The Hobbit: Why 48FPS Makes Film Less Magical
blog.vincentlaforet.com
blog.vincentlaforet.com
3D on the other hand... I wish it would die. You have to converge at a distance and focus at another, and that's really hard for some people. There are a huge number of cues[1] that are important in depth perception, but 3D movies make use only of parallax confusing the brain. The depth of field is usually shallow, and that's great for 2D, but catastrophic for 3D. In real life, objects that I make an explicit effort to focus to are not blurry, but in 3D they are.
Another annoying aspect of 3D movies is that they artificially augment the parallax to make the 3D effect more extreme. That's equivalent to objects being really close. Apart from strain on the eyes, that's really annoying for wide outdoor shots, where things should effectively be at infinity. It's like you are looking at a miniature, not at a vast valley.
The only films that truly have great 3D today are Avatar (in the 3D animated scenes -- most of the movie) and modern 3D animated films (Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks, etc.).
The reason is that you need different parallax settings (among other things) within the same shot. Let that sink in. There's no global setting for any of the stereoscopic cues that works well for all objects in a single image. Obviously, then, having two cameras alone doesn't really get you good 3D no matter how you do it.
Live-action recording like the Hobbit only ever gets one set of 3D settings per frame, unless you do the 3D 'painted' thing you claim sucks, and even then, the '3D painted' technique is time-consuming, expensive, and still not as good as what you can get when you're doing 3D stereoscopic rendering and can actually use different settings for different objects within the frame at the same time. FWIW, I'm certain that the Hobbit also used the '3D painted' technique. Everyone does it when they have the budget for it.
If anyone is really interested in how 3D is actually done by those in the industry, subscribe to cml-3d. The 3D supervisors post their techniques on films often; it's quite an interesting read.
Film makers have a wide variety of creative tools available to them to help them tell a story, of which HFR is one. We're talking about art, not a technical quest to reproduce reality as closely as possible.
And they look like soap operas.
So anything that 24fps can do, 48fps can do too.
And I don't buy the crazy idea that someone using 24fps during an entire movie would someone be the achievement of some visual art perfection.
This is wrong, wrong and wrong.
Also I have to laugh quite a bit at you describing a movie called "The hobbit" which shows dragon, trolls, elfes, magicians, etc. as "trying to reproduce reality".
; )
Not quite. Shooting at 48fps requires a faster shutter speed than 24fps (1/48 vs 1/96) which gives you less motion blur.
And if the film maker wants blur sometimes, they can still add it, without compromising the entire film.
It reminds me of video games, in a way. GPU's are constantly being improved, and we get closer and closer to producing real-time photo-realistic graphics every day... and yet there is still plenty of room for games like Super Mario or Team Fortress 2, which don't want or need to look realistic to be fun.
So anything that 24fps can do, 48fps can do too.
I'm not sure what your point is. If a film maker frame doubled 24fps and projected it using a HFR system nobody would regard it as HFR.
And I don't buy the crazy idea that someone using 24fps during an entire movie would someone be the achievement of some visual art perfection.
This is wrong, wrong and wrong.
I didn't say that.
Also I have to laugh quite a bit at you describing a movie called "The hobbit" which shows dragon, trolls, elfes, magicians, etc. as "trying to reproduce reality".
I didn't say this either.
One very sore point I have with this film is just that.
And I really like the LoTR saga, having seen it several times.
There definitely were moments where it looked like you were looking at actors on a set. The fidelity was so good that it was obvious the characters were wearing prosthetics and makeup. However there were plenty of scenes where the increased detail and clarity were a huge advantage, especially some of the CGI scenes. The flight of the eagles was gorgeous and the feeling of actually being there you got from the combination of HFR and 3D added a lot to the experience.
It very much is a question of trade-offs. I'm very glad I saw it in HFR 3D because for a lot of the scenes it gives you an experience you couldn't get any other way, but if I were to see it in a cinema again I'd go for 2D, and I look forward to seeing it on TV at home. I'll quite happily watch the next film in HFR 3D.
Bear in mind, I cannot stand those TVs that double the frame rate to make everything look like a cheap soap opera. I've heard this comparison, or ones like it, in almost every negative review I've read. In my opinion, this is false comparison.
Imagine if soap operas were filmed in colour, and proper films shot in black and white. Then a film maker comes along and releases a colour film. Suddenly everyone says it looks like a cheap soap opera. To me this is the psychological effect that is hindering the acceptance of HFR and thus the negative reviews.
Ten years from now our children will scoff at our luddism.
