Hobbit Film Underwhelms At 48 Frames Per Second 607
bonch writes "Warner Bros. aired ten minutes of footage from The Hobbit at CinemaCon, and reactions have been mixed. The problem? Peter Jackson is filming the movie at 48 frames per second, twice the industry standard 24 frames per second, lending the film a '70s era BBC-video look.' However, if the negative response from film bloggers and theater owners is any indication, the way most people will see the movie is in standard 24fps."
Is it "too real"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this another version of the same issues people complained about when seeing their favorite newscaster (or "other" things) in HD?
Do we need some "masking" of the mundane reality of scenes (e.g., things "looking like sets") to sufficiently suspend disbelief?
Re:Is it "too real"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Every time I hear someone bitch about higher FPS video I'm seriously annoyed, I've had to deal with the damn 24 FPS jerky and/or blurry bullshit for too long people need to just adjust.
Habit (Score:5, Insightful)
The only reason people don't like it is because they are used to film looking another way. It has nothing to do with what is actually happening on screen, or some magical quality that allows 24fps to transport you to another place.
If all films changed to this, in three years no one would have an issue with it. In 10 years, people would say that older movies looked to "fake."
It's all what you are acclimated to.
Re:Is it "too real"? (Score:5, Insightful)
If movies had originally filmed at 48 FPS (Score:5, Insightful)
Just whiners (Score:5, Insightful)
People have decided that 24fps is "cinematic" since that's what movies have been for so long and so they expect it and hate on things that aren't. They need to STFU and just take some time to appreciate a more real format.
We have cameras at work that shoot 60fps and I just -love- it. It is so silky smooth. When you first see it, it almost seems like something is wrong. Then you realize what is missing is the stutter of 30 (or 24) fps. Things are fluid, much more like they really are. Motion looks great.
We need that in movies. Spatial resolution is getting really good these days, we need better temporal resolution. Get that framerate up there and things will start to look much more real.
People have just come to associate the stuttery crap that is 24fps as being "cinematic". They need to tie a can on it and get over it.
Re:Is it "too real"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Me too.
Seriously, what could be wrong with 48 fps? That it didn't flicker enough?
I read this story a few days ago and actually went searching for some samples but couldn't find any at that time, other than some silly animated combat scenes.
What I did find was a bunch of bloggers who have never produced anything in their life except whiny bitching without a single valid criticism that didn't amount to jealousy and NIH.
Re:Just whiners (Score:5, Insightful)
I went to a very early digital cinema festival years ago, and in the round-table discussions all these people were focussing on how "sterile" digital looked, and moaning about how that "film look" was going to die a horrible ugly death, and the world as they knew it was ending. Everybody else was thrilled to death about how the image was actually sharp and consistent, you couldn't see the ugly film grain, colors were sharper, there was no crap stuck to every frame or spinning along down one side, you didn't have frames jumping all over the screen (60ft screen avg vertical jitter is +- 8 inches per frame!), etc etc etc.
Guess what? Digital won, end of story.
The "film purists" will always find something to complain about, while the rest of the world moves on.
Re:Modern 120Hz+ HDTVs (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop thinking of "movies" and "TV shows" as being separate entities. It's all basically the same (actors on fake sets), and the only distinction that exists is all in your mind.
In fact a lot of 2000-era movies don't even use film anymore..... they're using HD videocams. Same thing TV productions use.
Re:Habit (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this is the case. I remember the transition to HDTV. When shows started airing in HD, I remember everything looking unnaturally crisp. It looked fake compared to the "real" 480i I was used to. By the time most shows went HD that effect went away for me, and the SD stuff started looking fake and crappy. I have roughly the same reaction watching SD shows now as I did watching the handful of B&W shows that were still airing when I was a kid. Yeah, it still works, but it definitely feels inferior and old fashioned.
My guess is 48fps movies will be about the same, unless they induce epileptic seizures or something...
