The Hobbit - starts filming March 21

[Kit Rae]

My TV does several grades of smoothing, from normal > faintly creepyvision > creepyvision lite > creepyvision > megacreepyvision. They look different-ish, but in degree, not kind. Points on a spectrum.

This one is on the extreme side, just like every other tv I have watched that has this feature. Everything has the smooth, flatly lit, video look. Impossible to watch a DVD or Blue Ray movie on that tv. It destroys the look of film lighting and has the annoying effect of flattening the contrast.

I don't equate that look with HFR though. The HFR 3D Imax I saw had a real look like I was sitting right there with the characters. 240hz does not look "real", but I can see how some people can equate the two, especially considering how some of the early scenes in Bilbo's House were somewhat flatly lit, making the brain see "video". Even in 24fps I noticed that, but most of the rest of the film was not lit that way.

 

[VortexRunner]

Would you love the new, improved, hi-def version of the Mona Lisa? The shots that work are great - the ones that don't are an abomination. It's wildly inconsistent. How you can claim to get used to it is beyond me. Overall it's a pretty significant hit to the aesthetics of filmgoing.

I guess we're seeing that some folk just don't care as long as there's 'splosions? Sorry, but that's about the same level of remark as your jab.

I'm actually one of the few people who didn't like The Avengers and that had explosions coming out the wazoo. The film was just some trash. I think Kit summed it up nicely. It felt like you were there with them, not any 'video' look. Loving film myself and studying the art in Uni, it's ridiculous to suggest that it is a "pretty significant hit to the aesthetics of filmgoing". The great artform of film is still engaged and produced much the same way, and the format at which we view the films have changed several times - from the gimmick Anaglyph 3-D to the proper 3D we have now, neither has greatly affected the success of the film industry and the aversion some people have to 3D today has had little effect on the numbers films attract.

 

[rodneyfaile]

Would you love the new, improved, hi-def version of the Mona Lisa? The shots that work are great - the ones that don't are an abomination. It's wildly inconsistent. How you can claim to get used to it is beyond me. Overall it's a pretty significant hit to the aesthetics of filmgoing.

I guess we're seeing that some folk just don't care as long as there's 'splosions? Sorry, but that's about the same level of remark as your jab.

I think HFR is just a better medium. If your "set" doesn't look good in HFR, maybe you should step your game up, the same as if blu ray or hd makes your special effects look less special. Yes HFR looks less like film. Just like 24 fps looks smoother than 12 fps.

To me, HFR is another step towards looking less like film and more real. I like movies I can escape into and forget I'm watching a movie. I can still appreciate and watch an old Buster Keaton movie, but also recognize the advantage of HFR, even though it may put some pressure on movie makers to have better "sets".

I think poorly done CGI is more of a detriment to the future of movies than HFR. HFR is just the next logical step.

 

[Treadwell]

I don't think it's fair to compare this with TV smoothing settings. That is something that alters the original intended look of a film, which I oppose and reject out of hand. For better or worse, HFR is the intended look of this film, so it is something I try to give a chance.

 

[benhs1898]

I think HFR is just a better medium. If your "set" doesn't look good in HFR, maybe you should step your game up, the same as if blu ray or hd makes your special effects look less special. Yes HFR looks less like film. Just like 24 fps looks smoother than 12 fps.

To me, HFR is another step towards looking less like film and more real. I like movies I can escape into and forget I'm watching a movie. I can still appreciate and watch an old Buster Keaton movie, but also recognize the advantage of HFR, even though it may put some pressure on movie makers to have better "sets".

I think poorly done CGI is more of a detriment to the future of movies than HFR. HFR is just the next logical step.

HFR could be used as an advantage for some films but not for everything. That is all I will say about it.

 

[Nwerke]

Weeell...I wouldn't do it if the look wasn't inescapably similar!

RF, what do you mean by 'step my game up'? Buy a better set? It's only a year old, not TOTR but better than midrange.

It's very clear that HFR CAN look great - as I've said since going to my screening. Half the time it does. The other half is SO HORRIBLE that I struggle a bit. :lol

The inconsistency has been pointed out by a few pro critics, so I have some clue that I'm not the only person seeing it...

