James Cameron Shooting Avatar 2 in 60fps...

[Michael Totten]

There are are very few things I will become sanctimonious about.
This is one of them.

Fuck 3D.

Amen.

 

[Evin Grant]

I saw Avatar in 3D both Imax and regular and I thought it was great!...

...Until I watched the Blu-ray at home and realized just how much detail I couldn't see, even in the Imax projection. Current 3D technology is just not capable of passing even 1080P to the eye and even when done as well as Avatar I now find it really distracting. I will no longer see any movies in 3D if I can find a 2D showing available. Three pieces need to come together before I'll be excited to go see 3D again, brightness (either glasses or projection) convergence and focus point need to be matched at subject plane at all times, and resolution (somehow they need to pass more detail to the retina, but this could be the limit of the human eye).

Somehow I just don't see 60P solving any of the above issues, but since I'll be watching the 2D 24P version I'm not concerned.

 

[Chuck Z]

Evin, did you see Avatar in IMAX 3D? That's the only way I saw it in theaters and I thought it looked good, barring a little bit of judder in some live action/blended CGI shots.

I also watched it at home on Blu-ray and, while it certainly looked crystal clear (within the constraints of the Blu-ray format; let's not bring up the 1080p vs. 4K/5K debate), it didn't have that dimensionality, for lack of a better term, that the IMAX 3D presentation had. It was captivating to watch it in theaters, not so much at home. Perhaps the latter can be attributed to the smaller viewing size of my setup as well as the fact that I already "experienced" Pandora.

 

[George Butterfield]

High frame rate and 2D looks bad.

+1, 2D looks much better with jerky 24fps motion.

 

[Thor Melsted]

There are are very few things I will become sanctimonious about.
This is one of them.

Fuck 3D.

There are very few things I will become sanctimonious about.
This is one of them.

Fuck 3D haters.

 

[Andrew Rieger]

Just go to Best Buy and watch a film on a plasma being played at 60 fps and then try to convince everyone that this is the direction we should be going in. I'm sorry but I don't care that it makes motion look cleaner and more crisp. In some cases, I think Red footage looks too sharp, just imagine it at 60 frames per second. The footage looks cheap, like a home movie or a soap opera. This is really pissing me off. I hate how Cameron wants to f everything up with his 3D high frame rate garbage. Once Cameron does something all the studio saps will force every other director who wants to make a big budget film to do the same. Unless your name is Nolan, you will have no choice but to shoot 3D at 48+ fps. Is nothing sacred? I really hope there is a backlash when Cameron does this, like when everyone complained about the lens flares in Star Trek or the 360 degree shutter look that Mann has been experimenting with.

 

[Iannis Holwech]

Just go to Best Buy and watch a film on a plasma being played at 60 fps and then try to convince everyone that this is the direction we should be going in.

Please make a distinction between 60fps frame interpolation that are creating "in between frames" on a plasma and true high framerate capture. The frame interpolation is what you see at Best Buy. A very different "beast".

 

[Ketch Rossi]

Sorry Andrew but completely and respectfully Disagree with your statements there

 

[Matthias Hutter]

Please make a distinction between 60fps frame interpolation that are creating "in between frames" on a plasma and true high framerate capture.

I totally agree. I'm looking forward to see how it looks in combination with live action and 3D. I tought that 24fps was problematic in many avatar scenes.

/Edit @Ketch: Will we be able to see any demo/trailer in the near future?

Regards Matt

 

[Andrew Rieger]

Please make a distinction between 60fps frame interpolation that are creating "in between frames" on a plasma and true high framerate capture. The frame interpolation is what you see at Best Buy. A very different "beast".

I understand that there is a difference but it looks like crap in both cases. interpolated footage looks artificially bad but 60 fps looks naturally bad.

 

[Andrew Rieger]

Sorry Andrew but completely and respectfully Disagree with your statements there

I'm glad, if everyone though the same way, life would be boring.

But yes, I think like an old film curmudgeon. I like miniatures, black and white, real film stock and real sets and locations. I don't like 3D, green screen sets, and overabundant cg.

