Debra Kaufman's Review of The Hobbit in 48 fps 3D

I would like to add some food for thought on this discussion of HFR. Please note that I’ve already harped on this process in an article from March of 2011. http://www.explore3dtv.com/article/16046/What-s-Right-and-Wrong-with-3D-Tod...

Here it goes… When the human brain no longer detects flicker caused by the shutter in a motion picture; whatever is presented becomes a more accurate (realistic) representation of what was actually shot. If anything within in the shot is artificial, the brain will perceive as artificial. This includes lighting, mattes, CG, make-up, hair, costumes, model sets and yes, even actors acting out a scene.

At 24 fps (even with the double flash of a projector) the brain silently detects the shutter and unconsciously works in the background trying to differentiate between the fine lines of reality versus a succession of moving images. Because the brain is busy working this out, our ability to suspend disbelief is greatly eased when viewing dramatic material.

Grant it, in order for the grand illusion of a dramatic motion picture to be believable, many things must first fall into place starting with a great story, perfect casting, good acting, appropriate photography, make-up, costuming, hair, direction, editing, music, score etc. Make no mistake, a good movie is a believable movie – no matter how high the concept.

The shutter, in my opinion, is the very glue that holds the grand illusion of movies together.

Without the black little frames of the shutter moving in and out, any suspension of disbelief is shattered. The shutter chugs forward making the movie actually move forward while adding a sort of organic quality similar to but more important than film grain. The shutter is the magical key that allows us to become absorbed in a good movie. To compare this in the music industry, one of the most magical little secrets of successful rock bands is the Hammond B3 organ, which cannot be digitized or duplicated as the sound reverberates in the brain and moves the song along, holding it together. Along with a good bass rhythm, a good rock song now becomes a great rock song.

One thing many reviewers have said about the HFR 3D experience in ‘The Hobbit’ is that the higher frame rates either distracted them at times or took some getting used to but they liked the movie anyway. I disagree with these types of comments because in order to have a perfect movie, the audience should never be distracted out of the story for even a second. The moment this happens, you’ve lost the audience. Sound mixes in movies can also be distracting. For example I’ve once witnessed an entire audience look over their shoulders as a realistic sound of a breaking glass emitted forcefully from a rear speaker. This is considered poor sound mixing (for feature films – not ride films) because it distracted the viewer from the movie completely for a few seconds – and that is all it takes to ruin it.

I viewed ‘The Hobbit’ in HFR 3D and went in with an open mind but with admittedly low expectations. As a whole, the entire look was non-cinematic yet some of the scenes were absolutely visually stunning in 3D. Because judder and blurring from fast moving action or fast camera pans are problematic with 24 fps filming in general and even more noticeable when shooting stereoscopic 3D; higher frame rates are the technical solution to this problem and this is why James Cameron started this movement with Peter Jackson on board to walk this plank for a feature length dramatic movie shot this way.

HFR 3D can be great for many things and there is a place for it on the big screen. Concert Films, Broadway Shows, Fashion Shows, Theme Park Rides and Sporting Events are perfect for this.

Of course video gamers choose higher frame rates, but video games must not be confused with movies. Even though there are many production similarities between the two, they are different mediums with different types of experiences. Hollywood continuously fails to realize this.

I’ve written some pretty nasty (yet funny) comments on some professional 3D sites in the past regarding HFR and cinema. Things like, As Dolly Parton says, “It takes a lot of money to look this cheap” – boy did that get a reaction because it is true. Some have asked me if I hated Jim Cameron or Peter Jackson and I was taken back a little bit, then pondered the question. The answer is no, I don’t hate either of them. I’m disappointed because they have done some excellent work in the past and I expect more from them. I truly believe that it was not Peter Jackson’s intent for ‘The Hobbit’ to look like a PBS Masterpiece Theater Storybook video drama or to distract the audience from the story. I just have to accept that these are very technical Directors that got caught up in a means to an end to solve judder issues with 3D viewing but forgetting about the aesthetic of what the 24 fps shutter brings to the table.