 

[Nwerke]

I'm actually one of the few people who didn't like The Avengers and that had explosions coming out the wazoo. The film was just some trash.

Right there with you as it happens. Long time Whedon fan here but this was by the numbers. Some funny lines, yes. Forgettable everything else. I've tried to like it but it's time to admit defeat.

I think Kit summed it up nicely. It felt like you were there with them, not any 'video' look.

This is one of many sentiments re all this that continue to baffle me.

That's what I associate with video. That 'right there with them' feeling. Is this an NTSC/PAL thing, maybe? We're a PAL country. :lol

Loving film myself and studying the art in Uni, it's ridiculous to suggest that it is a "pretty significant hit to the aesthetics of filmgoing".

If something looks like crud, it looks like crud. Modern 3D is glorious; a huge improvement on the old techniques. Film still looks like film, but it's enhanced.

By contrast, 48FPS looks hideous in character closeups, mid-distance shots and pans or tilts. It looks utterly fantastic in trucking shots, locked-camera character stuff where people don't move, and shots with deep backgrounds. That's, overall, a mess, not an enhancement.

 

[MooMooEgg]

So I finally watched the HFR version, and overall, I did not like it. There was still that unnatural smoothness when the camera was panning side to side (which is my biggest issue with 240hz) - I just dislike the way it looks. When you're turning your head and looking around, it isn't ultra smooth like that. Your eyes need to focus on a specific point, and every time they adjust, there's a natural "choppiness" that occurs. To me, the HFR is smoothing out that choppiness, and it was messing with my head - The first 20 minutes of the film was giving me a small headache.

On the plus side, however, I did see a rather large increase in detail. The backgrounds looked much more vivid, and (very) slow pans of scenery looked especially lovely. But sometimes I could see too much detail. When Dwalin had his axes on his back as the party was heading into Rivendell, I could see they clearly not metal and looked like props, which took me out of the scene just a bit.

CG sequences (Radagast on his rabbit sled, for example) fit a bit better in the real backgrounds with HFR than the standard frame rate versions (perhaps because the unnaturalness of the HFR complemented the fakeness of the CGI). Azog, too, looked a little bit better when compared to what he looked like in the SFR.

I will admit that the entire sequence with the dwarves and Gandalf escaping the goblin cave looked LEAGUES better in HFR. You could see what everyone was doing and how they were reacting very clearly, since I remember the sequence being a slightly blurred mess in SFR. But that alone, sadly, cant make me give a thumbs up to this HFR experiment. Maybe 48 frames is too much. Maybe 30 or 35 frames per second could increase detail but not create such an artificial look?

 

[VortexRunner]

Nwerke, you are a hard man to please!

Yes, maybe in the future they should have specific scenes in HFR and the rest standard!

 

[rodneyfaile]

...what do you mean by 'step my game up'? Buy a better set? It's only a year old.....

No, lol

I was referring to the movie set. I think the better technology becomes able to reproduce images with higher definition and higher frame rates, the more detailed movie makers will have to put into their sets, props, stuntwork, and special effects. They will have to step their game up.

Sorry, for any confusion. Was multitasking while posting. Lol

 

[Too Much Garlic]

I just don't get why 48fps has anything to do with sharpness over 24fps. It makes sense to me that it is smoother regarding movements, but where does sharpness and detail richness fit into that at all?

Scenes in older movies shot at 200fps for slow motion scenes weren't sharper or more detailed - if it had been run back in full speed rather than normal 24fps speed, why should it then suddenly appear sharper and more detailed?

Seems more like the type of lenses and filtering used.

Or am I getting this all messed up?

 

[Jedi2016]

I just don't get why 48fps has anything to do with sharpness over 24fps. It makes sense to me that it is smoother regarding movements, but where does sharpness and detail richness fit into that at all?

Scenes in older movies shot at 200fps for slow motion scenes weren't sharper or more detailed - if it had been run back in full speed rather than normal 24fps speed, why should it then suddenly appear sharper and more detailed?

