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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...

I have to withhold judgement until I see the projections and for now, defer to Jackson and Cameron. They say it's a 3D thing... that for 3d it is best and you have to experience it to appreciate it. I can respect that.

If the trailers were not carefully reduced to the 24 fps that we prefer for 2D (Which may be the case.), then we should likewise withhold judgement of how it will look in 2D. It's a rush to judgement.

If the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit. :reddevil:

Josh Snyder said:
From the trailers Hobbit looks videoish. Said out loud bg "oh no" when I saw the first trailer.

Movies aren't meant to look real.
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Edit: Oh Yea, and I disagree, some movies ARE meant to look real.
 
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Al Lougher said:
What I find funny is low budget filmmakers have strived for years to get their video to look like film, and just like that PJ undoes years of effort and makes a film that looks like video.
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and even funnier is to see some people now saying videolike footage looks good when it's shot with RED.
 
I'm reserving my judgement for the theaters though I suspect I will not be able to see it in 48fps simply because it will obviously require projector modifications or new hardware which will not be in place when the film is released and that will probably not even happen by the time Avatar 2 rolls around.
 
I've never seen good looking 48/fps electronic footage. It's video and nothing else. It's not film.
What happend to our opinion about the elusive film-look we all agreed on in the recent past? 24fps, 1/48, shallow DOF, grain: that's film look. And you need all of those ingredients.
Cut that all out and you're stuck with video. 48 fps is a film look killer. It will render your Red camera in an overprized broadcast-grade video camera.
Filmmakers that use 48fps are NOT film makers, they are videoshooters.
Just my two cents.
 
And what of all of those shooters who have mastered high-speed film work? Are they not film makers too? Are you saying that all of those action flicks I've seen with slo-mo in them were not films?
 
Martin Beek said:
Filmmakers that use 48fps are NOT film makers, they are videoshooters.
Just my two cents.
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Wow... Pretty close minded. I would withhold judgment until the film is actually available to see as it is intended. This is new ground. It will def look and feel different from anything before it. One could argue that anyone shooting digital is not a film maker by your logic. Or that you can't use high shutter speed for effect... Or that sync sound has no place in a true "film" no pne of these elements is the be all end all of what it means to be a "film" Everything has its place. I am always excited to see filmmaker a like peter Jackson push new technology and ways of telling stories forward.
 
Will Wernick said:
... and ways of telling stories forward.
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This.

I'm really excited about how higher frame rate shooting and projection is going to affect the cinematic language. For a director to have the freedom to tell their story, or parts of their story at different frame rates is definitely going to be interesting. I personally love the look of 24fps, but when I had the opportunity to watch 3D at 24fps and 48fps back to back, I really won't be able to bring myself to watch 3D at 24fps as easy as I did before (except for Prometheus, but that's just because that movie is going to be awesome).

I think people are saying it looks like watching an old BBC show or having your TV set to smooth-o-vision because those are the only things we can compare it to, but they are really not the same. The amount of information and sharpness per frame is not the same. I think we are truly going to appreciate this once we get the whole movie, not just bits and pieces. My guess is that we might feel uncomfortable throughout the first 10 minutes of the movie, but once we adjust we are going to really enjoy the look of the film. In the end, it's the directors choice how he wants to display his art, and I'm extremely excited that people like Peter Jackson and Cameron are pushing the boundaries. Will it succeed? Who knows, but I for one I'm excited that they are trying to change the rule and explore new ideas. It's scary that they are doing it with something as beloved as The Hobbit, so not only the eyes of filmmakers are set on this, but pretty much everyone out there who loves Lord of The Rings, one of the most popular franchises there is.
 
Film would be a poor artistic medium if changing the frame rate from x to y (> x) would make it suddenly a lesser medium. About as absurd a claim as paintings are only paintings if they are made with oil paint. Film should be variable frame rate depending on content and desired effect. Not more, not less.
 
Martin Beek said:
24fps, 1/48, shallow DOF, grain: that's film look. And you need all of those ingredients.
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I don't know, I've seen some Gilliam films that did not use shallow DOF (in fact quite the opposite) to an amazing effect. I don't think it is a formula. You can use formulas to solve problems creatively, but I don't think those formulas are creative on their own.
 
Still you must consider: while the industry strives to add more realism to their imagery, every smartphone owner downloads apps like "hipstamatic" to give their pictures that "old film stock" feeling. Same with apps that let's you record videos in "8mm" style. Just a trend?
 
I think it has been established they are shooting 48fps at 1/48 shutter so their venture is not so risky. If it doesn't work they will drop every second frame and present at 24p without it taking anything away.

For me the idea that we have been programmed to like 24p better than 30 or 48 does not hold much water. I agree that 24fps was an arbitrary number decided upon by studios quite some time ago but that doesn't necessarilly mean that more fps = better.

