paulherrin
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have you shot anything since we last spoke that you can show me?
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The Hobbit at 48fps...
- Thread starter Jannard
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have you shot anything since we last spoke that you can show me?
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António Fagundes
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Christmas break, innit?
Mark Warren
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RIGHTIO, now I've seen it.
Shakespeare wrote a play once titled 'Much Ado About Nothing', and that was my overall impression of the HFR in 'The Hobbit'. To me there was no seismic shift in craft or the experience itself. As I sat there I thought about the tsunami of stinging criticism as well as passionate, loyal praise, but to me there was nothing really deserved of such polarising opinions, other than the fact it clearly demonstrates filmmakers are passionate about making and critiquing how movies are made. The bottom line for me is the average Joe would not even notice or care. There's some melancholy in that, by the way.
Yes the HFR at times looked like the BBC had bought the rights to 'The Hobbit' after the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy and decided to screen a very high-budget Christmas Special. It looked truly awful in some parts, yet surprisingly gorgeous and old-school/new-school cinematic in other rare moments… a 3 second shot here, a 5 second shot there. It was hard to work out why some shots worked better than others. At first it seemed that the lower the luminance, or range of luminance in the shot, the more gorgeous. If a scene was muted with no big highlights and say below 50% overall luminance the better it seemed to look to me. (And ironically, better with less movement.) At other times I thought that it looked at its worst on real sets, for instance some cave sets and scenes were cringe-worthy, (nominally low-light, but maybe not) straight out of 'Doctor Who'. At other times it was jarring in natural "daylight", if in fact it was daylight. There seemed no rhyme or reason to the inconsistency but I'm sure there IS a reason.
At other times when there was extensive and complex comping of faraway vistas behind characters it could look wonderful. They would surely go through every shot now and examine why one looked awful and another looked surprisingly good, what the secret sauce is. If someone told me that they varied their shutter or framerate, shot dramatically differently as results came in, I'd believe them. On such a huge project as this with scenes so obviously shot all over the place out of order, and pickups here there and everywhere, it makes sense that they might steadily evolve their techniques and might explain why there is a splattering of bad looking stuff throughout, even within scenes themselves. I don't know. All I know is it was wildly inconsistent throughout and wildly inconsistent even within the same scene.
You would get a really awful looking patch, then a really nice looking section, then an awful reaction shot or dialogue scene, then something else that looked really nice, and so on. Overall, for me the director and his team failed to deliver a seamless product, but the general audience will love the overall big pyrotechnical fizz, the big picture. From a purely critical craft perspective though, the filmmakers to me looked over-matched and overwhelmed by their self-imposed massive challenge, and the HFR exacerbated the problems of making everything match. But props to them for trying, and a big amount of applause and praise for the staggering amount of hard work they put into this project.
So the big surprise of 'The Hobbit' to me was how visually uneven it was on the one hand, and how phantasmagorically ambitious it is on the other. Yet understanding that, the result is no surprise. Ultimately it demonstrates both Peter Jackson's fearless, unbridled ideas as a director, but also starkly showcases his personal (and technology's) limitations. Simple evidence of this is quickly evident in the opening long establishing feast scene in Bilbo Baggins' home. In what should be a fairly unassuming, concise and simple beginning, the restraints of a monstrously effects heavy film, with staggering production management issues, (the unbridled ideas) shows as barely one of Gandalf's eyelines is correct. Ian McKellan looks like he was shot 6 months earlier or 6 months later when no-one was around, supposedly looking at Baggins but missing him by about a foot, and so many dialogue scenes throughout the film are pieced together where actors clearly weren't even together in the same month, let alone the same room, and it really shows. There are reaction shots, phoney comped over the shoulder shots and poor eyelines as bad as any film I've ever seen. There's very little traditional filmmaking mastery on show here, or to put it another way, the overly ambitious schedule and mammoth jigsaw aspect to the production required artists of the highest calibre to make it even half work. They seem to be working their guts out bravely just to keep their head above water. If any mastery was achieved here I'd say it was production management. They should give an Oscar to production management, who are all probably now in the loony bin. How they scheduled this film I have no idea.
