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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 :)

The Hobbit at 48fps...

People talk about intangibles, things like 'reality' and 'immersion'. I saw The Hobbit in 3d HFR (48fps) at Cinetopia Progress Ridge and it was very weird. Simple things like characters walking felt 'sped up', like I was watching a Charlie Chaplain movie. What's going on? Why did they feel like they were jitteringly fast while just walking? I'm not trying to be negative, just very confused. After the movie I turned to my brother and described a deeply personal feeling I'd never shared with anyone until then: that very rarely I feel like my brain is working 2x and the world feels jittery to me and I have to close my eyes until the feeling passes, it's a very unsettling freak occurrence that only happens rarely to me and then passes. This is exactly what 48fps felt like.

it's all good man, that's years and years of your brain being consciously and unconsciously trained to look at movies in a certain way, amplified by your awareness of it. neuroplasticity can take a little while, your brain has to get all rewired. i'm just lucky because i woke up breathing digital video, mixed formats, video games, tru-motion (which i despise), computers and all that. i'm just trying to help everyone else learn how to transition, cause it's happening.

just sink into it. the story, that is. "you're workin' too hard"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcglnY_xGfc
 
^and if that doesn't do the trick, turn on the auto-captions for a good failed-technology laugh ;)

if they'd just do a search limited by the most common words (other than a, the, and, etc), i guarantee they'd find some lyrics to plug in easily... come on! and quit calibrating it off the political transcripts! beta my butt, get it together :)
 
Saw it with some friends last night. In some ways I waited since I was 5 years to see the movie, but I was "wise" enough to not have overly high expectations.
The movie was good, but not a powerful master piece like the original Lord of the Rings.

Some comments about image quality.
48 FPS
+ camera movements looked better because the images could be more smooth
+ The image was extremely sharp always. Almost confusing to look at sometimes
+ Another point was that it felt less like watching a cinema and more like actually being there. It felt more like a window to a reality in front of you. Interesting.
- It did feel strange. Sometimes it felt a bit "unprofessional", maybe not a fair comment but that is the word that I got when watching it. But in the big battles it worked very well when so much was moving fast.
My feeling was interesting but I need to watch more movies and compare it to know if it's good or not. I'm sure it will be good for some movies.
I think many people that complained about the image not looking like a "movie" got confused by the extremely short appertures used. Rarely have I seen a movie that has so long depth of field in nearly every scene. Here everything was sharp. This is both good and bad. It's hard to know where to look and it also doesn't have the beautiful bokeh. However it feels more like when you see a play or a painting where you can really look everywhere in the image. Interesting choice I must say.

3D
3d worked very well. I would say the best 3d that I have ever seen. The motion blur caused by 24fps makes other 3d movies look a bit strange. Motion blur in 3d simply doesn't look very good if you focus on it. In this way The Hobbit was much better than other 3d movies made. I could imagine this could work very well for Avatar as well.

They really stepped up the quality on Gollum. He look great in the old movies but not he looked perfect. The goblins looked great as well.

All in all very interesting. I think I will have to see it in 24fps no 3D to compare with. And erhm Red Ray of course!!!
/Andreas
 
Saw it last night.

The beginning looked odd, the outside bits in the shire with frodo and bilbo. But it was an overly bright over saturated look, seemingly chosen to add a contrasting feel to the rest of the movie, taken a little to far for my taste.

There were a few shots not quite in sharp focus (perhaps made more obvious by the HFR) and a couple where the editing had left me looking at a separate part of the screen to the area in focus.

Apart from those couple of niggles HFR made the film look spectacular, and really help draw me into the swirling action.

At no point did it put me in mind of TV or the horrible fake high frame rate smoothing that I turn off on TVs the moment I look at them.

it certainly wouldn't suit every movie, but then again the list of techniques that even the biggest of purists would accept without question that also fall into wouldn't fit every movie catorgary is a long list.

I suspect variable frame rate would give the best of both worlds, still not for every movie.
 
I loved the high frame rate. Especially for fast action scenes there was much less eye strain and more image coherence than with 24f 3d.

I was intrigued by the visual movement in depth during 3d dissolves. There is a whole new aesthetic playground for how visual centers move from scene to scene.
 
The reason why I think the Hobbit is a great movie, and by great i mean in twenty years i will be rewatching this movie with my grandchildren, is that he had a well defined theme (which is stated by Gandalf in the middle of the movie) ... and all the cinematography supports that theme. The audience "get's it", but a lot of people in the industry aren't getting why the movie may be the most successful of all time.
 
a lot of people in the industry aren't getting why the movie may be the most successful of all time.