Seems more like the type of lenses and filtering used.

Or am I getting this all messed up?

The general consensus is that they added extra motion blur to the 24p version to compensate for the lack of blur in the 48p version. Of course, no one can really prove this until the home video versions are released, assuming we get a 48p version at home at all.

 

[Too Much Garlic]

So, they deliberately blurred the image for the 24fps version. Makes sense if they want people to prefer the 48fps version.

 

[Kit Rae]

You don't have to blur 24fps. What people perceive as blur is simply the frame judder effect of 24fps. It's a stutter of the image that does not allow you to see detail clearly when an image starts to move fast. Take every other frame out of 48 and you have 24.

The general consensus is that they added extra motion blur to the 24p version to compensate for the lack of blur in the 48p version. Of course, no one can really prove this until the home video versions are released, assuming we get a 48p version at home at all.

Blu-ray does not support 48fps in 2D or 3D. None of the current tv's do either. The whole point of HFR was to upgrade the image quality to give theaters something that you can't get in the home formats anyway.

 

[Kit Rae]

Worth posting Peter Jackson's statements.

"“I’m fascinated by reactions. I’m tending to see that anyone under the age of 20 or so doesn’t really care and thinks it looks cool, not that they understand it but they often just say that 3D looks really cool. I think 3D at 24 frames is interesting, but it’s the 48 that actually allows 3D to almost achieve the potential that it can achieve because it’s less eye strain and you have a sharper picture which creates more of the 3-dimensional world.”

“Warner Bros. were very supportive.They just wanted us to prove that the 24 frame version would look normal, which it does, but once they were happy with that, on first day, when we had to press that button that said ’48 frames’ even though on that first day we started shooting at 48 FPS, you could probably say there wasn’t a single cinema in the world that would project the movie in that format. It was a big leap of faith.

“The big thing to realize is that it’s not an attempt to change the film industry. It’s another choice. The projectors that can run at 48 frames can run at 24 frames – it doesn’t have to be one thing or another. You can shoot a movie at 24 frames and have sequences at 48 or 60 frames within the body of the film. You can still do all the shutter-angle and strobing effects. It doesn’t necessarily change how films are going to be made. It’s just another choice that filmmakers have got and for me, it gives that sense of reality that I love in cinema.”

 

[Jedi2016]

Blu-ray does not support 48fps in 2D or 3D. None of the current tv's do either. The whole point of HFR was to upgrade the image quality to give theaters something that you can't get in the home formats anyway.

I'd be surprised if they didn't at least attempt some version of it, even if it's only some kind of PC-playable X264 file.

Besides, there's still the option in your TV if it supports it. SmoothMotion or TruMotion or whatever, will take it up to 60fps. Not ideal, but better than 24fps.

 

[Kit Rae]

Increasing the refresh rate or doubling frames is not the same as real frames.

I'm sure they will come out with BR and other players that will play 48fps - if it catches on. This was the test film, and despite the fact that a lot of people saw it in that format and it made money, and the younger audience liked it, the opinion of the vast majority of the public and reviewers was negative. They still have a long way to go before it warrants and industry change for home players.

 

[Jedi2016]

Increasing the refresh rate or doubling frames is not the same as real frames.

That's why I said "it's not ideal". But I will do it if I have to.. seriously, the 24p version will never look right to me.

 

[Paul Andrew]

Saw it again today. Upon second viewing Azog is much better. On the first shot I dismissed him as a big cartoon orc. This time I actually watched him, instead of reading the subtitles every time he was on screen. I think he's almost as well done as Gollum. His eyes are creepy, his facial animations are really slick and I got the distinct impression they used mocap to animate his face rather than hand animating. His skin texture is super detailed and the musculature of his neck and shoulders when talking/yelling/growling also animates really well. He is still clearly not an actor, but it's one of the better CG creations I've seen on screen easily.

 

[Nwerke]

Me too, 48fps again, just back. I think HFR may be growing on me. Azog annoys me only because he shouts so damn much. :lol He really is well executed, as are the wargs. The inconsistency of the video 'look' wasn't nearly as noticeable this time...interesting...