Brilliant, masterful cinema (to me) is like a well executed swan-dive hit absolutely perfectly. In filmmaking terms it's almost impossible to do. And I'm talking about what appears to be the simplest dive, like a half-pike, executed flawlessly, hit perfectly. I don't think there are many current day masters of cinema in America who can deliver directorially what appears the simple half-pike, the holy grail. I think there are less than a handful of modern cinema masters. Jackson isn't one of them. The technical, visual craft of the masters can appear jaw-droppingly flawless at times. They can make the incredibly, astonishingly difficult appear so beautifully simple. This is also the domain of other revered directors from the past.
Jackson reveals himself as a director who decides to hell with the simple pike, (that's too hard and too revealing), I'm going to go off the highest platform imaginable and do a backwards quadruple somersault pike twist into a forward three and a half somersault roll and even if I belly-flop the audience will gasp with entertainment throughout. What stood out to me is how beyond him (and his team) the gargantuan challenge was. That's no surprise, nor any great criticism, because I think no-one alive today has the ability to pull this off seamlessly because barely anyone alive can pull off the "simple" pike. I am coming to believe that he may know this inherently (his limitations) and has decided that sufficient pyrotechnics and grandiosity will obfuscate the fact, divert the audience like a well-delivered smoke bomb, and I think on the whole to the undiscerning it does. Definitely to the undiscerning he would seem to be at the top of his game. As he stuffs millions of dollars into his pockets he can be satisfied that he is onto a reasonably good thing. He's got his niche. Good luck to him.
For all his apparent fearlessness, Jackson might be terrified of being exposed by the simple pike, and in fact in his film 'The Lovely Bones' his failure as a director to deliver that subtle, sensitive, nuanced and challenging material shone like a strobing beacon. Here in 'The Hobbit' he will have none of that harsh, uncompromising, searingly "simple" spotlight, in reality it's easier hiding behind lots of smoke and mirrors.
In his enormous vision of 'The Hobbit', he was also at the mercy of his visual effects team (even if he owns it) and though some of the effects were truly stupendous, a lot were simply not. A big snarling wolf still leaps at you (movement-wise) like a wolf out of a 1950s Warner's cartoon. They may have conquered some aspects, but inertia and really believable fast movement and gravity is still beyond today's technology or human skill. They were the only scenes that appeared "sped-up" to me, but only because the CG action seemed to be beyond the animators' great skill to get movement perfect. So instead of one flawed CG character, there's a hundred. Or a thousand. And cut really quickly. That's today's solution. Bombardment to obfuscate problems. But truly I believe the average Joe could not care less, they would be in rapt attention and fans of the film and genre would lap it up on the whole, surely. The movie does have like-ability and this is helped tremendously by the easy charm of Martin Freeman. I can see why Jackson was so keen to cast him for this role.
Jackson delivers to the fans. And as to his requirements to the studio, he delivers to them too. He may very well know that he bats two out of three, and is safe in his Tolkien niche.
** As an aside, someone should do an edited compilation of all the big budget movies in recent history that include two leviathans fighting one another, whether they be giant robots ('Transformers' and sequels), men inside giant robot suits, ('District 9', 'Avatar' and others), just general fights with other giant beings ('Hulk' 'Iron Man', 'Real Steel' 'Super 8' and others), giant rock creatures fighting one another ('The Hobbit') and there are so many more, I've named about one tenth of them. Look at so many blockbusters and you can be almost assured there will be a scene with gargantuan robot-like things slugging it out… it actually historically defines the current period. In 'The Hobbit' it happens for no apparent story reason whatsoever other than it just happens for the hell of it.
That's my 2 cents.
Shakespeare wrote a play once titled 'Much Ado About Nothing', and that was my overall impression of the HFR in 'The Hobbit'. To me there was no seismic shift in craft or the experience itself. As I sat there I thought about the tsunami of stinging criticism as well as passionate, loyal praise, but to me there was nothing really deserved of such polarising opinions, other than the fact it clearly demonstrates filmmakers are passionate about making and critiquing how movies are made. The bottom line for me is the average Joe would not even notice or care. There's some melancholy in that, by the way.
