OK, just back from the cinema. Wow. This may get longwinded, apologies in advance.
Once in a while I feel a little embarrassment at being Mr. Middle Of The Road all the damn time. My politics are centrist-ish, I'm pro consensus and peacemaking, I dislike extremism, I like vanilla, etc. And guess what? I loved 50% of the cinematography in this film, and didn't love the other 50%. So once again I can't give a hard 'no sir I don't like it', and I can't give a "yay HFR" either. Not on the whole film. But I can give both opinions for BITS of the film. Gah...
I didn't expect that HFR would produce such schizophrenic results. People have alluded to the way it supports some types of shots while detracting from others, but I didn't realise the distinction would be so sharp. Half the shots work unbelievably well, the other half are brain-hurtingly videotastic.
I completely agree with those who have said that it's nothing to do with lighting, quality of sets or costumes or any of that sort of thing. And it's absolutely not an arbitrary "association" with cheap productions - sorry TMBountyHunter, you were way off the mark there IMO. The shots that don't work DO NOT WORK and it's not because anything IN the shots looks cheap...it's the actual footage, it just plain looks jarringly wrong. Lighting, performances, staging etc are as good as any of the shots that work - costumes, sets etc are all stellar; there's very little of the styrofoam statue look in this film, unlike LOTR. It's not colour grading. It's that half the shots just don't work.
As far as I could tell the polarisation is due to the HFR working unbelievably well to improve the clarity and detail in some categories of shots without subtracting anything aesthetically - while in other categories it adds little and DOES subtract from the aesthetics.
The good:
* tracking shots both aerial and ground based look fantastic; most of the many shots where the camera pulls back or trucks forward chasing the characters are just great
* wide shots with a locked camera and deep, deep backgrounds absolutely justify the "future of cinema" hype - dear GOD were those beautiful, especially Rivendell and various landscapes. The clarity and detail has to be seen to be believed. Utter works of art, those shots...just wow. I can't say it enough - revelatory!
* action scenes CAN look good but I found there was some patchiness. Possibly the fast intercutting of types of shots which work with others that don't
* still camera middle to close shots where characters just talk and don't move work fine...better than fine really.
The bad:
* panning and tilting shots; really anything where the camera moves laterally instead of longitudinally, basically. They go videotastic straight away
* character closeups where someone turns or moves at anything other than slow pacing speed. Same effect as a camera move. Makes me wonder whether Galadriel's slow stalk around the meeting table was for camera/frame-rate reasons
* shots in which foreground objects with edges give way to middle-distance, as with, say, a reveal of a path behind a boulder. Instant video look again.
Consistently through the film I found that just as I thought I might have adjusted to the HFR look, another shot would pop up that looked as nasty as ever.
None of it destroyed my enjoyment of the film at all, I had a great time; loved the film and had the sense most of the audience did too. Plenty of laughter at the jokes and nobody left the cinema through the running time, even for a toilet break. It's very long, but it's not 'Amadeus'. No fidgeting problems.
I think my tentative opinion would be that HFR should be used for some kinds of shots and until some way is found to make it look good in the others, they should be shot 24FPS. Unfortunately, eliminating staccato motion in pans is one of the big draws for filmmakers, I guess...you absolutely can see insane amounts of detail; it's just not worth the tradeoff in believability, IMO.
