The Hobbit Filming at 48fps

An anonymous reader writes "Peter Jackson has announced via his Facebook page that The Hobbit is being shot at 48 frames per second, ameliorating the '3D headaches' that many viewers have complained of in the last few boom-years for the format. Film has been shot and projected at 24fps since the 1920s, with the exception of Douglas Trumbull's 60fps 'ShowScan' format, used for the Universal Back To The Future ride, amongst others. Jackson himself predicts that the widespread adoption of 48fps workflow could not only improve the 3D but also the general cinematic experience, though it may earn itself some backward-looking critics. But until digital principal photography completely usurps celluloid, this may be good news for Kodak, who now have even more reason to lament the death of Stanley Kubrick."

Comments

Wrong problem anyone?

[kevinmenzel]

Wait what? I'm not getting headaches because of the frame rate... People get headaches at 60FPS on their computers... if anything, this will result in a film that looks unnaturally smooth to a movie going audience... essentially adding a distraction for the 2D viewers while not fixing anything for 3D viewers...

Re:Wrong problem anyone?

[Rob the Bold]

... if anything, this will result in a film that looks unnaturally smooth to a movie going audience... essentially adding a distraction for the 2D viewers while not fixing anything for 3D viewers...

That's why I never go outside. And when I stay inside, I insist on strobe lighting.

Re:Wrong problem anyone?

[Rei]

Real life is "unnaturally smooth". The frame rate on reality is approximately 1.85486e43 fps (give or take due to uncertainties in the value of Planck time).

And really -- upconversion is your standard? Really?

Re:Wrong problem anyone?

[Colonel Korn]

Not to mention that 60FPS is overkill - the human eye can't see any faster than 50FPS. Making 60FPS a complete waste of data.

48FPS is an unfortunate choice because it isn't a smooth 50FPS, meaning that it'll have weird pulldown issues on all TVs, but at least it's not throwing away frames the human eye is flat-out unable to see.

50 fps is noticeably jerky - you're just used to it. The idea that the human eye can't even see something faster than 50 fps is preposterous. Take a look here for some solid debunking of this silly myth: http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm

Re:Wrong problem anyone?

[SpryGuy]

I have to say that I think this criticism and line of reasoning are utter crap.

I heard all the same thing before the switch to digital. Everyone bemoned the "video" look, and lamented the passing of the "film" look. Then again with the switch to HD. "you see everyone's pores! the makeup is obvious!"

Complete bollocks.

It will take directors and artists a while to get use to the new tools, their paremeters, and their behavior, but they'll be making things look just as good and probably a whole lot better in a short period of time, once they gain experience. Just like they did with digital filming and projection, and just like they did with HD on TV.

This "crappy flickering smeary motion stuff looks better" nonsense just really needs to stop. You sound like the nay-sayers bemoaning the arrival of sound to moving pictures a hundred years ago. In other words, in ten or so years, you'll look back on these statements with shame and embarassment. And rightly so.

Re:Wrong problem anyone?

[Rei]

You know, I wonder when we'll ultimately just drop the concept of "frames" and switch to temporal-tagged packets of image changes, without requiring a full image to have been acquired simultaneously. Aka, your CCD doesn't accumulate photon counts, but photon rates. The readout from the CCD returns the delta between the current rate of activation and the previous activation rate. For a CCD polled thousands of times per second, for most pixels, that would be near zero, and that pixel is declared "unchanged" and ignored. The pixels which have a statistically significant changes are returned to the camera as ID/rate pairs, and are all bundled together with a time tag, processed, and compressed. Then it's a trivial matter to assemble them into whatever frame rate you want, it makes it much easier to do high quality slow motion, etc. Our insistence on accumulating all data into (proportionally slow) "frames" during the recording process is throwing away data.

Of course, this would require some significant hardware and video format changes, plus different approaches to compression, as the data you're reading is loosely packed instead of densely packed. Good compression approaches would take into account the strong regional correlations between pixels reporting changes in light intensity.

Re:Wrong problem anyone?

[toleraen]

I admit I've never watched that many movies in the theatres, but when I finally came home with a massive TV and a BluRay player (PS3) that supported 24p, I couldn't wait. 24p is what the source material is really shot in, it was going to be epic. Set up everything, made sure 24p was on, and got rolling.