Don't get me wrong, when done right, 3D can be interesting but now it is just becoming a money crutch for studios, something that gives them an excuse to jack up ticket prices 30%+. A good movie is a good movie, you do not need to create the false illusion of depth to immerse the audience in the film's world. A film like the Wrestler or The Hurt Locker would not have felt more real if it had been shot in 3D. If anything, it would have been distracting and would have taken away from the performances. Tack on the fact that 3D is a pain in the ass to shoot. I know the ET and 3ality rigs make life easier but it is still 10x harder than a traditional shoot. If anything, it seems tacky to me, like Smellovision or those seats that rock and vibrate to the action. The glasses are annoying, it can give you headaches. It just seems like more trouble than it is worth but I guess if you are forced to go 3D, you might as well do it right with a stereo rig than half assing it with a post conversion. Just my 2 cents.

 

[Subhadip Sen]

It's funny, we are so used to the inferior film format that anything more realistic is shunned as bad. By definition, 60fps, higher resolution, HDRx™™, no grain, a neutral/realistic look etc. are all signs of realism, yet each of those are variably deemed problematic, with each different person having a different quibble. Realistic is just isn't pleasing, considering the way we have been conditioned. 24 fps, high contrast, a bit of grain, an undersaturated, diffused, aggressively colour graded image, etc. are much preferred. Some actors and/or other crew will also have probably problems with resolutions higher than 4K, which reveal excess detail we aren't used to seeing with film, that are hard to deal with. (e.g. wrinkles) Of course there are solutions, but they all involve losing detail.

In 3D, 48 fps will be a welcome addition, especially for a super fast-paced action film like Avatar 2. As for 2D, I am not sure how accepting we, the audience, will be.

 

[Tom Lowe]

I saw Avatar in 3D both Imax and regular and I thought it was great!...

...Until I watched the Blu-ray at home and realized just how much detail I couldn't see, even in the Imax projection. Current 3D technology is just not capable of passing even 1080P to the eye and even when done as well as Avatar I now find it really distracting. I will no longer see any movies in 3D if I can find a 2D showing available. Three pieces need to come together before I'll be excited to go see 3D again, brightness (either glasses or projection) convergence and focus point need to be matched at subject plane at all times, and resolution (somehow they need to pass more detail to the retina, but this could be the limit of the human eye).

Have you seen TRON 3D on a proper IMAX screen? It's fantastic.

 

[Michael Schrengohst]

All of the 3D films I have watched are dark. Why don't they compensate for the 3D glasses? It is really getting to be a turnoff to spend the extra cash to see a dim film.
And in most scenes you really have to turn your brain up to strain to see the 3D effect.
I look at many trailers on the Apple Site. They look fantastic in 2D on my computer.
You see the 3D previews in the theatre and they are dark and mushy. 60 fps is not going to address these inherent problems in 3D projection.

 

[Michael Schrengohst]

Have you seen TRON 3D on a proper IMAX screen? It's fantastic.

I saw it in IMAX and it was just too dark. I realize most of the film is low-key but when I took the glasses off it looked a hell of a lot better.....

 

[Stuart English]

Higher frame rate imaging

Higher frame rate imaging

Personal view ...

As I suspect most of us have no direct experience of what a 60 fps image with shallow depth of field and cinematic colors looks like on a big screen, but instead all (or almost all) of the 60 fps images we have seen to date have been either 480 or 1080 interlaced or 720 progressive; with relatively noisy blacks, obvious edge enhancement, limited dynamic range, DCT block based compression artifacts and 8-bit 4:2:2 colors; I'm not sure how we could definitively conclude 60 fps is inherently ****, as the visual comparison being made is shurely between "cinema image quality" and "SD / HD ENG image quality"

So let's see some clean, cinematic 48 fps and 60 fps images first, then we can properly comment on this subject ....

 

[Andrew Rieger]

In order to make 3D work in the long run, there are a few factors that must be addressed:

1. The glasses need to go! They are annoying, fog up and prevent you from seeing the whole screen in the full size IMAX format. Getting rid of the glasses will be a challenge no doubt and I can't see an effective solution coming any time in the near future.

2. Screen Darkness: this seems pretty easy to fix with improved projectors but as of now it is a problem. Also, many theaters just invested in new digi projectors so I doubt they will want to upgrade anytime soon.