Yes the HFR at times looked like the BBC had bought the rights to 'The Hobbit' after the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy and decided to screen a very high-budget Christmas Special. It looked truly awful in some parts, yet surprisingly gorgeous and old-school/new-school cinematic in other rare moments… a 3 second shot here, a 5 second shot there. It was hard to work out why some shots worked better than others. At first it seemed that the lower the luminance, or range of luminance in the shot, the more gorgeous. If a scene was muted with no big highlights and say below 50% overall luminance the better it seemed to look to me. (And ironically, better with less movement.) At other times I thought that it looked at its worst on real sets, for instance some cave sets and scenes were cringe-worthy, (nominally low-light, but maybe not) straight out of 'Doctor Who'. At other times it was jarring in natural "daylight", if in fact it was daylight. There seemed no rhyme or reason to the inconsistency but I'm sure there IS a reason.
At other times when there was extensive and complex comping of faraway vistas behind characters it could look wonderful. They would surely go through every shot now and examine why one looked awful and another looked surprisingly good, what the secret sauce is. If someone told me that they varied their shutter or framerate, shot dramatically differently as results came in, I'd believe them. On such a huge project as this with scenes so obviously shot all over the place out of order, and pickups here there and everywhere, it makes sense that they might steadily evolve their techniques and might explain why there is a splattering of bad looking stuff throughout, even within scenes themselves. I don't know. All I know is it was wildly inconsistent throughout and wildly inconsistent even within the same scene.
You would get a really awful looking patch, then a really nice looking section, then an awful reaction shot or dialogue scene, then something else that looked really nice, and so on. Overall, for me the director and his team failed to deliver a seamless product, but the general audience will love the overall big pyrotechnical fizz, the big picture. From a purely critical craft perspective though, the filmmakers to me looked over-matched and overwhelmed by their self-imposed massive challenge, and the HFR exacerbated the problems of making everything match. But props to them for trying, and a big amount of applause and praise for the staggering amount of hard work they put into this project.
So the big surprise of 'The Hobbit' to me was how visually uneven it was on the one hand, and how phantasmagorically ambitious it is on the other. Yet understanding that, the result is no surprise. Ultimately it demonstrates both Peter Jackson's fearless, unbridled ideas as a director, but also starkly showcases his personal (and technology's) limitations. Simple evidence of this is quickly evident in the opening long establishing feast scene in Bilbo Baggins' home. In what should be a fairly unassuming, concise and simple beginning, the restraints of a monstrously effects heavy film, with staggering production management issues, (the unbridled ideas) shows as barely one of Gandalf's eyelines is correct. Ian McKellan looks like he was shot 6 months earlier or 6 months later when no-one was around, supposedly looking at Baggins but missing him by about a foot, and so many dialogue scenes throughout the film are pieced together where actors clearly weren't even together in the same month, let alone the same room, and it really shows. There are reaction shots, phoney comped over the shoulder shots and poor eyelines as bad as any film I've ever seen. There's very little traditional filmmaking mastery on show here, or to put it another way, the overly ambitious schedule and mammoth jigsaw aspect to the production required artists of the highest calibre to make it even half work. They seem to be working their guts out bravely just to keep their head above water. If any mastery was achieved here I'd say it was production management. They should give an Oscar to production management, who are all probably now in the loony bin. How they scheduled this film I have no idea.
Brilliant, masterful cinema (to me) is like a well executed swan-dive hit absolutely perfectly. In filmmaking terms it's almost impossible to do. And I'm talking about what appears to be the simplest dive, like a half-pike, executed flawlessly, hit perfectly. I don't think there are many current day masters of cinema in America who can deliver directorially what appears the simple half-pike, the holy grail. I think there are less than a handful of modern cinema masters. Jackson isn't one of them. The technical, visual craft of the masters can appear jaw-droppingly flawless at times. They can make the incredibly, astonishingly difficult appear so beautifully simple. This is also the domain of other revered directors from the past.