It sucked. Sucked bad. Maybe it's the movies I chose, but any time the camera even somewhat slowly panned across the screen it the limitations of 24p became glaringly obvious. After my wife and I watched a few different movies I was ready to return my TV thinking there was something wrong with the HDMI input. Then I remembered the 24p factor, disabled it on the player, and watched in glory as the screen refreshed at a rate that supported my brain.

I don't get the draw of 24p...is it a videophile thing, like people who only listen to vinyl?

Re:Wrong problem anyone?

[CohibaVancouver]

is approximately 1.85486e43

I can only measure large numbers in units of Libraries of Congress.

Re:Wrong problem anyone?

[drb226]

That's why I never go outside. And when I stay inside, I insist on strobe lighting.

I know, exactly how you feel. The outside world is just too much like a cheap soap opera.

Re:Wrong problem anyone?

[mug funky]

talking poop.

the eye is not a brain. the brain takes what the eye gives it and fills in the gaps. more information does not make it harder to do it's job.

gamers certainly don't have a problem with high frame rates.

the 120Hz TVs look shit because you're seeing it fail on complex motion (crossing objects, moving objects with insufficient motion-blur, repeating patterns like a pan across a picket-fence, hands gesturing, etc, etc). the result is warped edges, or areas where it's given up and just duplicated frames to get up to 120. so you see patches of smooth and patches of jerky jutting up out of the smooth with ugly edges between them.

Re:Wrong problem anyone?

[mug funky]

film look and 24p are definitely exactly like the vinyl thing. it's aesthetic and nothing more.

however, it's a big enough part of the aesthetic that IMHO turning on interpolation will have a detrimental effect.

what you could do is calibrate the screen a tad. turn any and all sharpening off, turn "dynamic mode" off, change the colour temp from that Godawful eye-burning blue to D65 (6500K, or "daylight", or "warm", or some such. white on the screen should match the clouds outside in colour, so maybe open a window and choose the closest), turn the backlight down a touch and kill the room lights.

it will make a big difference.

Re:Wrong problem anyone?

[Dr. Spork]

I agree, and would add one more example: Color - which was said to make movies look garish, gimmicky and all kinds of awful. But then it got a lot better and now we're OK with it, and even like it.

Re:Wrong problem anyone?

[Trogre]

This.

I'm still a bit disappointed that even the best LCD monitor I've managed to buy can only manage a 60Hz refresh rate. It's one of the few areas where CRT still has an advantage - under-drive a CRT's resolution (say run a 1280x1024 monitor at 1024x768) and you can often get a 100Hz refresh rate. Provided your CPU, graphics card, etc can keep up games and other simulations just look that much better, not to mention the tactical advantage in rocket arena style games :)

Re:Wrong problem anyone?

[skelterjohn]

Gamers typically set their monitors to refresh at 125hz, if they can. I haven't been serious about gaming since the hey-day of CRTs, so I don't know what the current style is.

But back in the day, we'd get CRTs that could refresh at 125hz and set the game's refresh rate to match.

Re:Wrong problem anyone?

[SD-Arcadia]

Luckily, the LCD's are finally catching up. Look for models that advertise "3D", because these can do 120hz refresh rates in 2D mode. These are TN panels only so far. Samsung, Viewsonic, Acer (and some others) have such screens. I finally bought a Viewsonic 2265wm after holding on to a CRT all these years and I'm satisfied.

Good, his movies are too long

[jmcbain]

I'm glad he's shooting at a faster rate. The last movies were over 3 hours. Now I can watch them in about one and half hours.

Re:Good, his movies are too long

[GiMP]

Twice as many frames means that if you view it at the standard 24 frames per second, the movie will be twice as long!

Re:Good, his movies are too long

[funkatron]

Depends what speed the resulting film is projected at. You might end up with a slow motion epic.

Although, that would be impossible since Baywatch the movie hasn't been made yet

Re:Good, his movies are too long

[elrous0]

And miss all the walking?!?!?