The media is making much too much of the technology. If there were no other choice than to see it in 48 fps I might understand the fervor, but where it is possible to see it in any way you choose I fail to see a problem.

Most folks go to see a story, not frames.
 
Saw The Hobbit at 48fps in 3D. Usually I hate 3D, but after the film started, I checked behind and saw that they were actually using two projectors. They did it the right way! Every gripe about the movie itself aside, the visuals were pretty much the best I have ever seen. Pretty amazing. 48fps took a little while to get used to, and even though I liked the 48fps for this, I still don't think everything should be shot at that frame rate. It worked very well for this, nothing about the movie made me feel like I was watching a movie. However, I can't picture something like Taxi Driver being shot at 48. Too many people like that look of 24fps. The same unexplainable reason that even though RED has basically eclipsed film in almost every way, but still people shoot on film so often. So, as cool as it was, I don't see every movie converting anytime soon.
 
The media is making much too much of the technology. If there were no other choice than to see it in 48 fps I might understand the fervor, but where it is possible to see it in any way you choose I fail to see a problem.

Most folks go to see a story, not frames.

precisely.
 
This sums it up well.

The Science of High Frame Rates, Or: Why 'The Hobbit' Looks Bad At 48 FPS
http://movieline.com/2012/12/14/hobbit-high-frame-rate-science-48-frames-per-second/

this looks into some decent areas of thought, but suffers serious contradictions throughout.

and, he has no idea what he's talking about. really.

we will always propose scientific theories to prop up what we've already decided to believe.

suspension of disbelief is not governed by framerate. if you don't get that, please let me know.

we are coming full circle. ever seen a play? ever heard someone tell a story?

i saw the hints of both in the unexpected journey.
 
This sums it up well.

The Science of High Frame Rates, Or: Why 'The Hobbit' Looks Bad At 48 FPS
http://movieline.com/2012/12/14/hobbit-high-frame-rate-science-48-frames-per-second/

Tagging something as being "the science" means we must believe it. After all, they've proven it, right? Having read the article I will have to disagree with it from I saw in the theater. It never once looked real, thus contradicting "The Uncanny Valley" discussed in the article. It just looked cleaner. Still had the film look to me and I would say otherwise if it were so. The author did some editorial CYA by inserting the couple of lines, "Not every person perceives the Uncanny Valley, however. There are some people that just do not reject things that look too real, although the vast majority of people do experience that phenomenon. So you’re going to get some individuals who see it and go, This looks great! The problem is anecdotes are not evidence. You have to look at the public as a whole, and I think that’s what Jackson and Cameron are not doing."

Had it not been combined with 3D, I think we might have less of a discussion going on. But since it was, there seems to be some throwing the baby out with the bathwater going on here. No problem from what I saw. It looked great and would have been even better if it were in 4K.
 
No I dont get that, please explain.

I have a little experience with fictional storytelling, but obviously I dont have your know-how, please enlighten me.

this looks into some decent areas of thought, but suffers serious contradictions throughout.

and, he has no idea what he's talking about. really.

we will always propose scientific theories to prop up what we've already decided to believe.

suspension of disbelief is not governed by framerate. if you don't get that, please let me know.

we are coming full circle. ever seen a play? ever heard someone tell a story?

i saw the hints of both in the unexpected journey.
 
No, actually science is just full of theories waiting for someone to disprove them and that will in turn change the scientific theory. Just theories here. I am only linking this article as I thought it was an interesting take. It might have some flaws, but what cannot be denied is that the majority of moviegoers DONT BUY 48fps when trying to believe a fictional story on a screen....for whatever reason.

Are you saying that isnt true either? All of these opinions are irrelevant?

Tagging something as being "the science" means we must believe it. After all, they've proven it, right? Having read the article I will have to disagree with it from I saw in the theater. It never once looked real, thus contradicting "The Uncanny Valley" discussed in the article. It just looked cleaner. Still had the film look to me and I would say otherwise if it were so. The author did some editorial CYA by inserting the couple of lines, "Not every person perceives the Uncanny Valley, however. There are some people that just do not reject things that look too real, although the vast majority of people do experience that phenomenon. So you’re going to get some individuals who see it and go, This looks great! The problem is anecdotes are not evidence. You have to look at the public as a whole, and I think that’s what Jackson and Cameron are not doing."

Had it not been combined with 3D, I think we might have less of a discussion going on. But since it was, there seems to be some throwing the baby out with the bathwater going on here. No problem from what I saw. It looked great and would have been even better if it were in 4K.
 
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