Jackson reveals himself as a director who decides to hell with the simple pike, (that's too hard and too revealing), I'm going to go off the highest platform imaginable and do a backwards quadruple somersault pike twist into a forward three and a half somersault roll and even if I belly-flop the audience will gasp with entertainment throughout. What stood out to me is how beyond him (and his team) the gargantuan challenge was. That's no surprise, nor any great criticism, because I think no-one alive today has the ability to pull this off seamlessly because barely anyone alive can pull off the "simple" pike. I am coming to believe that he may know this inherently (his limitations) and has decided that sufficient pyrotechnics and grandiosity will obfuscate the fact, divert the audience like a well-delivered smoke bomb, and I think on the whole to the undiscerning it does. Definitely to the undiscerning he would seem to be at the top of his game. As he stuffs millions of dollars into his pockets he can be satisfied that he is onto a reasonably good thing. He's got his niche. Good luck to him.
For all his apparent fearlessness, Jackson might be terrified of being exposed by the simple pike, and in fact in his film 'The Lovely Bones' his failure as a director to deliver that subtle, sensitive, nuanced and challenging material shone like a strobing beacon. Here in 'The Hobbit' he will have none of that harsh, uncompromising, searingly "simple" spotlight, in reality it's easier hiding behind lots of smoke and mirrors.
In his enormous vision of 'The Hobbit', he was also at the mercy of his visual effects team (even if he owns it) and though some of the effects were truly stupendous, a lot were simply not. A big snarling wolf still leaps at you (movement-wise) like a wolf out of a 1950s Warner's cartoon. They may have conquered some aspects, but inertia and really believable fast movement and gravity is still beyond today's technology or human skill. They were the only scenes that appeared "sped-up" to me, but only because the CG action seemed to be beyond the animators' great skill to get movement perfect. So instead of one flawed CG character, there's a hundred. Or a thousand. And cut really quickly. That's today's solution. Bombardment to obfuscate problems. But truly I believe the average Joe could not care less, they would be in rapt attention and fans of the film and genre would lap it up on the whole, surely. The movie does have like-ability and this is helped tremendously by the easy charm of Martin Freeman. I can see why Jackson was so keen to cast him for this role.
Jackson delivers to the fans. And as to his requirements to the studio, he delivers to them too. He may very well know that he bats two out of three, and is safe in his Tolkien niche.
** As an aside, someone should do an edited compilation of all the big budget movies in recent history that include two leviathans fighting one another, whether they be giant robots ('Transformers' and sequels), men inside giant robot suits, ('District 9', 'Avatar' and others), just general fights with other giant beings ('Hulk' 'Iron Man', 'Real Steel' 'Super 8' and others), giant rock creatures fighting one another ('The Hobbit') and there are so many more, I've named about one tenth of them. Look at so many blockbusters and you can be almost assured there will be a scene with gargantuan robot-like things slugging it out… it actually historically defines the current period. In 'The Hobbit' it happens for no apparent story reason whatsoever other than it just happens for the hell of it.
That's my 2 cents.
Gunleik Groven
REDuser Sponsor
Lol!
Snobbishness is all about disliking something because "what I like is better".
I am a profound snob myself...
And I don't particularily advocate 48fps... Haven't seen it yet, and 3d interest me somewhere up my butt, as I only have one working eye...
Still, I think opening up for new expressions and tools is good. No reason to limit the options for others, only because it annoys me, and if the first (well... It isn't really the 1st... HFR formats have come and gone previously, much like 3d) attempt at an HFR production sucks some and is good some, then that is only proof of... exactly that. And obviously it seems like some people here see some good use for it, like Graeme has advocated... Different framerates for different kinds of shots.
I like tjat things get tested and worked on, expanding the expression.
HFR is as interesting as dv-cams were for the dogma films.
We kinda seem to agree there, we just put different values in that sentence...
Which is fine with me...
Will Keir
Well-known member
It was a bit of a pain to go see the film in HFR 3d, two hour drive each way, but I got it done just after Christmas.
No need for a lengthy post ^^. My conclusion is simple.
Like Dec 21st 2012, the world is still here.... so will 24fps... for a long time.
No need for a lengthy post ^^. My conclusion is simple.
Like Dec 21st 2012, the world is still here.... so will 24fps... for a long time.
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António Fagundes
Banned
Good post Mark Warren!
Gunleik, I'm really not that concerned about the HFR. Anyone can do what they want, I really couldn't care less. What does bugg me, is to see how some people get so fanatical about something so basic. It only tells me that they don't really like movies, they much prefer to fuck around with it and whatever happens is good. And to those people I'm just trying to make them see that some of us do actually have a sophisticated taste, are not so easily led by hype and do actually have an opinion that can be backet with common sense. Weather that is in favor of HFR or against!
