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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

48fps The Hobbit - First Review

Stuart English said:
No, you wouldn't have to. Because EPIC uses an electronic shutter, you can shoot at 48fps but still maintain very close to a "standard" 1/48th sec exposure time. So, if you then chose to drop every other frame at film out you will have a 24 fps 1/48th sec motion blur product....
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oh...i thought that shooting 48 and keeping the option to go 24 , means use a 1/96 sec shutter .....

so you are saying that 1/48 is the right one to use if than we drop every other frame ?

thanks
g
 
Andrew Rieger said:
Today, apple released the trailer for John Hillcoat's new film Lawless. The film was shot digitally on the Alexa. Compare it to the trailer for Public Enemies which was also shot digitally but uses that awful 360 degree shutter effect.

One looks normal, the other looks odd even though the use they same technology.
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What does this have to do with The Hobbit? It wasn't shot with a 360° shutter. It's an apples and oranges comparison.

Nick Morrison said:
What's the 360 degree shutter supposed to do, exactly? I'm going to plead ignorance here and ask for a bit of help.
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I'm not very experienced with a rotary shutter, but I will try and help.

The 360° shutter is relative, so it is tricky to explain what it does in general terms. A 360° shutter is no shutter at all. It never closes, making your shutter speed equal to the frame rate; at 24 FPS it is 1/24th of a second and at 48 FPS it is 1/48th of a second. So if you were comparing a "normal" exposure of 180° @24fps (1/48th) to 48fps @ 1/48th you would be looking at a 360° shutter, or an exposure twice as long as you expect, so you would see more blur than you expect.

Is that right or exactly wrong?
 
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Stuart English said:
This technique is NOT the same as LCD TV motion interpolation though. I totally agree that is a terrible idea.
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Not the same technique, but it produces the same kind of smooth soap opera motion. And if you're used to looking at films with motion interpolation, you won't mind 48fps.
 
For me 48fps is terrible. For this simple reason: it kills the suspension of dis-belief. Cinema is an abstraction of reality, it has to be if we are to believe in aliens, dinosaurs and gremlins...
If the image is too life-like it destroys the illusion, high resolution can hamper that goal too, but 48fps is the surest way to break the spell - and as others have mentioned, cheapen a movie. 24fps is a step closer to our imagination...

I'm very glad Ridley Scott chose to shoot Prometheus in 24p. That is one great looking trailer.
 
Scott Crawley said:
What does this have to do with The Hobbit? It wasn't shot with a 360° shutter. It's an apples and oranges comparison.
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I was not comparing Lawless to the Hobbit, I was comparing it to Public Enemies. Sorry if I did not make that clear. Both Lawless and Public Enemies use digital cameras to shoot films about gangsters during the depression. One opts for a more traditional 180 degree shutter (Lawless) while the other tries to shake things up with a 360 degree shutter (Public Enemies) which produces very ugly digital looking images. Lawless looks normal and quite pretty in my opinion while Public Enemies looked like crap, so much so that it ruined my enjoyment of the film. The example was designed to illustrate the fact that making a big change to the way a film appears to the audience can have a negative effect on the film if the audience hates the look. The 360 degree shutter did nothing for Public Enemies except make it look ugly and it sounds like 48fps has done the same thing with The Hobbit. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
 
Jaakko Rinne said:
+1 to what Ketch said. People are used to 24, it'll take them a while to get used to 48. People who are used to watching films on their home plasmas and LCDs with motion interpolation won't notice anything.
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I can't tell you how many times I have been over to people houses to watch something on their new plasma and they complain about how odd movies look. I tell them to turn of the interpolation feature and bam, suddenly they realize how bad it looked before.

I am used to 24fps and I am not ashamed of it. Jackson, Cameron and Lucas can tell me till their blue in the face that higher frames looks better but I will still think it looks like crap. What we need are higher resolution projectors, not higher frame rates which represent motion in an odd and distracting manner. Distracting is never a good thing. You should never be thinking about how odd the footage looks.
 
Other advancements in motion picture history that met with mixed reaction:

Sound.
Color.
Digital.
3D.

Why should a frame rate change be any different?
 
Hmmmm, I'm kinda of the opinion if it isn't broken, don't fix it.

2D 24fps definitely isn't broken.

However 3D at 24fps is broken - it looks bloody awful. Upping it to 48fps will solve it's problems. But will it actually make 3D good? I'll wait until I see it - but I doubt it.
 
Andrew - I would respectfully submit that unless you have done high-framerate tests yourself and evaluated it on its own merits... then you are basically saying, "well, a buddy of mine saw that movie and he said it sucked, and I believe him." It's just not a really strong argument. ; )

At CPG, we have been doing a ton of high-framerate testing and shooting and reviewing using a lot of different cameras with different lensing and lighting options. And then reviewing it with a lot of different projection and viewing methodologies. In addition, we've been doing a lot of cutting together of high framerates with "standard" framerates to see how things look. Projecting at 24fps and skip printing the 48... projecting at 48fps and double-printing the 24, etc, etc. We're doing what creative and technical professionals do with new technology: test, observe, adjust, test, observe, report, adjust, etc., etc., etc.

