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Why The Hobbit's 48fps Is a Good Thing
An anonymous reader writes "Last year, when we discussed news that The Hobbit would be filmed at 48 frames per second, instead of the standard 24, many were skeptical that format would take hold. Now that the film has been released, an article at Slate concedes that it's a bit awkward and takes a while to get used to, but ends up being to the benefit of the film and the entire industry as well. 'The 48 fps version of The Hobbit is weird, that's true. It's distracting as hell, yes yes yes. Yet it's also something that you've never seen before, and is, in its way, amazing. Taken all together, and without the prejudice of film-buffery, Jackson's experiment is not a flop. It's a strange, unsettling success. ... It does not mark the imposition from on high of a newer, better standard — one frame rate to rule them all (and in the darkness bind them). It's more like a shift away from standards altogether. With the digital projection systems now in place, filmmakers can choose the frame rate that makes most sense for them, from one project to the next.'"
A lot fo the magic of film was 24fps.
sure its outdated, but so is 48 fps.
broadcast TV has been 50 for years, with more recent forays with high def into 120hz (no idea of the actual frame rate with digital, but I could image its up there)
why are the doing this now? and why only 48fps?
distracting? Since the film seems to be getting panned a lot, does this maybe have something to do with it?
maybe Jackson should just try actually shooting the whole story this time. Hey Merry - where'd you get that cool magic blade that killed the Witch King? "Errr.... well err ummm. See there were these barrows, but we had to cut that from the story, but - hey, Liv Tyler is hot, right??"
Blu-Ray of old movies are still 24P, they don't magically add more frames that don't exist, and interpolation generally looks like ass.
I really don't get why people are so attached to 24fps. Can you imagine this with computer games?
jh
Agreed. The kvetching over the transition from 24 fps to 48 fps reminds me of the transition from incandescent bulbs to compact fluorescent or the transition from records to CDs. It strikes me as nostalgia for a (mostly) inferior product.
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Most of the time you can't even tell the difference between frame rates, except when it emerges as artifacts at 24 fps.
24 fps movies are purposefully shot with more motion blur to hide the jerkiness. But nothing really gets around it when panning.
So 24fps primarily equals artifacts: Blurring, jerky motion, and juddering pans.
How nonsensical is it, and how resistant change do you have to be, to worship these artifacts. They are no more beneficial than ticks/pops were on Vinyl. There is certain nostalgia value to listening to something with ticks/pops sometimes, but it isn't something we put everywhere because we can't do without it.
So these resistant to change, Luddites in love with quite irritating artifacts have taken to calling superior motion video with less blur, less judder and less jerking: "The Soap Opera Effect".
Do a freeze frame on a soap opera and good movie. You can still tell which is which when frozen. Soaps look like crap, because they have crap production values. Poor sets, poor lighting, poor cameras, shot without any flair.
Shoot 48fps (or 60 fps or 120 fps for that matter) with great sets, great lighting, great cameras and great flair and it will be amazing and have nothing in common with soap operas.
We really need to move beyond 24fps though. Take any single frame of that scene and just try to make out what is in the house. Is that a lamp? Or a table? Or wait, maybe it's a vase with a funny flower coming out of it. You can't tell. It's a blurry mess. All you can tell is that is was a sweep of the inside of a house. No detail. [...]
That of course assumes that viewing all the detail is important. In many cases "viewing all the detail" is not what you want. It can be distracting from the message that the writer and director is trying to convey. At times the blur in the background can help support the in focus stuff in the foreground and the elements that are actually important to the story.
To be fair there is more to it than just "24fps has unwanted artefacts". Most people will probably remember when they first saw Saving Private Ryan because the film stock and shutter speed used gave it a very realistic, un-blurry and gritty look. One of the biggest reasons it has taken so long for digital cinema cameras to become popular is that the early ones were unable to replicate the effect of using particular well known film stocks and camera techniques.
Star Wars is another good example to look at. Part of the charm of the original movies is that they were a bit rough around the edges. The film had a fair bit of grain that made the Star Wars universe look a bit grubby and used, rather than sleek and clean like Star Trek. The later trilogy was crisp and clean, and ended up looking more like generic sci-fi than the Star Wars we loved.
48fps is still in its infancy and it will take some time for cinematographers and directors to figure out how to get the effect they want from it. In the end the result will be better than 24fps, but that doesn't automatically mean that the early examples will be particularly good. 3D was the same; everything looked terrible until Avatar finally figured out how to use it and still look like a movie and not give you a brain aneurysm.
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