HFR is really interesting when contextualized in the history of cinema: frame rate was never a problem until directors started changing how they shot action scenes in the 1980s. It was realised that if you made the action fast and blurry you could get away with a lot more: what from a wide shot would look like a slow moving car chase could become a very dramatic action scene.
I think this is being reflected in a lot of the reviews coming out for The Hobbit (I haven't seen it yet): it seems a lot of people don't mind it during action sequences, but it becomes distracting during dialog and less frenetic moments. And this makes sense: why should dialog scenes be in 48fps? There's no technical or artistic reason for them to be.
I'd be really interested in watching a cut of The Hobbit which moves between 24 and 48 fps for dialog/action: people are happy to accept aspect ratio shifts (like moving from full-frame IMAX to CinemaScope in the Dark Knight, etc, and more artistically moving to Academy for a particular scene in Life of Pi), perhaps they'd be willing to accept frame rate shifts too?
Fixed that for you.
Like the OP, I applaud Peter Jackson's experiment - without courage like this, you won't be able to advance the technology of the art. But, in this case, it just didn't work for me. I'm interesting in hearing what other's thought.
I think this is interesting. Like yourself, and the author of the article, I applaud Peter Jackson for having the courage to try, and reserve judgement until I have the chance to see it myself next week. That said, I still think it's very much an open question whether people's responses to this are due to the intrinsic nature of 48fps or just due to how alien it feels.
Personally, I can't see how anything that replicates reality better can be intrinsically bad. When I was a very young child and watching films for the first time I remember being distracted by its artifice: the depth of field, the way camera perspectives changed, and the motion blur, though I couldn't have put a name to these back then.
I think the bad reaction to 48 fps is largely for three reasons: legacy associations, with home video and the like, a lack of experience making films at 48 fps (could Peter Jackson have made a better 48 fps film had the industry had more experience doing it? probably), and sheer alienation (if every single film you've ever seen is 24 fps, and you've acquired a suspension of disbelief for 24 fps, then you're going to lose that at 48 fps). I think this last point is worth emphasising: I don't think we innately are capable of a suspension of disbelief for film. I think it's something we learn over time, like I did as a child, and it's something we haven't yet done for 48 fps.
So I'm optimistic. And sad too, because perhaps next week I won't enjoy The Hobbit as much as I should. I think back to Technicolor films and how crappy they looked at the time compared to how beautiful black and white films looked (and continue to look) at the same time. Yet here we are now, and we'd never go back these days.
But who knows. Maybe I'm wrong and there's something intrinsically bad about too-fast a frame rate. Perhaps, as the author alludes, filmmaking is as much a decision of what information to lose as it is what to keep. But I can't help but ask the question: the author says that certain scenes looked like a video game to him, but I ask what would it look like if you'd never played games in your life? If you lacked that association...? Maybe it'd be something a little bit magical.
There are lots of people out there (me included) that can see the "home video" effect and HATE it. For me, the 120 & 240HZ features on LCD TVs drive me absolutely batty when trying to watch a movie. It's fine for sports but completely ruins the movie experience for me.
As for me, 24 fps is incredibly noticeable, especially during panning scenes. To the point that it often takes me out of the movie; I've been wishing for higher FPS movies for years.
Of course, I'm also one of the very few people that can see phosphor decay in plasma TVs, so...
I think a potential problem with replicating reality better is that the reality is that the set/props/makeup/etc are all fake. Unless you really take some exceptional care, and probably do way more post-processing work than you would normally have to, replicating reality better means revealing reality better.
Technicolor films looked fantastic when they were first released. There are a lot of bad transfers that have been done since, but three-strip technicolor (the kind used on the Wizard of Oz, where you shoot using three separate film strips) had incredible saturation.
There were other, considerably less expensive alternatives that you might be thinking of, but Technicolor was the process to use for color: the problem was that to do so required a huge budget (unsurprisingly shooting on three film strips simultaneously requires three times the processing budget), and lots of light (the film speed was very low). One-strip Eastman became the dominant format for reasons of cost, but most people would agree the Technicolor 'look' was in most cases superior.
A lot of film stock from the 30s/40s has deteriorated significantly, and studios do not always take the greatest care when transferring (especially for films not so well known or renowned) - but I personally think three-strip Technicolor films like the Wizard of Oz have great, vivid color.
3-strip Technicolor, by its own nature, tends to oversaturate colors as well.
These two facts help explain the garish colors seen in The Wizard of Oz and other 3-strip Technicolor films of the era.
With that being said, I find The Wizard of Oz (and most other 3-strip Technicolor films) to be indescribably beautiful.
Books have the best graphics (followed closely by nethack)
(Relatedly, my disappointment started when they pronounced the dragon's name as Smah-oog, and I've been calling him Smorg for years. The version of the story that happened in my imagination with my personal tastes taken into account FTW)
It's not intrinsically bad, it's just harder to use.