Because I actually know better and have tried for years to get a break in this industry; things like this do anger me at times and more so because none of these movies are true 3D movies in the first place. Nothing is deep and images never fly off the screen – even if the scene can call for it. 3D of the past 7 years has remained homogenized because good 3D takes longer to set up and the studios won’t spend more money for a 3D movie than a 2D movie, so crews are forced to shoot at the same breakneck pace as usual with little to no room for consultants like me or the few talented veteran Stereographers that know what they are doing. This is why unknowledgeable crews and terrible 3D camera rigs have come into existence. There are people calling themselves “Stereographers” making a fortune from 3D and they are all systematically killing the 3D industry by continuously churning out boring, barely 3D content that has numbed audiences to their process all while brainwashing producers, directors and audiences that anything flying off of the screen is a gimmick when the reality is that they can’t pull off these effects without inducing headaches because they don’t know what they are doing! If audiences only knew something better to compare to and demand better…Wishful thinking. They should all watch the adult movie “Erotek Dimensions 3D” on Blu-ray 3D and learn something!

I'd really like to see a more conventional film done in HFR. Something more plot/dialogue-based I suppose.

Marco makes a good point about the colour grading of the movie. Particularly during the first 3rd of the movie (or so) it felt to me like I was watching a cut of the film that hadn't been graded. I put it down to the 48fps and, to some extent, the 3D (which I've never been a big fan of), but perhaps that's just the look they were going for. Not a good one, IMHO.

http://www.stephenblacker.com

I find it strange that somehow 24 fps has been deified. After all, we got 24fps because it was the slowest that we could move film through a projector and still get decent sound -- it had almost nothing to do with its visual quality at all. (When movies were hand cranked, we had faster and slower frame rates - based on notes sent to the projectionists along with the films.) Yet somehow 24 fps has become the end all and be all of watching "a movie", and any change is sacrilege. Weird.

I'm not disputing that watching rather dim, blurry, often grainy images, flashed multiple times each to avoid too bad of a flicker effect, and changed 24 times a second, can't lead one into a dream-like suspension of disbelief. I just think it's been done to death.

I'm one of those people who have been watching movies for way over 1/2 of a century, and I must say I'm pretty bored by most of them. The "movie going experience" is usually rather ... blah. So I'm all for something that can add some interest, some life, back into movies. However, I find most stereo 3D irrelevant or annoying, not because it's 3D but because most stereo 3D we've seen so far is so poorly done: stuttering juddery motion (or limitations on movement to avoid the effect), usually excessively dim and dark because of the low illumnation from today's projectors (often made worse by theaters turning down the brightness in an effort to save money on the expensive replacemnt bulbs), and the weird effects caused by alternate left eye-right eye projection. Add to that some of the things that many people think you can't do when shooting stereo, and you get a more limited visual palette than 2D rather than a richer one. So I for one look forward to something that can actually expand what we can do with cinema rather than restrict it.

I've seen the test footage that James Cameron and Vince Pace shot, and I must say that the difference between 48 fps and 60 fps was stunning. In some of the ARRI footage at various frame rates, I still see judder and flicker at 48 fps. But at 60 fps, for me, it's gone. For most people (but not all), there is a tipping point above 55 fps where you stop seeing an image projected on a screen; and with higher resolution added in, the screen sort of disappears from your consciousness. It can be disconcerting, because suddenly you can be AMONG the actors, almost WITHIN the scene. As Debra said, this isn't a "filmic" look but it's not a "TV look" either -- I've never seen any TV look like that.

The issue for film makers is just that: the techniques that have been developed over the last century for film and the last half century for TV won't work the same way in this new medium. We will have to learn a new visual language to exploit this stuff. Everything from lighting something so that it looks real whether in front of the physical screen or behind it, to the ways that coverage is shot and edits are done -- all have to be carefully re-thought through. Even things like the shutter angle used can affect the way we perceive a scene, in ways we never expected before. The "uneven-ness" of The Hobbit is, I think, (in addition to the limitations still placed by only 48 fps, low brightness, and temporal stereo artifacts) due to Jackson exploring (and learning) what works, what doesn't, and what can be done about it.

That The Hobbit is as good as it is, it seems to me, is a testament to Jackson's (and his team's) genius and talent.

