Geeks on Film: The Hobbit – The 48 FPS Debacle
When you add a new technology to a theater going experience, you should be adding to the immersion of the audience into the film. With Avatar and its shiny new 3D, folks were totally immersed and felt like they were in Pandora.
The technology in this instance saved a thin narrative, turning it into an almost theme park ride, and people couldn’t wait to get in line and ride it again.
Now we are faced with the newest advancement 48fps. This is essentially doubling the frame rate of a film to give an added sense of fluidity or realism. At least that is what Peter Jackson wanted. What we got is something quite different and this is probably due to three main factors.
First off doubling the frame rate changes your minds perception of what you are seeing. You have been trained from day one to register the flicker of 24 frames as a theatrical film and anything more than that as video. Most folks seem to compare the look of The Hobbit to a HDTV broadcast of a BBC Miniseries, and this is due to the combination of the more fluid frame rate and the next factor.
The 48fps version can only be shown on a digital projector. This nifty little upgrade to increase frame rate cost theaters “several thousand” per screen. So most theaters are banking on this to be the next big thing. This high frame rate could only be shown digitally due to the mechanical constraints on actual film projectors. If film were attempted to be run that fast the projector, it would simply destroy the celluloid as it passed through the machine.
Now for the final factor, thanks to the superfluid, super high-resolution digital image you are seeing and all the special effects required to create the world of Middle Earth, everything has a very artificial look to it. If an actor looked the wrong way and you got a look at a makeup seem or the lighting was off on a set, you immediately pick that up and are pulled out of the film. This makes it hard to really focus because your eyes are instantly drawn to these imperfections.
All these factors coupled with some really poor 3D really sums up my experiences trying to watch this film. I say “trying”, because every time I almost settled down into Middle Earth I would once again get reminded that I am simply watching a movie. I honestly cant give you an honest opinion on the film, because of this.
Hopefully I will be able to check it out in the normal 24fps, because the folks that saw it that way said it was pretty good.
I heard about this issue so I saw it in regular 24fps. It’s a good movie but seems a little crowded or cramped. They tried to add to many scenes. I think some of the film should’ve been saved for the extended BluRay/DVD release. Still, worth a view and I’m looking forward to the next installment…in 24fps.
I got a wicked headache during the movie and for about 12 – 18 hours afterword. I never get headaches!
I am not sure if the 3D glasses gave me a headache because I have never worn them for so long or if it was the frame rate
I get what you’re saying, I saw it in HFR at the new Penn Cinema in Delaware…but I had a different experience of it. I felt less like I was watching a movie, more like a stage production…which I’m okay with. There was less of a veil, for me, between the actors and my eyes, and the characters were more believable, more immediate, because of it. I’ll admit, some of the digital backgrounds suffered a bit for the more telling eye of a faster camera, but I think much of the protest centers around what’s familiar (using a lot of motion blur to gloss over limitations in frame rate during high-action sequences) and what isn’t (actually having the frame rate necessary to portray motion that’s fast enough to see clearly, but impossible at 24 fps to do without blur). One of the best demonstrations I saw of it was where an elven archer did a quick removal of an arrow from his quiver, and a knock/pull/shot in about 0.2 seconds that would never have been convincingly rendered in the older techniques. People should also understand that this isn’t the artifact-ridden interpolation effect you get on some modern tv sets, it’s simply a technique that produces more natural fluidity…fluidity you’re not used to seeing. Long story short: Things will get better as we get used to it.