If people liked realistic Instagram would be dead.
I'd agree if you were trying to display reality, like in a documentary, or a reality TV show. But when it comes to fictional settings, people wearing prosthetics, props made of plastic, etc. I think exposing the whole of reality certainly has potential downsides.
Simple. People don't watch movies for reality.
Just like how people prefer photos with bokeh in shots where in real life it would never appear.
My experience was that for the first half hour, I felt that some scenes were there just to please the 3D movie. A tree that goes into the screen, a big rock on top of the characters to give perspective, a bird that goes to the depth of view...
Also, the first part (will avoid spoilers), all the CGI was noticeable, and also felt the gamma filters were way too high (fake HDR ?).
For the rest of the movie I did not feel it, so I either forgot about it and decided to enjoy the movie, or maybe they did stop using the tricks.
(Spoilers ahead.)
Bilbo and the dwarves were caricatures - overdoing their roles as a surprised hobbit and a fat, funny disney character with a single personality. (Seriously - there's a fat one, a stupid one, an Irish one, an old one etc...)
That would be ok, since The Hobbit is a children's book, but this is certainly not a children's film. I did not like the mixture of comedy and seriousness that was attempted. Whereas LOTR (which I really enjoyed) had moments of Merry and Pippin being funny, these dwarves never seemed to stop taking everything as a joke (obviously apart from Mr. Serious Dwarf). Some bits were genuinely funny (dwarves with Elrond), but they're in obviously safe environments.
If the overarching plot is to kill a dragon, there are some difficulties when trying to stretch it out into 9 hours of films. Sauron had a command structure and it was perfectly possible to kill mini-bosses (Saruman) and get some feel that you're doing something useful. A dragon has no such web of power, so the various evils they vanquish in the film appear disconnected and irrelevant to the main plot.
Gandalf has seemingly random amounts of power at any given time. I guess this also cropped up in LOTR, but it was much more obvious here.
Graphics for graphics sake. Rock battles?
Gollum was good.
From what I've gathered the dragon will be dealt with in the second movie (hence the name), while the third movie will deal with the aftermath, as well as being padded with content from the LOTR appendix. Personally I think the first movie will make more sense in light of the sequels, though that of course doesn't really defend the somewhat lackluster nature of it.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Hobbit-There-Back-Again/dp/0618150... or see the end of Return of the King where Frodo adds the "Lord of the Rings" title under Bilbo's title.
http://www.oldmagazinearticles.com/pdf/Talkie_Town_USA.pdf (apologies for the low quality of the scan):
"Only last winter an extensive poll of film fans showed them relatively unsatisfied with sound pictures and desirous of once more seeing silent pictures."
We also have Aldous Huxley (http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/sound.cfm, about halfway down):
Silence is Golden
I have just been, for the first time, to see and hear a picture talk. "A little late in the day," my up-to-date readers will remark, with a patronizing and contemptuous smile. "This is 1930; there isn't much news in talkies now. But better late than never."
Better late than never? Ah, no! There, my friends, you're wrong. This is one of those cases where it is most decidedly better never than late, better never than early, better never than on the stroke of time....
I bet I could find similar reaction to the introduction of color movies, colour television, GUIs for personal computers, etc. (did anybody ever critique Gutenberg for 'form over function' on his bibles?)
In all cases, we had to discover how and when to properly use new technologies. This will not be different.
Also, I expect we will eventually go beyond 48 Hz, as 48 Hz is slightly below human perception thresholds. http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Flicker_fusion gives limits around 60Hz. Those are for bright lights, large areas, and peripheral. You will not normally see that with old-syle television sets and won't see it in most homes, either, but in cinemas, one can easily get there.
48 FPS is probably analogous to 3D, rather than talkies. When the talkies came along there was a rapid transition: the big five studios were exclusively shooting talkies about two years after the Jazz Singer was released. Whereas 3D is more prevalent today, but some film-makers choose not to use it. There is not quite the same demand by the audience.
I mentioned this earlier, but I'd love to see a screening of The Hobbit with 24fps for dialog and 48fps for action.
The Hobbit - good or bad, it doesn't matter - is really just the first of the next generation. It means makeup artists and prop creators have to step up the quality based on complaints like those in TFA, but that's technology for you.
Timeline:
• Silent movies: Tell all the stories.
• Sound!: Tell al the stories again, no one will watch a silent movie.
• Color: Tell all the stories again.
• Style change: Never look like a play. Look "real". Tell all the stories again.
• Decent CGI: Tell all the stories using special effects again.