What we've found so far - and there is a still an awful lot of testing and observing to do - is that it is a new tool. And like any new tool, it has its place. And it is incredibly subjective. I've had one very well-respected Director look at high framerate material and viscerally recoil while another well-respected Director look at the exact same material in the same room with the same projection and think it is beautiful and intimate in a way he has never seen before.

My *personal* opinion is that when done correctly, it is gorgeous. It brings an intimacy and beauty to shots that is difficult to quantify. Can it look like crap? Of course... so can anything. But it's a new tool and needs to be judged on its own merits as opposed to strictly a comparison to others. Because it is *not* a "film" look and it is *not* a "video" look. It is its own thing.

Best,

Lucas
 
I have to say I am surprised at the vitriol on the net about all of this.

This is about creative options for filmmakers.

The nice thing about cinemas getting upgraded to project 48fps is... it's a fun new look and definitely helps 3D. And you can still play 24fps fine too.

You can easily mix stuff too - have the film at 24fps... but maybe you have ONE MOMENT of the film that you think looks better or achieves a certain creative effect at 48fps: you now have the creative option to show that the way you want to.

The internet seems to be filled with a bunch of whiny jerks who think that Mr Jackson or Mr Cameron should make movies the way they want them to.

What a nerve! Jackson and Cameron can do whatever the hell they want. And guys who like 24fps 2D film can keep doing it. Nobody's stopping them. In fact, now 24fps becomes an artistic choice.

The whiny jerks are free to get off their asses and make movies the way they want. But they'll never do that, of course. Too much work.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
The first time I noticed the "360 degree shutter on HD video" effect was on Emmerich's "2012", near the end of the movie in a scene where a bunch of characters are about to drown. I didn't know back then what caused the effect but it looked absolutely terrible. A bit later I read an interview of the DoP who talked about how they were running out of light in that scene, and how happy he was to discover that he could get more light on the sensor by using a 360 degree shutter. I think he also mentioned he hadn't shot a lot of HD video before "2012".

As far as flat screen interpolation goes, it's all about the algorithms. I've yet to see a flat screen capable of retaining the film look while interpolating a shot-at-24fps Blu-ray. The best result I've seen so far was produced by Mitsubishi's HC7800 DLP projector which has separate interpolation modes for video and film sources. One of the film modes struck a nice balance.

Nevertheless, I don't think we should compare what Jackson is doing with the Hobbit to what flat screens are doing when interpolating film sources. Firstly, flat screens are interpolating from 24fps to much higher frame rates, up to 120 fps. What's more, interpolation algorithms are basically guessing what happens between the original frames. It's not the same thing as a higher acquisition frame rate.

I shot some 48fps tests last summer. When played back on a 120fps PC monitor at 48fps, the result did not look like a soap opera. It felt more like heightened realism.

As far as Devin Faraci goes, that guy's been on a crusade against advances in cinema technology for a while now. He probably isn't happy until we're back to watching mute black and white movies at 18fps.
 
Demetri Zuev said:
Well, they can always fix it in post if they decide so (or the studio makes them to).

Honestly, I'm not surprised to see this kind of reaction, even watching something in 30p makes me fell that it looks like video, not to mention 48fps.

It'll take time for people to adjust to this new format and ultimately the audience will decide if it's good enough or not, in other words if they want to see it on screen.
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Totally agree...

it's easy to make a simple test. Shoot at 48fps 360 shutter with your epic/scarlet export a quicktime in 48fps and watch it... does not look good at all.

There is a reason why commercials for tv are shot in 24fps in the states even though they are broadcasted in 29.969 (or what ever the decimals are) simply because 30fps looks terrible.

High playback frame rates with CG looks super ugly. So I wonder how Peter will pull it off, it will definitely not look like a beautiful canvas moving... more like one of those cheap action tv series shot on video that New Zeeland was so famus for before the lord of the rings era :)
 
Thor Melsted said:
With all due respect Mr Rieger, but I honestly can't take you seriously after that sentence.
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Well, all you have to do is compare the films he used to make to Avatar. They almost seem like they were directed by a different person. Cameron is not a filmmaker anymore, he is a deep sea explorer and a tech salesman. Hell, someone needs to rent all those Pace Cameron rigs he built so he hast to hit the road to push this 3D crap on theater owners to get them to drop boatloads of cash on new projectors so they can project films at higher frame rates. When recently asked if he was going to still make Battle Angel (a crazy movie about fighting robots), he said he was going to stick with Avatar because he thought it would have more of an impact on saving the planet. Yawn, he is starting to sound like a broken record and I really hope theater owner don't buckle under the pressure just so he can get what he want when it comes time to bring out Avatar 2.

This is just my opinion but my distaste for James Cameron is based on legitimate criticisms. I hope Jackson avoids becoming another tech salesman like Lucas and Cameron who probably have the two biggest egos in Hollywood. At least Jackson seems like a nice guy. The other two just come off as smug.
 