Essentially the more fps the more realistic an image will apear in an existential sense. For news casts and sports there is no limit to how realistic one might want an image to appear. For narrative production I think there are definately times when you want to limit how realistic the images you are rendering are for story telling reasons.

As for the 'film look'. Take any film stock you want, shoot at 60fps and project at 60fps and you will see something that looks alot like video. In many ways this is simply because more fps = an image that looks more realistic and since it's inception video has shot more fps than film.
 
Most of you are really jumping to conclusions here: You have to see it for yourself to decide. I was able to catch James Cameron's HFR presentation at NAB and hands down in 3D, 48 & 60fps is clearly the future. I was definitely skeptical going in because I also hate that Super Reality TV look, but you have to remember they are not displaying the 2D versions at those rates- In 3D at 48fps you are still seeing 24fps per eye and the judder/ghosting/ whatever you want to call it is gone and the images were beautiful. You have to see this presentation to compare and form your own opinion. My guess is the Hobbit footage will look immaculate on the RED Laser Projector.
 
James McLellan said:
I think it has been established they are shooting 48fps at 1/48 shutter so their venture is not so risky.
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Actually, according to Peter Jackson's facebook page, they're shooting at 270 degree shutter, which means the 24fps extraction is like shooting 24fps at 135 degree shutter (or 1/64 of a second).

24fps wasn't as much arbitrary as it was a standard that was settled on for reasons other than visual aesthetic. For most of the silent film era many films were shot at different rates, anywhere between 14 to 26 fps and projectors used double and triple blades to minimize flicker. It wasn't until the addition of sound that 24fps became the standard, because using various different rates didn't work with sound as we can more easily detect pitch changes in audio than speed changes in images - and 24 fps was the slowest frame rate at which proper audio fidelity could still be kept (yes, the slowest - because film was expensive). The desire for faster frame rates existed even way back then. Thomas Edison was one of the earliest proponents of high frame rates.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. I think frame rate should be a variable tool for a filmmaker to use just like exposure and shutter angle. 24fps for scenes with little or no motion and for standard dialogue scenes - and then bump it up to 48, 72, 96 or even 120fps for the fastest action sequences, especially in 3D. But we're very far from that being a reality.
 
Thor Melsted said:
I've said it before and I'll say it again. I think frame rate should be a variable tool for a filmmaker to use just like exposure and shutter angle. 24fps for scenes with little or no motion and for standard dialogue scenes - and then bump it up to 48, 72, 96 or even 120fps for the fastest action sequences, especially in 3D. But we're very far from that being a reality.
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An enthusiastic +1!
 
Thor Melsted said:
Actually, according to Peter Jackson's facebook page, they're shooting at 270 degree shutter, which means the 24fps extraction is like shooting 24fps at 135 degree shutter (or 1/64 of a second).

24fps wasn't as much arbitrary as it was a standard that was settled on for reasons other than visual aesthetic. For most of the silent film era many films were shot at different rates, anywhere between 14 to 26 fps and projectors used double and triple blades to minimize flicker. It wasn't until the addition of sound that 24fps became the standard, because using various different rates didn't work with sound as we can more easily detect pitch changes in audio than speed changes in images - and 24 fps was the slowest frame rate at which proper audio fidelity could still be kept (yes, the slowest - because film was expensive). The desire for faster frame rates existed even way back then. Thomas Edison was one of the earliest proponents of high frame rates.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. I think frame rate should be a variable tool for a filmmaker to use just like exposure and shutter angle. 24fps for scenes with little or no motion and for standard dialogue scenes - and then bump it up to 48, 72, 96 or even 120fps for the fastest action sequences, especially in 3D. But we're very far from that being a reality.
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My mistake. I understood they were shooting 360 shutter which seemed to make sense to me when I heard it.

I think you misunderstand my meaning of arbitrary. Exactly what you explain is exactly what I mean and, although many people tell this story of 24fps like one guy just said well that's that, you can be sure there was discussion and negotiation that took place. Now that we both agree that the selection of 24fps was arbitrary in the sense that it was not solely based on the perception of the best possible image it does not necessarily mean the opposite is true; that a faster frame rate is better. I think your vision of multiple frame rates within a film will come to fruition. I don't foresee widespread adoption of faster than 24p frame rates as a standard for narrative storytelling in the future though.
 
Michel Hafner said:
Film would be a poor artistic medium if changing the frame rate from x to y (> x) would make it suddenly a lesser medium. About as absurd a claim as paintings are only paintings if they are made with oil paint. Film should be variable frame rate depending on content and desired effect. Not more, not less.
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Exquisitely put - I wholeheartedly agree
 
It seems part of the beef can be traced from using a 270 degree shutter angle.

While the trailers look fine (IMO) on Apple's website at 24 fps, I have no idea how they are perceived at their true 48 fps capture rate.
 
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