• High frame rate? 3D? HD?: If one of these hits the industry is set for the next decade.
␄
[1] This is where I came in. Movies from before the '70s have either a video sitcom or musical theater look that does not engage me as "real".
[2] My 18 year old daughter can't really engage in a movie filmed before about 2000 if it has special effects. They are just too campy looking to her. She can tolerate some cinematography from the mid '90s, but before that it looks cheap and fake to her.
There may be older films that have good cinematography but the viewer is still going to judge it as 'old' before they get to appreciate that.
The LA Times ran an article[1] arguing lack of interest in old movies stems largely from new films having a social function that is similar to fashion. I'm inclined to agree. Therefore, while 48+fps might become the fashion, I doubt it's required to retain interest in new movies as referenced in the great-grandparent post.
I certainly wasn't around when The Seventh Seal was filmed, yet I find it astonishingly beautiful and impressive (which makes the parody film De Düva even better.) Of course, I can't talk about it the way one talks about the weather or of theater run films-- "Did you see Argo yet? I want to check it out, the trailer looked cool."
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jul/14/entertainment/la-ca-...
Speak for yourself... there is a certain art form in black and white movies that can never be reproduced in color (for example, great use of shadows). Many people enjoy watching the great classic masterpieces. It's a shame more movies are not made this way.
> In the opening hour of The Hobbit shown in 3D HFR – I don’t recall hearing a single sigh, or laugh. Not one.
Okay? Correlation does not imply causation. Maybe the audience of the 3D HFR show was more Tolkien and/or cinema fans that were taking the movie less lightheartedly, or were more introverted. And what does this even mean to say? The related point further on saying that the movie is too comedic - and in the wrong places - doesn't serve his premise any better.
I hadn't read much from the perspective of those against HFR, but if this is the only real argument, I think it's time to start pushing. There's no reason not to have all the visual information we can, and lower technology-imposed limitations. If filmmakers actually think that stuttering and blurs improve a movie, they can still add them! That's no reason to limit the technology, though.
For the record, my experience was similar. It was hard to shake the "home movie" feeling as I was watching it, and suspension of disbelief was a little harder. However, I recognized this as a personal limitation, and I was able to enjoy the visuals and the experience regardless. I don't think that seeing more movies like this could be anything but an improvement.
Firstly, I normally come away from a 3D film with my eyes feeling extremely strained, but the Hobbit was the first film where this wasn't the case, which was a refreshing change.
There were a couple scenes, particularly at the start, that somehow felt weird as described in the article thanks to the HFR, but to say it stopped people laughing at the jokes seems pretty extreme, that wasn't the case with the audience I was sat in.
In other scenes, the benefits were clear: Panning landscape style shots were judder free. You could actually see what was happening in action scenes, rather than the usual mess of blur. (Made worse in many films by their insistence on making things more "exciting" by going into shaky-cam mode)
Ultimately, I think what we will settle on is a variable frame rate set-up, where talking heads, indoor scenes with little action can be shown in 24fps to prevent the "soap opera" look that people hate, and action/high motion scenes can reap the benefits of 48fps.
The 'unwashed masses' seems to be at least indifferent, and in many cases, positive about it.
I think that sometimes, the fact that the medium you are using is not perfect/too realistic makes your imagination do a lot of the work, and that makes it easier to be immersed in the experience you are having.
That is why I jump into immersion really quickly when playing Mario or even more so reading a book, but a game like Skyrim has a really hard time hooking me in.
I think realism may in some cases be a kind of a red herring when striving for immersion.
For example, I, as a programmer, can be completely immersed in what I am doing without my text editor being "realistic" (whatever a realistic text editor could be :) ).
I think that the state of "flow" and the immersion in some kind of experience (movie, game, book) go hand-in-hand.
I think it's OK if we discuss it for a little while.
The objective fact is that the existing 24 fps standard blows goats. What can/should be done to improve upon it?
The porn producers already had to confront similar issues to some extent, when HD started to ramp up. Nobody wants to go back to fuzzy porn, do they? :-P
I thought it was pretty magical for a movie to flow like this, I felt the 3D was well focused and in many cases hard to notice (As it should be), and not just a layer slapped on.
All in all I'd rather watch it in 3DHFR first, and 2D later, to make a fair judgement on whether it's a good thing.
I agree that in the start I was a bit focused on the looks of it all, but after a few minutes it added to my immersion rather than detract from it.
Isn't it possible that the reason you're distracted by this new way of doing things, is because it is in fact new, and different from other movies? If everything looked like this, we can focus on the right things instead.
I thought it was pretty damn magical.
