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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...

Ryan Farnes said:
I wonder if HFR fans always had a disposition toward video frame rates and this was a breath of fresh air to see it more cinematically employed?
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perhaps. for me, i'm just all about letting film be film and digital be digital. we're square in the middle of an identity crisis in the age of electronics ...
[see instagram, magic bullet, 'film look', et al]

(electrical engineering [and stereoscopy] is parallel to and foundational in the beginning of american/studio/hollywood film which all started from experimentation and novelties/gimmicks, if that helps)
 
When ScarletUser was alive and kicking, David Rasberry posted there a lot. Lens guru and 16mm format enthusiast if I remember correctly. Also, he really liked 30 frames and stuff like that from working with television spots shot at those frame rates through his career. I always respected his knowledge and he knew so much about motion imaging, but he preferred 30 frames (or more?) over 24, which always seemed odd to me.

I'm guessing he is loving HFR while I'm not digging it as much. And it seems that we didn't need to see it to know that would be the case. (my apologies David to presume your reaction :blush:)

To each their own I suppose.

I must add, that the CG doesn't suffer from it quite as bad, it seems most abrasive to me in live action...except maybe crazy CG camera moves like the beginning of The Hobbit in Dale where it does take on a video game appearance. CG creatures seem to benefit from the HFR, so I could see a film like Avatar 2 looking better in HFR than 24p.
 
the other thing to think about is that CG/3D artists are by definition well-versed in depth and are simply spending a lot more time per frame/shot dialing things in. making the transition from 2d to 3d is a huge step. when i was studying with traditional animation students who were being exposed to 3d animation software, some people were not able to gracefully make that transition, even though their drawings may have had beautiful 'depth'. it's a whole nother dimension. there's nothing 'wrong' with that - you should play to your strengths, and i love traditional artwork for everything that it is, especially its natural simplicity.

i've seen some really terrible cameras (and some of them were my own in early years) going crazy in cg space... it takes a lot of development (and probably some natural proclivity) to become thoughtful about such things. heck, you can look at my past work and see that i'm still in an infancy state of space. compositing has traditionally been a 2d collage medium... i'm just now beginning to understand dimensionality and the illusion of depth (in 2d or 3d), and hopefully that will start showing up in my current and future works, and in every one else's as what are essentially these augmented and virtual realities draw our attention (back) into the third spatial dimension of visual art.

"3d isn't about objects but about the space between objects. When composing a scene, don't think about it in terms of foreground, middle ground, and background, but in terms of the air that is contained, or the volumes that the objects define." - Chris Parks
 
Just saw the film in 3D, 48fps. As some others have mentioned I enjoyed the experience much more than I thought I would. I think HFR for 3D is a very interesting approach. Overall I found the experience similar to a FPS video game. The wide angle battle scenes where very immersive and stunning (when the camera stayed on the ground). I walked away with the assertion that 3D is best served without telephoto shots and fast cuts. HFR presentation only supported that. If every 3D film from here on out shot HFR with just an 18mm, 25mm, and 40mm I'd have no qualms about going to see them.
 
I watched it in 3D 48fps yesterday. I think the HFR really worked for the film in 3D. I'd like to see a HFR 2D version to see if it still works. Loved the wide landscape shots in The Hobbit!
 
It took a little bit to get use to, but HFR 3D was pretty amazing. Some shots seemed to work better than others, and I'm not just talking about aerials either. Overall, can wait for the next one in HFR!
 
Adrian Jebef said:
I walked away with the assertion that 3D is best served without telephoto shots and fast cuts. HFR presentation only supported that. If every 3D film from here on out shot HFR with just an 18mm, 25mm, and 40mm I'd have no qualms about going to see them.
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Completely agree. I've always said that since seeing my first 3D film, Avatar. 3D isn't something you can just 'tack on'. A film needs to be shot FOR 3D, not just IN 3D. Telephoto and fast action sequences are not just bad in terms of spacial tracking, but exacerbate the problem with 24 fps + 3D. My opinion of 48 fps and 3D overlap considerably. 3D should not be shot at anything less than 48 fps, though I'd prefer 60 or perhaps 72 fps as I could still see temporal aliasing in some scenes, so 48 fps isn't quite high enough. Likewise, the burden 48 fps creates for film makers in terms of props, etc, overlap almost 1-to-1 with 3D, so in my opinion, if you're shooting FOR 3D, you've inherently covered all your bases to shoot 48 fps effectively also. 3D still has way more overhead than 48 fps ever will, so 48 fps can be tacked onto any 3D film in my opinion. Any 3D film that doesn't work at 48 fps must be just as ineffective being in 3D also.

While 48 fps won't suit all styles of films, it will suit the majority I think, and it should be made almost compulsory to shoot 3D at 48 fps, where as 48 fps should always be an option for 2D films. I've said it before, but 3D at 24 fps is bullshit. 48 fps really should have come before 3D in my opinion, but it's here now, so that's what's important. The thing I most look forward to is 48 fps+ documentaries and ubiquitous 50p/60p TV.
 
I really enjoyed it in 3D and HFR. Not sure if I think people are going to all start doing 48 FPS, but it's definitely much nicer to watch the action scenes with. :-)
 
My wife and I watched it in 3D HFR last night. Both of us were disturbed by the HFR, but also enjoyed a few scenes because of it.
My overall impression of the film was that it looked like a mix between a video game cut scene from the FMV kick of the 90s and a History channel special and 80s and 90s late night television low budget mystery shows from the BBC. Not a good look for me at all.