I've yet to see the high frame rate version, but the 3D 24fps really suffered from excessive blurring and stuttering. Of course it was interpolated 24 fps so that mave been the issue. I wonder if P. Jackson took the whole super clear reality thing too far. Why not add in motion blur if its not showing up? I add in motion blur to my 3D animation in post all the time! The other thing about 24 cps is that though it is not how we really see, our eyes naturally filter out so much detail, both near and far. 24 fps in many ways is part of that natural filtering.

Doug Bowker

3D Animation for the Medical and Technical World
http://www.dbowker3d.com

I work in the film industry, in visual effects, and opinion is rather divided here about HFR. Personally so far (having seen the Hobbit) I find it takes me out of the film. Not because it's more realistic, but because I see it as less realistic. For me, all the motion appears sped up slightly. I hoped that it would get better as the film progressed, but all the way up to the end, it kept dragging me out as everyone felt very Keystone Cops. It's weird because interlaced TV never looks like that to me....

As for resolution, there is only so much you need. Avatar was shot and produced at HD (1920x1080) and projected in cinemas at that resolution. Normal film scans are at 2048x1157 (ish). A little extra resolution is useful for some things, but in the vast majority of situations, you would be hard pressed to see the difference between 2k and 4k images. The movie going public won't notice or care. It's just marketing hype beyond a certain point.

I think this speaks to our psychology and our stodginess for tradition as a society.

The fact of the matter is, you have been trained since birth to subconsciously associate 24fps with the grandiose or big-budget. You're associations with 30frames-sec/60-fields-sec* are the low-budget (daytime soaps, late night talk shows, local TV news, etc.

But what if had been swapped all these years? What if you had grown up with cinema having been >30fps and TV at 24? It would be >30fps you'd then associate with big budget productions and 24fps with small-time stuff. Your brain would have made the opposite associations.

Watching 48fps cinema for the first time is like learning a second language for the first time. It's awkward, hard to get used to, and frustrating. But that's only because you've had a completely different second-nature up to that point.

But just like DVORAK keyboards, or non-english languages, they are inherently better, but just not better to you because they are not the familiar. Open your minds to 48fps and 60fps. No one would ever say less pixels are better than more. Why do we insist on this in terms of framerate? HFR is simply better temporal resolution than good ol' 24fps.



* 25fps/50fields-sec for my PAL friends

HFR needs to be stopped in it's tracks immediately. We go to the movies for an immersive visual experience that has been absolutely defined by 24fps. People do not want to see movies in the theatre that have the visual quality of a TV soap opera.

There's almost no benefit at all to HFR. It costs double the amount of frames to render, takes double the amount of frames to roto and track for us VFX artists, and ultimately makes every VFX shot look like it belongs in a saturday morning cartoon. The only given benefit to this new system is that it makes green screen footage a lot easier to key as there is more data to pull mattes from along with crisper motion blur.

There's almost no difference between that and seeing a current film played back with motion interpolation with the 240Hz LCD TVs...it just looks hyper-real and awful, losing the visual "majesty" that we expect from the big screen.

__The Internet Scared me so bad I Downloaded in my pants!__

I have to respectfully disagree. There is a major problem from my eye anyways, with the transition from live action footage to special FX footage. Shooting in 48fps coupled with 120hz or higher, I can't imagine how horrid it would look. The top shot where they are standing in rivendale and the mountains are in the background. It yells fake. I realize most people obviously know they did not build Rivendale, or atleast the backgrounds. The reviews I have read have reflected this, as they are giving it terrible reviews for special fx and movie experience in general. The only thing in my opinion that could save it would be story and that's a long shot considering it is hard to watch.

I was looking at transformers on a TV one day at Best Buy that was running 240hz. It was so awful when you were looking at shots that combined live action with special FX (90 % of movie I might add). A blind rat would walk out of the theatre. This was at 24fps so I can't imagine how bad it would have been @ 48fps.

My 2 cents.

I have to say..I saw it in HFR 3D and I was Blown AWAY! You could see every raindrop every blade of grass or leaf of lettuce. I think that every fantasy movie should eventually jump to 48fps

I wish I had thought to start a Tolkien Club in high school! Then I would have had a legitimate reason to hang out with my nerd friends talking about the politics of Middle Earth.

I'll cautiously be attending an HFR screening soon, and I hope I have a similar experience because I usually end up with eyestrain as well.

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