3. 24 fps does not look good in 3D especially if there is a lot motion. The solution is to up the frame rate but in my opinion, the totally ruins the film look. I have seen footage projected at 48 frames per second at it looks like live TV and soap operas. It does not look good, plain and simple. No way around it. Unless audiences are forced to watch and get used to it, they will complain. You have no idea how many times I have been walking around best buy and have overheard people commenting about the distracting look of the 60fps interpolated footage coming from the high end TV's. I know that real 60fps looks better but not much better. Frankly, watching footage that looks like real life messes with peoples minds. Say that we are conditioned to like 24fps all you want but I am fine admitting that I have been conditioned to like 24fps. People like what they like, they like the movie look and 30+ frames per second does not look cinematic. It looks plasticky, cheap, harsh and unpleasing. I am also concerned about shutter speed at 48 frames per second. A shutter speed of 1/96 will cut down on the light getting to the sensor and a of shutter of 1/48 at 48fps will result in the crappy "Mann Look" (Or possibly not, I am not sure how 48fps would react to no shutter. Any ideas? A 360 shutter looks blurry at 24 fps but at 48fps the footage will appear sharper so does the no shutter blur cancel out?)

Also, I know this is the wrong forum to be talking about but I fear that 3D is also killing off film stock faster than I would like. Don't get me wrong, digital is the future but film should always be an option. With the big budget pictures going digital, it will be easier for everyone else to do the same and soon it will be too impractical to shoot film. Hell, I guess 3D is the best thing to happen to digital.

I guess I get weepy when I look back on all the hands on involvement it took to make a picture. Think back to craftsman building real sets and miniatures, real explosions, real stunts performed by brave men and woman, physical film stock, matte paintings done with real paint. Now we have rows and rows of computer animators staring at screens. Some of that movie magic has gone away. In the past you could watch a film and wonder how a certain effect was created. Now you can say "in the computer" by default and be correct 99.9% of the time. The mystery has gone. Now films are made in sterile laboratories with computer captured performances, totally green screen sets. Hell, for Avatar, Cameron did away with a real camera altogether for 60% of the film. I like guys like Nolan who still believe that there is a place for practical effects, film stock and good old 2D. Unfortunately, he is part of a dying breed and those who agree are not paying the bills, the guys who think 3D will save the film industry are. Good films will save the film industry, not gimmicks. But they keep turning out films like Little Fockers and wonder why they are in trouble so they turn to the gimmicks to save them. A film like Inception proves that 2D is still viable if there is strong narrative and creativity behind. Technology will never be an adequate replacement for storytelling but it seems like fewer and fewer people at the top recognize this. Rieger out.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Avatar was amazing in IMAX 3D but the 24p I thought was detrimental. I never saw it in 2D. I probably won't ever see it on DVD.

If he wants to shoot Avatar 2 to maximize the IMAX 3D experience. I say go for it. I probably won't watch it on DVD either.

For films that I will be watching in 2D, I would prefer 24p.

What I wouldn't look forward to is rendering Avatar @ 60p. Especially since render times don't tend to ever decrease--complexity and quality only increases.

 

[Tom Gough]

I saw Avatar in 3D both Imax and regular and I thought it was great!...

...Until I watched the Blu-ray at home and realized just how much detail I couldn't see, even in the Imax projection. Current 3D technology is just not capable of passing even 1080P to the eye and even when done as well as Avatar I now find it really distracting. I will no longer see any movies in 3D if I can find a 2D showing available. Three pieces need to come together before I'll be excited to go see 3D again, brightness (either glasses or projection) convergence and focus point need to be matched at subject plane at all times, and resolution (somehow they need to pass more detail to the retina, but this could be the limit of the human eye).

Somehow I just don't see 60P solving any of the above issues, but since I'll be watching the 2D 24P version I'm not concerned.

+1 :thumbsup:

 

[Ruairi Robinson]

I have seen footage projected at 48 frames per second at it looks like live TV and soap operas. It does not look good, plain and simple. No way around it.

What footage did you see projected at 48fps?

I've always wanted to see Douglas Trumbull's showscan footage shot on 65mm film and projected at 60fps. I heard a bunch of accounts of how amazing it was.

It says this on wikipedia:

Trumbull also did research into frame rate, running a series of tests with 35 mm stock filmed and projected at various speeds, shown to audiences who were instrumented to biometrically test their responses. He found that as the frame rate increased, so did the viewer's emotional reaction.
Trumbull discovered that although viewers see smooth motion from film displayed at 24 frames per second (fps), the standard in motion pictures for decades, they are subconsciously still aware of the flicker. This awareness reduces the emotional impact of the film. As the speed of projection ramped up, so did the emotional response, peaking at 72 fps. After that speed, no further improvements were noted.

R.