. Also, look at v1 of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other popular sites - they…

I completely disagree with you.

> Humans like flaws

Humans like perfection, humans like beauty.

> People like the hiss and compression of records and tapes.

People were used to the hiss and compression of records and tapes

> This is also the same reason why people like Instagram filters

Instagram doesn't downgrade the quality of a picture, it adds effect, plays with the colors, like professionals do with photoshop (but not at the same level). I don't think you understand what Instagram does to a picture.

> Also, look at v1 of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other popular sites - they were far from pretty.

Look at the videos on youtube, before they brought HD. Could you go back to that?

Re: Pain of the New: The Hobbit at 48 fps

#195

Post by damoncali »

I'm a little confused. I saw the movie last night in 2D. From the article, it seems that that was at 24fps.

But one of my biggest gripes was that the makeup seemed noticeable and unbelievable, and axes and hammers looked painted. Doesn't this have more to do with the quality of the images than the frame rate? Is it even worse at 48fps?

Re: Pain of the New: The Hobbit at 48 fps

#196

Post by lolcraft »

anigbrowl wrote: post #120
jerf wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quasi-pop psychology: The human brain is a remarkable machine. It is fantastic at extracting data from any stream of data it can find. It is aided in this by the neural ability to accommodate and model constant elements of the stream. In the simplest form, you can see this effect with the simple persistence of vision phenomena [1], but the effect can also be applied to fantastically complicated phenomena by our overp…

Hmm, no. You don't necessarily want endlessly increasing information content because that's more work for your brain to filter. As I pointed out below, 48 FPS has been well within our technical capabilities for a long time - far longer than the current polarized-3d technology, for example. Yet there isn't a body of 48 FPS films out there, in contrast to 3d, super-widescreen, movies with vibrating chairs, 'smell-o-vis…

Nah. That's a bad analogy. The film equivalent to BPM is composition (scene switch, montage) speed. Much better to think of 48 fps as going from ~ 40 kHz to 48 kHz sampling rate: instead of fitting more things into a movie, what you film has higher temporal resolution. Net gain, easy to downgrade with a low pass filter... People can even notice the change, which is more than you can say for 48 kHz MP3 to 96 kHz FLAC, for instance.

Re: Pain of the New: The Hobbit at 48 fps

#197

Post by B-Con »

baddox wrote: post #95
pud wrote: post #16

Humans like flaws. When CDs first came out, people argued that they sounded "cold," even though they're near-perfect recreations of the music that was recorded. People like the hiss and compression of records and tapes. This is also the same reason why people like Instagram filters. Normal iPhone pics are too good. Let's fuzz em up a bit. Also, look at v1 of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other popular sites - they…

> Humans like flaws. I don't think that's it. I think humans dislike change , and a lot of change (especially in technology) involves the removal of flaws. Almost every argument I've read that's critical of The Hobbit in HFR can be put in historical perspective by replacing "HFR" with "dialogue audio," "wide aspect ratio," or "color." You can find this sentiment anywhere you look.

I think this hits the issue. Humans grow "fond" of flaws/quirks they have to interact with for long periods of time.

Re: Pain of the New: The Hobbit at 48 fps

#198

Post by cpeterso »

jeremyswank wrote: post #158
mcphilip wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Starting with The New World, Malick has instituted “rules” in his filmmaking, including using only natural light, no cranes, no big rigs, and handheld cameras only [1]. You might want to checkout New World if natural lighting interests you. Malick is known as the "director's director" and has done a lot of very interesting work. He loves trying to capture "unrepeatable moments", like how he used a clip of an in-cost…

"Don’t allow yourself to fall in love with the camera. Keep it in its place and keep your eye open for those little moments you didn’t plan for. It’s my definition of what it is to be a movie director: A man who presides over accidents." -Orson Welles

Similarly, Werner Herzog said:

"Coincidences always happen if you keep your mind open, while storyboards remain the instruments of cowards who do not trust in their own imagination and who are slaves of a matrix... If you get used to planning your shots based solely on aesthetics, you are never that far from kitsch."

Re: Pain of the New: The Hobbit at 48 fps

#200

Post by 13hours »

anigbrowl wrote: post #66
ginko wrote: post #36

>Knoll asked me, "You probably only noticed the odd lighting in the interior scenes, not in the outdoors scenes, right?" And once he asked it this way, I realize he was right. The scenes in the HFR version that seemed odd were all inside. The landscape scenes were stunning in a good way. "That's because they didn't have to light the outside; the real lighting is all that was needed, so nothing seemed amiss." I would…

Kubrick would have loved the high sensitivity of current senros, which makes it practical to shoot without artificial light* though it has to be said that film stocks have improved a great deal since Barry Lyndon was shot. But I'm much less certain about whether he would have embraced 48 FPS (not Hz, because we're not modulating a coherent beam). He had such technology fully available to him as far back as the 60s an…

The unit Hz is used for frequency, per definition "per second". If "frames" are implied, surely 48Hz is acceptable?
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