Have a read of this article about a preview screening of The Hobbit - apparently it looks like crap, because it was shot at 48fps.
The quote that got me was
"The sets looked like sets. I've been on sets of movies on the scale of The Hobbit, and sets don't even look like sets when you're on them live... but these looked like sets. The other comparison I kept coming to, as I was watching the footage, was that it all looked like behind the scenes video. The magical illusion of cinema is stripped away completely."
Perhaps the hyper reality of video has finally come back to bite them! But Jackson is a bit nutty - I think he's one of these people like Lucas who can't wait until everything is created inside a PC and we don't need reality or actors.
Kind of ironic that the reality of 48fps is getting him now.....the awe and other worldliness of film would have avoided all this
Scot
Read my science fiction novel The Forest of Life at https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01D38AV4K
This is all very much an I-WARNED-THEM-ALL moment for me. Well, I didn't really warn THEM, of course, but long ago I posted how higher frame rates in film would make it look like video and that is exactly what happens. You can actually see this for yourself on any Elmo or Goko viewer that has a revolving prism. If you rewind your footage through the viewer at a high rate, it looks just like video because video breaks up motion into either 50 or 60 increments (depending on PAL or NTSC, respectively) and that creates a silky smooth motion that is closer to the way the eye sees and less like a series of separate photos strung together to create the illusion of motion. Douglass Trumball experimented with this long on with his ShowScan process that used high frame rates for thrill rides. He had a film called "Brain Storm" that was supposed to switch back and forth between 24fps and the higher frame rate of 48-64fps (I can't remember which), depending on whether the audience was witnessing the "movie" parts of the story or experiencing the "mind link" parts of the story. Ultimately the movie got made using 24fps for all and simply switching between wide screen and standard 4:3. Actually, the movie is quite good and I'm glad he didn't use the high speed gimmick to fuck it up.
Anyway, I digress. Yes, the new 48fps version no doubt looks like HD video, only in 3D. The article says that the high frame rate effect doesn't really work unless you get up to 72fps but, honestly, I can not imagine it helping things at all. That said, super 8 at 30fps seems to be a nice balance. Smoother motion, more resolution yet still looking like a bunch of photos strung together to create the illusion of motion.
I remember too Roger you posting about seeing some talk show broadcast in HD for the first time and you could even see the zits on the hosts face or something - that kind of resolution doesn't help either.
Maybe this could be a turning point in the film vs video thing? Although costs will still keep alot of productions firmly in video land
Scot
Read my science fiction novel The Forest of Life at https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01D38AV4K
Well, the MOST annoying thing is that my ex-wife and daughter watch television on an HD monitor that has something called "motion smoothing" which makes everything look like video, even if it was shot on film 60 years ago. They INSIST on keeping it activated and it is very, very disturbing to watch classic movies like "The Maltese Falcon" and it all looks like black and white video tape. Even weirder is watching westerns like "The Magnificent Seven" and it looks like color video. All the motion is very smooth and lifelike and, ironically, very cheap looking. I'm just not sure that the intent of motion pictures was to simulate reality. But, I don't know. Maybe I'm just old. My daughter loves the way it looks with the Motion Smoothing function on. Oh well.
It's astonishing how some people think this looks better. The stills I've seen honestly look more like those Final Fantasy movies. The insanely limited color pallette, the greasy, plastic hue. The use of aftereffects to add a glow to everything like goosing week old veggies with MSG....
Frankly, I think cameron and jackson's films succeed despite themselves, and one the the main problems is the obviousness of the CG everything. This simply doesn't seem to register with them. Reading about Cameron's work on avatar, so proud of getting every little pseudoscience detail out of his fake planet, and then seeing the results, which to me looked like the airbrushed side of a van, it all makes this 48fps routine make sense. From their perspective.
I'm starting to wonder if there's some analog to color blindness in the inability to see the difference between the texture of image in digital vs. film.
In fact it will go full circle - we'll get saturated with video and then someone with a big name will shoot something big and lovely on film and everyone will rediscover how beautiful it is........yawn yawn yawn
Read my science fiction novel The Forest of Life at https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01D38AV4K
My sympathies, Roger! It reminds me of the early (and not so early!) days of Colour TV... whenever I made a House Call I would carefully adjust Contrast, Brightness and Colour Saturation for a high quality result, only to find on the next call that Colour was up to its limit again!
The reason? "It's a Colour set; I've paid for Colour and I'm going to get full value!"
Thank god that Colour controls are now in the Menus rather than a knob on the set front or a button on the remote.
Luckily, nobody but the guys who made it will see it at 48fps.
As for that motion smoothing stuff goes, I hate it as well. It only works when the motion is fairly slow and even then, there's motion estimation issues. It just makes everything look cheap.
What I have trouble comprehending is that how come Jackson didn't realize one very crucial thing when he described the new frame rate as making it seem like one was really there and it was reality ---
If I were to see people running with swords and shields out on the fields, I wouldn't think that I'm in the middle of some epic fantasy story -- my first reaction would be, "those live action role players look funny".
So is it really that big surprise if the sets look like sets -- when they in reality are sets? :o
I watched the trailer after reading this thread, while I find that it doesn't look too bad for the most part as long as there isn't a lot of movement, its the scenes where even a modest amount of movement like someone pulling a sword out of a sheath etc look extremely silly.
Too bad, I bet most people will love it though, its that way in music videos right now. They're all on video and look like college first year productions but I think if they were shot on the mass populus would refer to that as an "old fashioned look"
Also interesting to me is how much the Look detracts from the people in the shot.
Maybe it's because it's new, but it seems like there's so much distrust in just shooting the damn thing instead of processing the heck out of it.
Oh, virtually every movie visually sickens me now. I'm not kidding, all the digital manipulation physically makes me feel unwell. It's getting worse now that film acquisition and prints are getting pushed to the wayside. I know a guy that gets so many compliments on his shoots, people ask how he gets such an amazing look all the time... His response is something to the effect of "frame, shoot, print". It doesn't even occur to people that his look was achieved on set using traditional technology. I told him about how it's becoming routine to light the set really flat, over expose one or two stops and digitally pull down everything you want darker and he actually got mad about it! Then there's jerks like Jean Clement Sorret, who insist on the director/DP doing the opposite of what they want specifically so he can manipulate it in post. Seriously, the script says an actor is to walk into a shadow, but he'd say light it flat & bring up the lights on dimmers across the board as they walk and he'd digitally darken everything. It's so alien and disorienting. The last movie I saw in a theater that didn't make me sick was about five years ago. It was also the absolute last time I saw a major (albeit low-budget) release that didn't have a single frame get touched by anything digital. I didn't even know of that till later. It seems that even common shots where you'd never expect any reason have digital trickery at all has digital composites, digital grading, CGI etc. Is it REALLY progress when you just want two people standing in a room talking, but it took a week to piece together? It totally takes away from the story & the whole experience.
I agree Wado - but I'll tell you what else bugs me with the whole shooting/manipulation thing - is when they downgrade film to look like video.
I saw Animal Kingdom last night in a cinema - and I think it's a superb film, but I thought it was shot on video because the colours were so flat - I honestly thought it was a Canon 5D or something like that - and got a real shock when I saw Kodak in the credits.
Have you seen The Wrestler - I think that was shot on Super 16 with an A-minima -- and it looked really nice and natural (in a filmic way) --> not like video -- but because of the small camera it still had alot of the maneuverability associated with video
Scot
Read my science fiction novel The Forest of Life at https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01D38AV4K
