Frik51's Collection

[Tito_Villa]

Yeah that copy of 'The Hobbit' is real nice!

[frik51]

There's been a presentation of Jackson's The Hobbit, but the verdict was not what I hoped it would have been. The 48 frames per second (instead of the usual 24) apparently is going to take some use to..:

The instant this morning's Warner Bros presentation ended, the audience erupted in chatter. Almost everyone had just seen something that had never hit their eyes before. Forget 2D versus 3D, this is going to be a hell of a conversation come December (earlier, if they demo it).
Filmmaking at 48 frames per second, whether 3D or not, is going to be massively divisive.
For 80 years, we've been living with the 24fps standard, and people are used to the strobing and motion blur associated with it. It's that hard-to-describe look that we associate with a movie feeling like a movie. It’s a certain resolution and a certain number of still images hitting our eyes each second.
Now that "Digital Cinema" is taking over, the next step beyond resolution (1080p, 2K, 4K, or 8K, or whatever else) is the frame rate frontier. It’s being breached as we speak. With such a focus on 3D, more frames in those films will mean less headaches and blur and so on.

When I saw the HOBBIT trailer at 24fps in December at BNAT, there was something somewhat off. I felt it most directly in the bits that involved fast cutting and motion. My eyes had to do a lot of work to soak in everything they were seeing. Even after seeing it three times, I felt I’d missed things.
48fps makes those moments more fluid and clear, but there's something that people will absolutely hate about this upfront.

It's different, first of all, but the big issue people walked out of the room this morning feeling is that the look of THE HOBBIT is not what they associate with filmic, or movie-like, or at all traditionally cinematic. The effect of watching 1970’s BBC television dramas as compared to US TV from the same era was mentioned by various people around me.

In the opening minutes, I thought to myself "this looks like the TV department when they turn on 120Hz or TruMotion or whatever they call it". At once, it really doesn’t look like that. The smooth motion clarity is similar, but the 120Hz TV setting is the TV inventing visual information to fill in loads of completely nonexistent frames, creating the bullshit garbage you see walking through most TV departments in stores. Again, there is an element that 48fps and TruMotion share (which is where the comparison comes from), but 48 fps does not simply “look like Korean soap operas” or TruMotion-enhanced TV images. That’s a reductive, sensationalist, utterly bullshit equivocation.
Despite that, loads of exhibitors and attendees echoed that exact thought all around me. The cinematic filter between the action and the audience is dissolved in favor of a more immediate lens on the world of the movie.

The High Frame Rate Effect is something that will take getting used to, and some will absolutely reject it outright. Many will do so pre-emptively. It’s already happening all over Twitter.
To be honest, it kind of terrified me at first. In his pre-recorded intro, Peter Jackson said that the reason we were seeing 10 minutes of content was that "it takes your eyes a little bit to adjust", and that is absolutely the case. The immersive experience was not immediate, but gradual. I felt much more comfortable toward the end of the presentation, but still disconcerted and outside a comfort zone.
The most upfront benefit I felt was in landscape and action sequences, where surprisingly intricate detail was easily absorbed, even in a very, very wide shot. I was drawing in more visual information than my brain was used to processing.
Motion blur was gone completely in fast-moving action scenes and dark environment. In general, 48fps has the ability to be at once crisp and smooth, subtle and bold. It is a maelstrom of contradictions when compared to the loads of filmed content I’ve seen in my life. Others started pronouncing it over immediately upon exiting, but I am not passing that judgment (or any for that matter) yet. I saw ten minutes of unfinished, un-graded, incomplete footage as a cross-section, not a full feature film.

I have major reservations, but at the same time am beyond awed at many elements of what hit my visual cortex. Recalling the sweeping landscape shots they opened with now, I almost feel tears welling, and I can’t explain why. It was overwhelming in the most literal sense. It directly assaults your synapses with twice as much information through your retinas as you have become conditioned to expect from traditional cinema. I did not see the digital seams around creatures like Gollum and the trolls, a major benefit over 24fps. The creatures had a sense of mass in the environment, which was disconcerting in a good way.

I started getting acclimated, and then it cut away again, and again, and again. The scene that really allowed me to relax and get used to it was the scene with Bilbo and Gollum in the cave, the longest segment they showed us. If there had been more contiguous sequences like that, cut together like a full scene (albeit with unfinished color grading and effects), I think the response might have been very different in that room today. The enemy of a radically new presentation like 48fps is the sizzle reel format of cutting. People needed to be given the benefit of their patience not being tried by rapid cutting back and forth from non-contiguous scenes.
My call is that it was a less than ideal way to introduce something that, despite it all, managed to actually show promise in places.

I just had three people in the press suite agree that they did in fact think the Bilbo/Gollum scene worked, no reservations. Those same people said that all the brief clips “felt” like the 1970 I, CLAUDIUS in HD. They agreed that if they’d seen two or three sequences of that length, they may have been less reflexively averse to it. The most bizarre thing is that I found Jeffrey Wells singing 48fps’ praises and guys like Alex Billington slamming it and setting it on fire.

