whoop-de-doo
I saw The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey this past weekend and let me just get this out of the way first: I enjoyed the movie. It was a little long in parts, a little indulgent, but I’m pretty sure the same magic that was present in the Lord of the Rings films was there and I enjoyed my trip back to Middle Earth a great deal.
Why only “pretty sure?”
Because of the friggin’ 48fps. Because of HFR 3D. I hated it. If you saw it this past weekend in HFR and you liked it, turn away now. I’m probably gonna make you mad.
For those of you that don’t know, since the 1920’s movies have been filmed at 24 frames per second. That’s part of why movies look like movies in the first place. Even with the recent change to digital cinema, the standard is still 24fps. What once was a technical limitation has become an aesthetic that, until now, filmmakers have always strived for. The advantage of 24fps? A slightly dreamlike quality that does not mimic reality, but looks real to us all the same. The disadvantage? Fast motions are blurred and pans have what’s called a “jutter” effect–the stuttering that happens when a camera is moving through a scene.
48fps takes care of blurring (sort 0f) and jutter but–I would argue–destroys the particular reality of cinema. A movie ceases to be a movie.
You’ve all seen higher frame rate motion pictures. Video games run at speeds well above 48fps. Soap Operas and old BBC shows run just under. If you have a TV that can see it by turning on the TruMotion or “Smoothing” feature. Maybe you like that. Maybe you’re delusional.
The problem with 48fps is that it looks like something that’s trying desperately to be real and yet undoes it’s own reality in the attempt. Don’t believe people who say watching The Hobbit in HFR is like looking at it through a window. HFR is real in the same way the characters in The Polar Express look real–you know it really should look more real than it actually does, but you can’t put your finger on what it’s missing. It’s the Uncanny Valley of film presentation. Ever seen a Behind The Scenes video? Wanna see a whole movie that looks like that? I wish I hadn’t.
Personally, I can’t understand anyone looking at the HFR and actually preferring it. It was that off-putting to me. It’s the opposite of cinema. I expect scope and cinema when I go to the movies and HFR just makes everything look small and poorly cobbled together. Nothing in the images looks like they’re part of the same world–not the people, not the props, not the CGI. Nothing. Elements of the image are simply at odds with each other.
Nothing interacts properly. When movement doesn’t look sped up it looks stretched or out of focus. Reality is broken, constantly. Cinema tries to create its own reality and you buy into it because it sets its own rules. HFR tries to ape reality but fails because reality doesn’t look or move that way. If it did, I wouldn’t want to stab my eyes with rusty keys while watching it.
“But,” I hear those of you in need of glasses and therapy saying, “You’re getting more. More frames means more information–you’re getting more movie with greater clarity!” Sort of. The problem is your eyes truly do not know where to go because you’re getting so much information from the screen. Yes, for a minute, it’s kind of cool. Landscapes are beautiful. The detail can be incredible. But then, somebody moves. Who cares about clarity when all that information renders the image awful?
They say HFR is the future. James Cameron has already stated his intent to up the ante to 60fps for Avatar 2 & 3. I may be an old curmudgeon who will one day look as ridiculous as those who once declared the introduction of sound to be the death of cinema, but, darn it, this feels like the death of cinema. These are not images I want to see. 48fps took the magic right out of Middle Earth. Think about that. This is a movie with no less than three wizards in it and there was no magic. Magic can’t survive the transition to 48fps. Not for me, anyway.
I take it back. Go see The Hobbit in HFR 3D if you want to see for yourself. Make up your own mind about it. But, if you want to just see the movie and be transported back to Middle Earth? Skip HFR. I’m telling you. Just forget all about it. Unless you want to be on the edge of your seat waiting for the moment when Bilbo reveals he has a twin brother whose been sleeping with his wife (who needs a heart transplant), just go see the movie the only way it can be justifiably called “a movie”–in 24fps.
Written by : Brock Heasley
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I truly think the potential is there, but since it’s in its infacy, no one really knows how to use it effectively. Given time, it may work, but since it is so new, it will take some time to get used to it as well as time for directors to master it properly.
You’re probably right, but is it okay if I don’t want to get used to it? I’m really happy with 24fps. I don’t see a need to change at all. Progress isn’t always progression.
I haven’t seen it, but I know very well what it’s like to watch HFR video.
It’s unreasonable to expect us as an audience to unlearn an instinct we’ve had literally all our lives.
Especially for a fantasy film, coupled with another technology (3d) that we’ve barely gotten used to, or even decided as a whole if we like.
HFR may very well be the future, and had we grown up with it, we might have preferred it.