There were certain scense that worked great, however, as mentioned before wide expansive shots with lots of CG, especially with the (SPOILER) Eagles OTS or perspective shots. Quick breathtaking actually.
HOWEVER, the whole film felt like it was being acted, and my wife commented in that it felt like we were watching a Broadway play. But at the same time it also felt completely in-organic. Mix HFR and blown highlights and it felt like it was shot by a Sony Vx1000 many times.

I think HFR has it's place, but I don't feel like that place is in MOST narrative films. I think it could work well for a film like Cirque Du Sole in 3D, which I havn't seen yet, but judging by the trailers would be a specatacular use of HFR if it were done that way, which it was not.
Narrative film just felt wrong. My wife isn't a film maker, rather an actor, and she even commented that things just felt wrong, and that everything felt like it was being acted, sometimes quite poorly. Maybe it was just poor acting in spots, but I honestly think the HFR does not help.
24fps hides a lot of things that the eys pick up on. The way objects move, the way actors move and make facial experssions. It allows our minds to fill in the blanks. Therefore set extensions, acting, makup, wardrobe and props can all look more REAL at a lower frame rate. At a higher frame rate we lose the ability for our minds to fill in the blanks and we catch every single flaw that exists.

So my conclusion, if you are shooting something that is real, HFR can help bring that realness to the audience, because it is genuine. If you are shooting something that has to be made to look real, HFR will actually work against you.
 
+1

I watched the 2D version on 35mm as well. It looked much more organic and cinematic. Even more than the 2D/24fps trailers I had seen before. Don't know if the 24fps version received special processing.

Strange thing is, some people are able to ignore the HFR look completely or just emphasize on the benefits it has in specific scenes.

It certainly improves 3D a lot. If only we could have the best from both worlds...

- Carsten
 
Having now seen it my take is lighting is the biggest issue. Because HFR creates a sense of reality, traditional film lighting which creates a painterly quality of depth looks ridiculously over the top in HFR 3D and draws even more attention to the fakeness of props etc. Meanwhile CGI characters have a much more realistic integration wih the scene, and are more weighty. (That may not be the format, it may just be Weta's high standard of work, but I do think HFR helped.)

Also, scenes with composited backgrounds become much harder to sell, adding to the sense of actors on sets, again this is exacerbated by heavy edge or rim lighting that just does not happen in the real world.

From a technical standpoint I found the Stereoscopic effect excellent, so I think for fully CGI HFR films, or for performance films or films set in reality without a high painterly quality it will be an excellent format, but films that need to look painterly ith an added dimension when presented in 2D as well as 3D (as The Hobbit is) will end up compromised in one format or the other, either too flat in 2D, or overlit in HFR 3D. I am ok with it feeling overlit in HFR 3D because it means the 2D version will likely match the other ilms in the series.
 
The CG has unfair odds against the director/dp... the lighters have spent all kinds of time tweaking with lots of looking and feedback and essentially no practical limitations. Performance capture is honed in on movement, and the animators are well versed in the language. The ability to review/playback without major time constraints (moving on!) is huge - they're looking at it over and over and over again. The movement in the CG scenes looked incredible (especially gollum).

I'm about to start working on my first outdoor, multimedia theatrical production. Besides a lot of fun, I think that's going to help me think about acting/staging/lighting for 3D/HFR... if it looks good on set/stage at close proximity - it's going to look good in that format. 'Hollywooding' sometimes looks ridiculous to the eye when you're on set... and it looks ridiculous when you're sculpting another dimension - so don't do those things. Make it look good right there. Then capture it. That's magic.
 
paulherrin said:
'Hollywooding' sometimes looks ridiculous to the eye when you're on set... and it looks ridiculous when you're sculpting another dimension - so don't do those things. Make it look good right there. Then capture it. That's magic.
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That's the old Kurosawa saying about how to make a move -- get it right in front of the camera then shoot it as well as you can with the camera. Of course, that makes it sound simple.

It's hard enough to get things "right" for the limitations of 2D and 2K, let's say, and it gets harder and harder with 3D and more resolution, temporal and textural. I would cut Hollywood some slack. It's all smoke & mirrors, a slight of hand, misdirection as much as it is direction. That's part of the job, to tell the audience to look here, not there. That's the art of storytelling. If you are making an IMAX documentary, sure, you may spend more time just letting the audience immerse themselves in the reality of the location and all the details in it. But in a narrative, you generally want the audience to look at the actor's performance and get caught up with the story, so visual details can either help... or become a distraction, even if they are beautiful details.
 
hehe :)

so hopefully, the acting performance is more captivating than the lights, camera, and action... (which should serve the story, not subjugate it)
 
3D 48 fps Hobbit is an amazing movie!!!!

With Hobbit Peter Jackson reached the highest level of his moviemaking style and his own creative potential he brought at the top.

In Vienna is easy to see Hobbit at 48 fps or HFR how it is advertised here in Austria.

In Hobbit I found only one issue with 3D or HFR that focus pull (AKA rack focus) didn't work properly in some of the shots and scenes.

To me didn't work at all, there is no need for that in 3D and it should be avoided in 3D just because it

made a bad effect and actually that kind of artefact also slightly damaged 3D cinematography/photography.

But that's probably a sort of un-perfection 3D stereography has from the beginning and nothing has to do with Hobbit or 48fps.
 
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