Re:Good, his movies are too long

[JonySuede]

Although, that would be impossible since Baywatch the movie hasn't been made yet

sadly you are wrong, it has been made :
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112464/

Re:Good, his movies are too long

[tool462]

I smell a director's cut. With 50% unseen footage!

It won't help

[peragrin]

Fake3D is still fake3D.

i will still get headaches while watching and I will still not see a single special 3D effect. the movie will appear dim or over saturated trying to correct the color balance caused by wearing sunglasses indoors against a dark room.

There are some things you just can't fix as they are broken by design. Fake3D is one of them. Please Hollywood give it up, and just dump the money into hologram research.

Re:It won't help

[geekoid]

You keep saying fake3d, because everyone listen to a whiny pendant.

If you want to be a pendant, at least be good about it.
All movies are 3d. Height, width, and Time..bitch.

Re:It won't help

[Literaphile]

You keep saying fake3d, because everyone listen to a whiny pendant.

If you want to be a pendant, at least be good about it. All movies are 3d. Height, width, and Time..bitch.

You keep calling the parent a pendant. Do you see him hanging from a necklace? It would have to be pretty big to hold all that weight...

Re:It won't help

[peragrin]

No i am just getting tired of people going ooh ahh it is so awesome when in reality it means that 45 million americans will never see one of those effects.

We aren't all the same, eyes are slightly different widths, focusing works slightly differently, etc, etc.

they can't fix current 3D tech no matter how hard they try because your looking at a 2D surface and trying to resolve a physical depth for something that isn't there. So the focal point won't shift right and people won't like it.

To me Avatar and Tron legacy in 3D looked like a dim, wrong color tinted version of the 2D movies I watched later. I saw nothing spectacular or out of the ordinary.

Re:It won't help

[19thNervousBreakdown]

Oh, I see, you can't enjoy it, so nobody else should either.

Re:It won't help

[dunkelfalke]

Avatar in 3d was awesome. If you personally cannot enjoy this - tough luck for you. If you were totally colour blind, you'd probably bitch and moan about people preferring colour movies to black-and-white ones.

Re:It won't help

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

No i am just getting tired of people going ooh ahh it is so awesome when in reality it means that 45 million americans will never see one of those effects.

255 million can.

Re:It won't help

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for focus and depth of field -- if 3D movies were to *really* be indistinguishable for the 3D world our eyes are used to, we'd be able to focus on elements in the background or foreground. The headaches in 3D movies are because the director is dragging our lenses' focus around against our will, something we're not accustomed to.

Re:It won't help

[aibrahim]

/sigh/

Look, first off its actual two camera 3D, not the rejiggered post only 3D, which I abhor.

(And a big thank you to Mr. Lucas for bringing post-3D to Star Wars films. The only good that can come of that is that perhaps everyone will finally get the idea that it just can't be done well- if ILM and Lucas can't pull it off it can't be done. Of course, I am always willing to be surprised.)

In any case what you call "Fake3D" works very much like your eyes do during photography.

Holography may be the way of the future, but it will be a rather distant future. Further ... holography, whenever it does come to pass, will benefit dramatically from the experiences of film makers today learning the new "grammar" of 3D film making.

As the movie appearing dim .... merely shooting in 48fps will address some of that. See, 24fps film is actually projected at 48fps with a shutter splitting the exposure.

48fps digital will be projected at 48fps without a shutter. Net effects it appears brighter to begin with.

Finally, about motion blur .... 48fps on Hobbit is being shot with the same shutter speed as is typically used on 24fps film 1/48th of a second. (In film we refer to the shutter speed using "shutter angles" instead of a fraction of a second. Standard 24fps shutter as 180 degrees, but Lesnie is using a 360 degree shutter on 48fps acquisition ... the net result is the same motion blur.)

Both Andrew Lesnie and Peter Jackson have written glowingly about the results of this particular choice, which is one I have been arguing for myself.

And YES, I am a credited cinematographer and colorist.

Re:It won't help

[tgd]

The fact that you have a neurological issue doesn't invalidate the techology for the 99% of the population that has no problem with it.

I like stairs. The fact that there are some people in wheelchairs doesn't mean I should have to stick to elevators.