It's quite possible the 3D film-making is going to see more advances both in the theater and during filming.
The 48p/3D was memorizing. I think it will take another 2 years to work out the kinks and a decade or more to really explore what can be done with it.
Furthermore, the audience and myself were all gasping and laughing etc unlike what the author states with his anecdotal 'proof,' clouded by preconceived notions and order bias.
Anyway, I haven't seen the Hobbit or any HFR movie. But I do think that while extra realism in the filming process will ultimately be a boon to the art form, currently there are a lot of challenges. The realism just makes me feel like I'm on a set with a bunch of costumed actors and props rather than in the film's universe with its characters.
Realism currently makes the suspension of disbelief harder rather than easier. But when they finally figure out how to overcome that, watch out, because it will be awesome.
Like the author, this pretty much ruined the movie for me, but I'm not prepared to totally write off HFR. I think directors will just need to learn how to properly adjust filming techniques to keep HFR feeling like a movie, similarly to how they had to learn to incorporate green screens without having an obvious separation between the actors and the CGI (which a lot of directors still get wrong).
In addition to looking lifeless and flat, everything seemed to move too quickly, and human movement looked cartoonishly fluid (curiously, CGI creatures looked more real, and people looked like CGI creatures). I found the scenes that looked best were the ones in slow-motion, and I can't help but feel the whole movie would have been improved through using effects to slow down everything.
In my opinion this will happens all the time new technology will be use in Films. The peoples just need time to accept it. I hope that future Films (especially 3D) will be made in with 60 FPS !
This is a natural step forward in terms of quality of medium and before long will seem normal.
But I did see the clip of the Bilbo and Gollum scene played on Colbert the other week. Martin Freeman (who I've loved in other stuff, like Sherlock) was fucking terrible.
If the calibre of delivery is like that, I'm expecting unexpected rubbish. Even one of the scenes from McKellen Colbert played was pretty shit. Maybe I'm expecting too much from what is meant to be a kids book.
My point is, forget FPS -- if the acting is shit, nothing will help.
The porn industry thought HiDef was going to be the end of their career, since suddenly everyone could see that the porn actresses were really just people with makeup on. Porn certainly hasn't died yet. Cinema won't either.
(Sorry for comparing porn to cinema)
I believe Jackson is onto something here, and I bet in a few years HFR 3D will be the gold standard of movie presentation in theaters. We may begin to see HFR take off in the home theater, but that's a less certain prospect. In terms of cinema, though, this is the future. And goofs like this article writer can protest all they want but audiences are used to the frame rates of games and it's only natural to wonder "why can I play Halo at 60+ fps and then I have to watch a movie at 24fps?" 24fps is a relic of a bygone age. Kids won't have the nostalgia factor here to cloud their judgement.
After a while we didn't really notice that anymore, so I could imagine we will adjust to HFR, too. Also I suppose film making will have to adjust (lighting, makeup and so on).
A problem could be that we get to watch a lot of TV, but not that much HFR movies in the cinema. The Hobbit will be the second movie I'll watch in the cinema in two years...
Anyways, I will watch it in HFR 3d in the cinema because I don't have the opportunity to watch it like that at home.
Or maybe I just didn't like the movie that much and picking on HFR in 3D is the easiest way to express my dislike.
It's early days, and there may be ways to work around the problems.
For example, with it showing too much sharp detail (too much for the viewer to take in at once), there may be ways to keep certain sharp detail while reducing the rest of it.
>In the opening hour of The Hobbit shown in 3D HFR – I don’t recall hearing a single sigh, or laugh. Not one.
He wasn't at the screening I was at as I did all of those things... oh and muttering "Fuck!"
The one things people are not mentioning is how the high frame rate fixes the 3d dimming problem.
I'm seeing this in 3D HFR tomorrow (and incidentally my first 3D movie as well). Will be interesting to see if I share his sentiment.
Two questions I relevance:
1.) What was the order you watched the different [quality of] films in? 2.) Is it possible that the 48fps version (with its inclusion of elements that do not directly add to the story) was shot in such a manner specifically for the substantial number of psychedelic-using filmgoers?
The genius of Tolkien is in the detail of his world, a detail no author I have read is yet to emulate.
This is a common theme among HFR detractors: The fact that "It's too real" when viewing Middle Earth is a helluva left-handed insult.
Another poster hit on a point of contention that has always bothered me, which is the "I can correlate it with something different (soap operas, football, etc), therefore it is worse". That is not a credible position, yet it is returned to again and again in the piece.
Better technology always has the capacity to present worse (48fps can be 24fps if you want, and you can vaseline up high definition to the point of achieving low definition), while the opposite is not true.