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Lucas Wilson said:
Andrew - I would respectfully submit that unless you have done high-framerate tests yourself and evaluated it on its own merits... then you are basically saying, "well, a buddy of mine saw that movie and he said it sucked, and I believe him." It's just not a really strong argument. ; )

At CPG, we have been doing a ton of high-framerate testing and shooting and reviewing using a lot of different cameras with different lensing and lighting options. And then reviewing it with a lot of different projection and viewing methodologies. In addition, we've been doing a lot of cutting together of high framerates with "standard" framerates to see how things look. Projecting at 24fps and skip printing the 48... projecting at 48fps and double-printing the 24, etc, etc. We're doing what creative and technical professionals do with new technology: test, observe, adjust, test, observe, report, adjust, etc., etc., etc.

What we've found so far - and there is a still an awful lot of testing and observing to do - is that it is a new tool. And like any new tool, it has its place. And it is incredibly subjective. I've had one very well-respected Director look at high framerate material and viscerally recoil while another well-respected Director look at the exact same material in the same room with the same projection and think it is beautiful and intimate in a way he has never seen before.

My *personal* opinion is that when done correctly, it is gorgeous. It brings an intimacy and beauty to shots that is difficult to quantify. Can it look like crap? Of course... so can anything. But it's a new tool and needs to be judged on its own merits as opposed to strictly a comparison to others. Because it is *not* a "film" look and it is *not* a "video" look. It is its own thing.

Best,

Lucas
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-1

I think 48p is a video look. slice it how ever you want.

But on the other hand I can not say that I like stereo as it is today either. The day when I get a laser beam or such in each eye and have full coverage can pull focus etc then maybe but for now it hurt my head and my eyes. I believe the stereo 3D stuff now is just a hype to sell some more lcd's, plasmas projector, etc. we bought them all but I do hardly ever use the glasses except for when we done stereo post work.

24P is a standard that has been set after about 100 years of testing. Film projectors and cameras can go in just about any speed, or at least between 0-100 with quite ease. For some reason 24p whas the choosen, and the reason is simple:

24p 180deg shutter gives:

The eyes time to see each frame.
leaves a pleasant amount of black in-between each frame. This is super important (TV sets does not do this, film projectors does). So half the time you spent at the movies they showed you nothing and I think you liked it, even without knowing.
The 24p is as low as you can go without having to much problems with strobe artifacts when panning etc.
And 180shutter at 24p gives a very pleasant motion blur for film, Half a frame of film smear looks close to 0.3 in animated linear motion blur.. = 0.5 in log blur.

So I think this new frame rate thing will settle. Peter is using the hype and he probably knows it will show in 24p in most theaters any way.
 
Lucas Wilson said:
Andrew - I would respectfully submit that unless you have done high-framerate tests yourself and evaluated it on its own merits... then you are basically saying, "well, a buddy of mine saw that movie and he said it sucked, and I believe him." It's just not a really strong argument. ; )

At CPG, we have been doing a ton of high-framerate testing and shooting and reviewing using a lot of different cameras with different lensing and lighting options. And then reviewing it with a lot of different projection and viewing methodologies. In addition, we've been doing a lot of cutting together of high framerates with "standard" framerates to see how things look. Projecting at 24fps and skip printing the 48... projecting at 48fps and double-printing the 24, etc, etc. We're doing what creative and technical professionals do with new technology: test, observe, adjust, test, observe, report, adjust, etc., etc., etc.

What we've found so far - and there is a still an awful lot of testing and observing to do - is that it is a new tool. And like any new tool, it has its place. And it is incredibly subjective. I've had one very well-respected Director look at high framerate material and viscerally recoil while another well-respected Director look at the exact same material in the same room with the same projection and think it is beautiful and intimate in a way he has never seen before.

My *personal* opinion is that when done correctly, it is gorgeous. It brings an intimacy and beauty to shots that is difficult to quantify. Can it look like crap? Of course... so can anything. But it's a new tool and needs to be judged on its own merits as opposed to strictly a comparison to others. Because it is *not* a "film" look and it is *not* a "video" look. It is its own thing.

Best,

Lucas
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I agree 100%. Test, fine tune, test, fine tune ect. What went wrong with The Hobbit? Did they not test enough? It sounds to me like they did extensive testing, even adopting a strange shutter speed to make the 24p extract easier yet most people who saw the footage thought it looked really bad. Too much resolution? Would it have been better if they had shot it in 2K 48fps so it was not as crazy sharp as it is. I'm not criticizing but I just wonder how they can put so much time an effort into a film without bothering to see if people would actually be pleased with the footage. We are not talking about a few critics who were unsatisfied. The vast majority of those who saw it (my friend included) though it was really quite harsh and unflattering on the actors, in addition to making the motion look odd. I'm sure sure Jackson consulted Cameron on this so what happened?
 
In reality we have been able to watch high frame rates for quite some time now. NTSC is 30 frames divided in 2 fields, so it's essentially 60fps in a really low resolution.
so, whenever you watch TV that's captured in 60i, that's what you see. And honestly, when I see 24fps, I really enjoy that magical motion picture world. It's made for story telling.
Imagine a bunch of guys in middle earth costumes, reenacting a scene for your favorite morning news broadcast. That's what it's going to look like. Just in really high resolution...
 
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