For as much as I love some film makers, I'm not a slave to their own taste. They do fuck up as well. Any Lord of The Rings is way better movie technically than The Hobbit. So yes, Peter Jackson in my own opinion, fucked this up big time! Now I wished Del Toro had made it!
By the ay, I'm not even loosing any sleep over HFR, all I do know is that Peter Jackson wasn't the man to make HFR work! He didn't change anything in the way he shot, maybe that was a mistake. Maybe a more talented film maker, with more attention to detail can actually make a HFR movie that rocks!
But many people here can't actually tell the difference between good and bad.
And I'm only trying to make them better film makers.
(gotta live up to my snobishness....)
Gunleik, I'm really not that concerned about the HFR. Anyone can do what they want, I really couldn't care less. What does bugg me, is to see how some people get so fanatical about something so basic. It only tells me that they don't really like movies, they much prefer to fuck around with it and whatever happens is good. And to those people I'm just trying to make them see that some of us do actually have a sophisticated taste, are not so easily led by hype and do actually have an opinion that can be backet with common sense. Weather that is in favor of HFR or against!
For as much as I love some film makers, I'm not a slave to their own taste. They do fuck up as well. Any Lord of The Rings is way better movie technically than The Hobbit. So yes, Peter Jackson in my own opinion, fucked this up big time! Now I wished Del Toro had made it!
By the ay, I'm not even loosing any sleep over HFR, all I do know is that Peter Jackson wasn't the man to make HFR work! He didn't change anything in the way he shot, maybe that was a mistake. Maybe a more talented film maker, with more attention to detail can actually make a HFR movie that rocks!
But many people here can't actually tell the difference between good and bad.
And I'm only trying to make them better film makers.
(gotta live up to my snobishness....)
Gunleik Groven
REDuser Sponsor
All good Antonio!
Sometimes I join discussions, because I constantly see that it is the ones I disagree with or knows something else /more than myself I learn from. Even when we do not end up agreeing...
Fortunately, the world is still open for a lot of learning for me...
Consensus is highly overrated in many situations...
Cheers!
Sometimes I join discussions, because I constantly see that it is the ones I disagree with or knows something else /more than myself I learn from. Even when we do not end up agreeing...
Fortunately, the world is still open for a lot of learning for me...
Consensus is highly overrated in many situations...
Cheers!
shashbugu
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Are you for real? Did you even watch the movie? What do you know about filmmaking? Del toro really? If they gave you twice the budget as Peter Jackson you wouldn't be able to make half the movie he's made. Peter Jackson is a talented visionary, LOFTR was a superb epic master piece satisfying on every level. The Hobbit is an entirely differently paced adventure, It short comings were more in the family oriented dialog and slapstick screenplay than in the HFR. Unfortunately I won't be able to see it in HFR, but I saw it in 24p 2D. The Red Epic shined just as marvelously here as it did in Spider-Man, vivid picture quality.
Antonio most Red users on here are very savvy filmmakers it's okay to be argumentative but having a very poisonous negative attitude in just wrong. You sound like a Hobbit
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António Fagundes
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By the way, you got all my respect by showing Chaplin to your kids. I love the man. Did my final film school dissertation on him. Great man. Father of blockbusters, but not as we know them today. He was all content and no style, where as his fellow Russian contemporary Sergei Eisenstein, was all style and no content... more of what we have today... how things change...
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António Fagundes
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If you say so.
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Pawel Achtel
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OK, I've finally watched it yesterday in 3D, HFR on a large VMAX (RealD) screen.
Mark, you must have been sitting next to me or somehow you couldn't have described my reaction better than you did. Exactly my feelings too - maybe all great minds think the same
So, I'm not going to repeat what you just described and focus on what you haven't: the 3D.
The expectations from such an expensive and high profile movie were understandably high.
The 3D was very conservative, to the point of being flat, completely flat in some scenes. It was also varied throughout the film and that part I liked. The variation created some sense of culmination and rest in between. With the resting parts being somewhat under whelming. But, even the strong 3D sequences were on a safe side, even on a giant screen. I gather the film must look almost flat on a smaller, 30 foot screen, and almost perfectly flat 2D on a television set.