I think anyone making a definitive pronouncement (positive or negative) based on that presentation does not have enough proper representative data. I’m a presentation obsessive when it comes to aspect ratio, resolution, contrast, color grading, and all the nitty gritty. For my part, I’m still holding out. I don’t think I (or anyone) got the right representative look at it. Keep that in mind as you read what I’m sure will be loads of articles calling for 48fps’ pre-emptive death.
At once, I am beset with wonder at what the Battle of Five Armies will look like in motion. I wonder at what Smaug will look like in motion. There is so much more to see before all of that, which I assume is going to be in the second movie anyway.

Jackson mentioned something in his intro that I don’t think he was hedging with, about the frame rate of silent pictures being 16-18fps, and how going to 24fps was a big leap in the day. Think of the relative jump: from silent to sound, a few decades pass and they increase the number of frames by 50%…in this case, 80 years pass and they increase the frame rate to 150% more. This is a massive shift in visual clarity, composition, and perception. Like I said, if you thought 2D versus 3D has been fun, this is a quantum jump into another realm of perception, and I expect the debate to be exponentially more heated.
There's so much more that's gone on too, but this is the biggest industry-wide thing that's gone down since I've been here.

Despite some of these misgivings, I can't wait for December to arrive.
The Hobbit will be one heck of a ride!

sk

[Joe315]

I know I'll still enjoy it. Maybe PJ will change it back to 24fps before release. As I understand it James Cameron wants to film the next Avatar higher then 24fps for added realism.

[Dan Hocker]

I say the higher the frame rate the better. Basically the higher you get the frame rate, the more real it will look. I'm really looking forward to the hobbit.

[frik51]

True, but apparently this higher frame rate is so much different from what we're used to, people have reservations.
I don't!
(But then, I haven't seen a singe frame - let alone 48...)

sk

[Dan Hocker]

I think generally people don't like change. I for one am all for it, and if anyone can do it right, it's Peter Jackson.

[srboone]

The problem that people are having with the higher frame rate sounds like the problem some people have with CGI in general, not necessarily just 3D. It makes everything in focus, the background as well as the foreground in the same shot as well as all motion we're used to seeing blurrred. Adding 3D onto that sounds like a headache waiting to happen. I'm afraid to see this in 3D (though 3D has progressed well passed the "let's spend all our budget in one or two scenes and overwhelm the senses" stage.) But it also sounds like the problem lay mostly with quickly-editted scenes. The longer and smoother the scene, the easier the transition the brain had in processing the information.

[TerryE]

It almost seems like Jackson should have gotten some other films made this way to let people get used to it. But someone has to carry the Torch of Change and he's got the clout to do it. It's a bit of a Catch-22. You need a high profile project like The Hobbit to get attention for the big change. But if the audience rejects the new technology (for whatever reasons), then it could be a huge profile flop and kill the new ideas. Personally, I hope it's all Jackson wants, and the audience realizes the technology is a great change.

[frik51]

Peter Jackson and James Cameron are the ones to watch. Cameron's Avatar (regardless if you thought it was boring or not) put 3D on the map to stay and I seem to remember he's also going to film the sequels like Jackson's making The Hobbit: 48 fps.
True, an audience can make or break a new process, but The Hobbit's got a built-in audience - it just can't fail.

sk

[TerryE]

Speaking of Cameron, I saw an article yesterday that he will be devoting all of his moviemaking efforts to Avatar (2, 3, and maybe 4) and documentaries. He thinks everything he wants to say can be done in those contexts. So I guess the True Lies sequel is now definitely dead. But then again, I seem to remember Stephen King saying (about 10 years ago) that he was retiring from publishing. We all know how that has turned out.

[Teriw]

I could watch some more Avatar. I enjoyed that movie, except the 3D. Although it was the best done of the 3d movies I have seen.

[srboone]

You've never seen Hugo in 3d, obviously!!!

[Teriw]

You got that one right. I have not seen Hugo AT ALL because it looks stupid. lol

[frik51]

I missed Hugo as well. And I really wanted to see it in the theatre, in 3D of course.
So I'll have to be satisfied with a regular BD version.

I'm quite happy with Cameron's Avatar plans. I was in awe of the first mvie and can't wait to see what Cameron will come up with.
I didn't even know a True Lies sequel was -at one time??- planned.


sk

[bookworm 1]

Hay Seip I thought you might want to know that Dark Horse comics is resurecting EERIE comics.The first issue will be out the end of July.I also know you are a Bernie Wrightson is releasing an artist edition portfolio for The Muck Monster.Acording to what I read Muck Monster was the start of the style he used in Frankenstein.Just thought You might want to know.The portfolio is being released through IDW.