Re:In film, frame rate = exposure time (Score:5, Insightful)
In theory, the shutter speed (e.g. exposure time) could be faster than the frame rate, but the same holds true in film cameras as well by adjusting the shutter angle. Most films shoot with a shutter angle of 180 degrees. (think of the shutter as a circle, half of it is open and half of it isn't) If you decrease the shutter angle, you get less motion blur and a shorter exposure time. This was used to great effect in the D-Day storming of the beach scene at the beginning of "Saving Private Ryan."
Unless you know of some way to warp time, the exposure length will never, ever be longer than the frame rate in film or digital!
Re:Habit (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Change (Score:4, Insightful)
But is it still the norm ? Gamers are used to watching and participating in scenes are much higher FPS rates... for those of us who were born after 1980, this is better... tv looks flickery and annoying. ... our cellphones have higher resolution than that, why is it only being upgraded now and by so little ? The latter one inspired a wonderful XKCD (just so I'm not accused of plagiarism) :P
We had the same issue with HD
Re:It'll take a little getting used to, that's all (Score:5, Insightful)
What you're talking about is a very different issue. With that, they're taking video at another framerate - perhaps 30 or 60 - and "upscaling" it to 120/240Hz. There is a chip in there that is looking at two frames, figuring out what changed, and making up frames to shove in between. It not only looked fake, it genuinely was fake. It really isn't any different from taking 480p and trying to upscale it up to 1080p - just you're doing it in the time dimension instead of x/y.
Seeing video that was actually sourced at a higher framerate displayed at that higher framerate usually doesn't generate the "fake" look you're talking about. That having been said, I have no idea what's causing issues with the Hobbit film.
Re:Is it "too real"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well 3D still doesn't work properly, and probably nothing will fix that while projecting on a flat screen.
But 48fps is simply smoother, and just as they are able to fake up 3D on films that were never shot that way, they will be able to digitally fake up with the extra frames between every 24fps frame and re-release all those old films in Astounding 48 FPS, New and Improved, Digitally Remastered, For a Limited Time Only....
Its a whole new industry, and they can sell us all copies of the disks we already bought once.
The wrath of the industry is usually tempered by box office figures.
Re:Is it "too real"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:You moron... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure that one day, you will accomplish something of value in your life, and you will no longer need to use trivialities to build your sense of self-worth.
Re:Is it "too real"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Tell you the little Hollywood secret, they HATE this. If the rubicon of 24fps & 2D is crossed, the film industry and all their flicks will be stamped as outdated '70s era films.
Really? I always thought Hollywood was jamming 3D down our throats. If 48fps takes hold and 3D starts being worthwhile, then the MPAA can just sell us all their old crap again in new "remastered" editions. The Citizen Kane blu ray collectors edition runs for $70!
Re:Is it "too real"? (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously, what could be wrong with 48 fps? That it didn't flicker enough?
48 fps look like cheap sitcoms. These are recorded at the TV frequency since ages. People have associated 24 fps with high-budget cinema-quality movies and higher frequencies with TV shows. Thing is, look at a tracking shot at 60 fps or one at 24 fps, it is incredible, but the 60 fps will scream "cheap production !" at you. Really frustrating.
If only we could leave this constraint... Fighting scenes are much harder to shoot at 24 fps : nothing can happen in 40 ms. Therefore you need motion blurs and slow motions. It is a dumbed down experience...
Re:Change (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with motion blurring or any sort of blurring is it makes my eyes hurt when I try to focus on something that can not be in focus.
In real life when you are looking at something moving, the object you are looking at becomes sharp, at worst the background becomes motion blurred. If you look at the background, the background becomes sharp, and the object becomes blurry. So whatever I look at is sharp unless the object is moving really fast, or I'm having problems with my eyes.
As technology improves they should strive to have more stuff sharp. As you said let our eyes do the blurring. Only in a few cases should the director blur stuff for effect.