I guess, after a series of eyestrain and nausea inducing 3D films, every producer is playing it safe these days. To the point of being flat.
But, the roundness was nice and pleasing in most scenes, maybe except the looking down the cliff tops, which were cartoon-like.
The edge violations were far too common, which is really simple mistake that should have not occured in such a high profile movie. But, they did, more often than not.
Another, relatively trivial problem, was the inconsistent use of convergence, or in other words, the depth placement of the scenes. Some shots had only negative parallax (behind the screen), some only positive (in viewers space). While neither is right or wrong, transitioning from one to another creates depth discontinuity. This wasn't so obvious because of the already mentioned conservative, flat, 3D, but it was not the most effective use of 3D space.
The HFR helped 3D a lot. The brain makes it easier to fuse the images together at HFR and it worked well. It also helped the special resolution and motion appeared sharper and crisper than that of traditional 24 fps films. Micro contrast was good, even in 2k. And, that's because of HFR.
I think the BBC soap-opera look like effects were not directly the problem introduced by HFR, but more so revealed by HFR. The higher frame rate simply revealed the shortcomings of the inconsistencies that you mentioned: and, I think, the combination of green-screen and not-so-good lighting and "feel" didn't quite match making some scenes look like cheap soap-opera effect. But, this was rather an exception then a rule. Most character scenes looked better in HFR than in 24 fps, which just proves one point: HFR is the way to go if only done well. The "magic" has to be there to start with and HFR will convey it, but if the "magic" is not there, HFR will reveal it while 24 fps will mask it.
just my 2 Aussie Peso
Cameron Chin
Member
Oh please... But I do see why some people are pack runners.
Tell me, when you see sparks from two rocks striking each other, do you just see a temporary set of pretty lights or something that could be useful if played with? It's a pretty basic question if you ask me... human or neaderthal?
And I guess you couldn't careless about the Italian and French new wave?
Brandon J.F.
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Do you have anything online we can take a look at? I'm interested in seeing your work.
ChristopherKenworthy
Well-known member
Not for me. In 24P the lighting looked just like Lord of The Rings. The motion looked cinematic. In HFR it looked cheap, glossy, over-sharp. I think HFR should be renamed HDV, because that's what it looks like.
Just this week I was talking to a record company about shooting a music video, and I offered them various budgets with various cameras. When the Red option came up they said something like, 'So long as it doesn't look like The Hobbit.' We spent years convincing people that Red was a film replacement, but HFR could have set us back by years. People are already assuming that Red = a Video Look. Bad news.
paulherrin
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well said.
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Pawel Achtel
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Christopher,
Our views are not necessarily different and I think they are the same
What puzzled me was the "cheap, glossy, over-sharp HDV" look that we are referring to was inconsistent. And this inconsistency is the key. Sometimes the problem was clearly there, but most of the time it wasn't. For me, anyway. Thus, it made me think HFR only highlighted that look when it was there to start with: in the scene itself, while 24 fps would "mask it".
For me, the film showed that HFR can work exceptionally well, reduce motion artefacts, blur and enhance the cinematic experience. But, the fact that it can also look artificially "cheap, glossy, over-sharp HDV" on a few selected scenes, tells me that this is not the cause.
You don't see it in 24p because that's what 24p does: it masks the problem and makes it less obvious. In 48 fps you see it all: the good, the bad and the cheap, glossy, over-sharp HDV. To me, it was mostly the good, which makes me think HFR can work the magic, you just need to be far more careful than with 24p in creating it.
Our views are not necessarily different and I think they are the same
What puzzled me was the "cheap, glossy, over-sharp HDV" look that we are referring to was inconsistent. And this inconsistency is the key. Sometimes the problem was clearly there, but most of the time it wasn't. For me, anyway. Thus, it made me think HFR only highlighted that look when it was there to start with: in the scene itself, while 24 fps would "mask it".
For me, the film showed that HFR can work exceptionally well, reduce motion artefacts, blur and enhance the cinematic experience. But, the fact that it can also look artificially "cheap, glossy, over-sharp HDV" on a few selected scenes, tells me that this is not the cause.