But there is an easy way to get us used to this… start with television. HD already has a 60fps standard. Start with something easy, news shows. They have low movement, and are as real as you get. Then move on to documentaries, reality shows, comedies, and if by that time you’ve proven people get used to it, you can move on to movies.
But haven’t we been watching HFR our entire lives? News shows are not a new thing. They’ve always been a higher frame rate. I don’t like it. It looks cheap. I have no doubt you can get used to anything, but that’s a lousy reason to get rid of something that’s beautiful.
Still deciding which version to see. I’m guessing that the fast motion pans through the woods at the end of Fellowship of the Ring annoyed Sir PJ as much as they annoyed me. I’ve heard mention that with digital projection there’s the ability to change frame rates repeatedly during the film. If they can make the transition subtle, perhaps the answer will be to switch to HFR only for fast action scenes.
That would be interesting. Kind of a Gladiator-type effect.
I have yet to see The Hobbit, but it sounds to me like taking a nice Monet and painting over it with meticulous rendering of each blade of grass and each leaf on every tree. Sure, you get “more” information visually but at what cost artistically?
Marc, that’s a brilliant analogy. Dang. I wish I’d thought of that. That sums it up perfectly.
John Ary had this to say about The Hobbit HFR 3D:
He mentions some of the same things you did.
Ary’s point about it looking like video is well made. It does and it’s terrible. Better 3D? Sure. But I don’t care and I didn’t need that. It wasn’t even the best 3D I’ve ever seen. (That honor goes to Wrath of the Titans.)
I’ve seen a lot of reviews of HFR, but I have yet to see a comparison of the 2 versions.
Has anyone actually seen the regular version? Both? (I haven’t seen any yet)
I hope to be able to offer up my own thoughts on that soon. Bear in mind, The Hobbit was post-converted to 24fps. Don’t know what difference that will make over the course of the movie, but you can see the trailers online for a brief example.
I saw Jackson and Cameron’s demonstration of the technique at SIGGRAPH this year. It does wonders for action scenes, but the rest of it looks like 1990s BBC productions.
That said – when 3D was first on the market back in the 50s, some directors abused it, throwing things at the screen to show the audience how 3D it was. Having seen The Hobbit in NON HFR 3D, I can tell you there are sweeping shots early in the film where the jutter is awful. It’s almost unwatchable. And it struck me that maybe Jackson panned things faster and used a more open shutter in those shots precisely *BECAUSE* he knew there would be an HFR version which would cut down on the jutter quite a bit, just like those early 3D directors abused 3D. *shrug*
Good movie, but the indulgences were twofold – Tolkien’s natural indulgences, languages, songs, silliness, goofy names – multiplied by Jackson’s love for the same plus his own indulgences – an inability to edit himself and a desire to jam more material into the movie.
But the Middle Earth magic was there and it was great seeing old friends.
You might be on to something there, Steve. When I start reading reports of HFR being done better and in a more refined way, I MIGHT check it out again.
Actually, i think the problem is more to the fact of why 24 fps was chosen to begin with. Back in the day they could have made it up to 48 fps on the old film players. But there had to be a balance between cost and clarity. 24 works because it is complementary to the eye’s normal fps. Think on it this way. If you were to record a fan going just the right speed on ANY camera, on replay it can look like it is standing still. move that fps one way or another, and it can look slower than it really is or even going backwards. Imagine any time you watched something starting to speed up, and it starts going faster, seems to slow down then goes backwards, then speeds up forward again, even though it is always just speeding up. it is a common optical illusion that the old cinema makers wanted to avoid!
Another issue is that higher fps can remove motion blur (this is the attempt made) but without motion blur, thinks look less real! (move your hand in front of your face really fast. you see a motion blur! and without motion blur you get the feeling of stuttering, whether it is there or not.
ok im rambling now 😀
I saw the HFR version and my complaints were similar to what Brock just said. It felt like I was watching an entire movie done as a “Behind The Scenes” footage. But that feeling did disappear for me as the movie went on. Maybe I was getting used to it, maybe I was just getting engrossed in the story of the film, maybe the first few scenes where I noticed the oddness of it were just an early edit or processing of the film and they didn’t get their “tweaking” down just right yet. Either way, during the early scenes where the dwarves were shown fleeing their mountain home I felt that I was NOT watching a dwarf run away, I was watching a man dressed as a dwarf act like he was running away. The movie magic did disappear for me during that scene, but like I said I didn’t notice it for much of the rest of the film. I think I felt it again near the final scene when the dwarves were in the trees fighting the orcs, but it was brief. All in all, however, I really enjoyed the movie and would recommend it to anyone (other than to the youngest of kids since there are some scary parts that might be too much for them).