Not the problem

[proslack]

It isn't the frame rate that's going to be the problem with The Hobbit, it's Peter Jackson's altering Tolkien's story and characters.

Re:Not the problem

[glwtta]

It isn't the frame rate that's going to be the problem with The Hobbit, it's Peter Jackson's altering Tolkien's story and characters.

No, the real problem is going to be ceaseless whining from Tolkien nerds. Preemptive whining, in some cases.

Re:Not the problem

[w0mprat]

It isn't the frame rate that's going to be the problem with The Hobbit, it's Peter Jackson's altering Tolkien's story and characters.

Lets face it, if it was true to the book then people would have walked out of the cinema in the first 20 minutes.

The real problem was Tolkien was not actually a good writer by many definitions and had a head full of wierd catholic patriachal moral absolutism which showed in his writing amongst it's many flaws. In fact in places his writing is rather cringeworthy (when I first read his work I had to struggle not to throw the book accross the room) and he has been easy pickings for many a literary critic over the years. What worked however was his world building was epic. Peter Jackson had to do a carefully considered rework of the dialog, plot, characters to make anything near an acceptable 21st century story, and to have a hope in hell of keeping people seated for 3 hours. He even included actual females, the gender Tolkien didn't seem to acknowledge existed let alone could have anything to do with events in his world. Tolkien fans will mod me down, go right ahead, but many won't, many knew PJ did what he had to do.

Re:Not the problem

[Bob-taro]

It isn't the frame rate that's going to be the problem with The Hobbit, it's Peter Jackson's altering Tolkien's story and characters.

Lets face it, if it was true to the book then people would have walked out of the cinema in the first 20 minutes. The real problem was Tolkien was not actually a good writer by many definitions and had a head full of wierd catholic patriachal moral absolutism which showed in his writing amongst it's many flaws. In fact in places his writing is rather cringeworthy (when I first read his work I had to struggle not to throw the book accross the room) and he has been easy pickings for many a literary critic over the years. What worked however was his world building was epic. Peter Jackson had to do a carefully considered rework of the dialog, plot, characters to make anything near an acceptable 21st century story, and to have a hope in hell of keeping people seated for 3 hours. He even included actual females, the gender Tolkien didn't seem to acknowledge existed let alone could have anything to do with events in his world. Tolkien fans will mod me down, go right ahead, but many won't, many knew PJ did what he had to do.

I've heard his writing criticized for being wordy and over-descriptive, but "catholic patriachal[sic] moral absolutism"? You mean he's a bad writer because you disagree with his world view? If he does believe that way, and he communicated that idea to you through his writing, I think that makes him a good writer. I personally didn't like some of the story changes Jackson did for the movie, but I do understand the need to sell tickets. E.g., the part about Tom Bombadil was interesting in a book, but in an epic film (even one with elves and dwarves and magic) it would seem childish and out of place.

Regarding female characters, the only one whose role was increased for the movie was Arwen. Galadriel and Eowyn were very significant female characters in the books.

Cameron wanted 48FPS for Avatar

[Animats]

James Cameron wanted to do Avatar at 48FPS. Avatar II, or whatever, will be. He's been pushing 48FPS for a while.

It's about time; 24FPS is way too slow. A big problem with 24FPS is that pans over detailed backgrounds have strobing effects unless the pan is very slow. Sometimes blur is inserted to mask this, either in camera or in post. Cameron likes richly detailed backgrounds ("Titanic", etc.), and this limitation has annoyed him.

Cameron will use higher frame rates well. He's used 3D well. Other directors, probably not so much.

Videophile. . .

[JSBiff]

24 fps is really just, warmer, you know. You can really see the difference, and the 24fps just looks better, to my eyes anyhow. BTW, I am so glad I bought the Monster Video cables - my DVD bits have so much less signal degradation with them.

imax & imax dome

[bradgoodman]

On particularly large screens - the relatively "slow" frame-rates used today are quite troublesome. For example, say your shooting video out of a front of a plane on an imax dome screen. When the plane banks - even if it does relatively slowly - since the screen is so large, you see a lot of "jumpiness" - as there may be several *feet* in real-world on-screen distance between an object's position in one frame vs. another. I've been complaining about this for years. It would be nice to see higher frame rates in formats like this.