You don't see it in 24p because that's what 24p does: it masks the problem and makes it less obvious. In 48 fps you see it all: the good, the bad and the cheap, glossy, over-sharp HDV. To me, it was mostly the good, which makes me think HFR can work the magic, you just need to be far more careful than with 24p in creating it.
Brian Boyer
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If that's true (I don't think it entirely is), in the interest of eliminating the shortcomings that plague this first 48fps effort, wouldn't the cost of making an HFR production skyrocket?
Any material that read as wool, for example, at 24fps, but had the benefit of being lighter weight and cheaper to buy, may have to give way to actual wool in order to read like wool at 48fps. Then, it's more expensive and the actors get hotter quicker. Then, your AC bills go up, and so on.
Furniture that passed as old-world craftsmanship at 24fps may have to actually come a lot closer to that level in order to read correctly at 48fps. This requires a higher skill level, which demands a higher pay scale.
And what about things that are the genuine article? What do you do when the real thing looks fake at 48fps?
Aging and dying techniques have to be completely revisited. Makeup has to be reformulated. The "48fps safe" versions will undoubtedly come at a premium price.
People have complained that the interior shots seemed claustrophobic. Although this may have served the story in terms of Bilbo's point of view, if 48fps makes a set seem smaller, bigger sets will be necessary. I went on the Warner Brothers studio tour some years back and we went to the permanent relocation of the Central Perk set for Friends. That set is pretty tiny but read considerably bigger. Three steps inside the door and you were at the sofa. 48fps would reveal that small set for what it truly is.
With shrinking budgets and timeframes, I'm not sure studios and production companies will want to deal with it in most cases purely from a financial standpoint...especially when you consider there's nothing really wrong with 24fps.
If you're a proponent of the variable frame rate approach, then maybe the fast moving scenes that 48fps is good for will hide some of its shortcomings (now who's masking!?). And, you'd still have to overcome the film>video>film look of old Doctor Who episodes.
Again, it seems 48fps has more minuses than pluses at the expense of a more aesthetically pleasing image, in my opinion. You could address every one of these issues and it wouldn't mean very much to me because my problem was with the overall look. I barely even noticed Gandalf's staff.
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Pawel Achtel
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Points well taken, Brian.
I think you are right in saying that what you could get away with 24p, may need much more craft (and cost) to look good in 48p. But, I wouldn't be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
For me, the scenes that worked well in 48p (and, I must say it was the majority) were totally magical, immersive and something I have never experienced in 24p. Is it worth it? I guess with the budgets that PJ has at his disposal: absolutely! For example, all aerial shots were stunningly beautiful and simply breath taking. And so were all the forest and location shots.
Is it going to work with all studio or indie features: probably not. Many productions will be better served with 24p whether for creative or financial reasons.
I think you are right in saying that what you could get away with 24p, may need much more craft (and cost) to look good in 48p. But, I wouldn't be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
For me, the scenes that worked well in 48p (and, I must say it was the majority) were totally magical, immersive and something I have never experienced in 24p. Is it worth it? I guess with the budgets that PJ has at his disposal: absolutely! For example, all aerial shots were stunningly beautiful and simply breath taking. And so were all the forest and location shots.
Is it going to work with all studio or indie features: probably not. Many productions will be better served with 24p whether for creative or financial reasons.
Brian Boyer
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Interesting. The aerial shots were the ones I hated the most. Even among the people that didn't care for the HFR version, some singled those out as looking particularly good.
Those shots lost their grand scope to me. The forest shots were less objectionable.
For the life of me, I don't know why people think 48fps looks like something radically different from 60i (1080i) captured video. It's not quite the same, obviously, but I feel it's close enough for rock 'n' roll.
Perhaps future incarnations will look more pleasing to me.
Subjectivity is what makes the world go 'round, I guess. As a graphic designer, there are certain typefaces I would probably never use (I'm talking to you Comic Sans and Hobo) unless it was for a single character...MAYBE. Millions of people would disagree with me and I'm sure someone somewhere in the world is using them both in the same project.
paulherrin
Well-known member
interlaced and progressive frames are absolutely different experiences. the only similarity is that they're not at 24... which is to say they are different. anything that in any way reveals the absurdity of holy-wood movie-making is fine by me.