Re:Boom-years

[elrous0]

The reason it's so "popular" is because studios can get away with doubling their ticket prices to a 3D movie. It has nothing to do with giving the public what they want. It has everything to do with giving the studios and exhibitors what *they* want (i.e., more money).

When they started showing car commercials at the beginning of movies, the public certainly wasn't demanding more of that. But the studios and exhibitors loved them because it gave them a new revenue stream. So guess what you see at the beginning of every movie now.

Finally

[Twinbee]

I'm glad that film-makers are finally beginning to realize the video world doesn't start and end at 24fps. That particular limit is pretty arbitrary and terrible for fast/smooth motion where higher frame rates are needed. Real life (TM) is actually infinite FPS of course, so things will only be more realistic, not less.

Maybe we can all switch to a standard like 60fps, 120fps or or even better 240fps, and our monitors can adjust too. We'd cure flicker or blurry motion (CRT/LCD respectively), general motion smoothness, and even sometimes input lag, all in one sweep. Finally we'd all have a universal framerate which everything can adhere to.

Re:Finally

[Reeses]

24 fps isn't arbitrary. It's the result of a lot of research.

It's the minimum number of frames that trick 99.9% of people into seeing a constant image on screen.

Slower rates result in flicker.

Higher rates, on 1920's technology, were progressively prohibitively expensive.

48 Fps is great. It's roughly half the maximum frame rate of we can see (the optic nerve refreshes at approximately 100Hz).

We'll get too 100fps soon. Anything over that isn't worth it.

This doesn't apply to LCD TVs and what not.

Re:Hobbit in 3D?

[Dyinobal]

3d is hollywood's latest gimmick, plus they've support from electronics manufacturers who are trying to push 3d tv's since most people have at least 720 HDTVs these days and their sales are finally starting to drop off to what they should be.

Wait...

[WiglyWorm]

The hobbit is being filmed in 3d? Ugh...

3d is a gimmic and it is helping to further ruin cinamatography. There are very few exceptions.

Re:Boom-years

[adamchou]

If they're charging double the ticket price for a 3D movie and people are actually purchasing the tickets, then I'm pretty sure that is giving the public what they want.

Re:Boom-years

[elrous0]

A lot of theaters don't offer a 2D alternative. So unless you want to drive across town to the ghetto theater, it's either pay up for 3D or find another movie.

Will 48fps cinematography catch up?

[jfengel]

At 60fps, things look very different than at 24fps. It looks great in short clips, very "real", but it rapidly takes on a hyperrealistic feeling. I assume it's just from me being accustomed to 24fps; it's what a movie "should" feel like.

I suspect that they're going to have to develop a new cinematography around 48fps, much as they have to for 3D. They're still working on the latter, but Cameron got awfully close in Avatar; a few shots I really didn't like, but it generally enhanced rather than detracted.

Finding the right lighting/lenses/aperture etc. for 48fps will probably take a bit of work, but Jackson seems to have a strong visual feel and will be able to figure it out. It should be easier than the shift required for 3D cinematography.

Hardware vendors rejoice

[juosukai]

Especially the HDD manufacturers and RAID-manufacturers. For several years Post Production houses needed to work with 2K @ 24 fps. This means a datastream of ~ 218MB/s. With 4K @ 48 fps, the drives need to stream ~1875 MB/s. Forget 8Gbit/s Fibrechannel and 10Gbit/s ether, we need internal PCIe based SSD drives and moving files between internal storage and the SAN again. Sounds so very 2004 to me... /jussi

Obligatory

[Tablizer]

TThhee HHoobbbbiitt

Re:Hobbit in 3D?

[DocHoncho]

You should be happy, it gives you one more thing to complain about.

Honestly, in my day the cranky whiners were HAPPY to have a new thing to complain about. Kids these days...

Re:Kodak? Kubrick??

[sexconker]

It's stupid commentary about how 48fps films require twice as much film compared to 24 fps films of the same length (meaning Kodak gets twice as much money).
Kubrick shot it retarded formats all the time to be intentionally pretentious. He also shot in great excess, to invariably throw the bulk of it out. The people he bought his film from profited greatly from his behavior.