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Comment RSS‘Hobbit’ Footage Screened – Many Say Picture Quality Is A Mistake
26.04.12 # News # 4 Comments
Peter Jackson screened about ten minutes of The Hobbit at Cinema-Con last night and the audience reactions were divided. While some were wowed by the footage, which was shot and projected at 48 frames per second (twice the frame rate of almost every film made in the past 90 years), others claimed it looked like a “Korean soap opera.”
An unnecessary cultural jab aside, the main complaint seems to be that the lack of motion blur creates a live video feel that’s reminiscent of the TruMotion settings on most HDTVs. Detractors like Badass Digest’s Devin Faraci say the higher frame rates made the sets look cheap and a professional projectionist claims it looked like a made-for-tv movie.
24fps / 48fps
There is a side to the debate that supports this cinematic advancement, however. Variety’s Josh Dikey states that it was “a thing to behold.” While this comment could be diplomatically vague for a reason, it does seem to connote a general sense of awe instead of disgust.
Deciding for yourself whether this new Double Stuf Cinema (a term I just invented but am sure will catch on quickly) is good, bad, or great will be tough since the film won’t be released until December of this year and even then not all theaters will be able to project the higher frame rate.
Until then, let yourself be persuaded by the medium’s biggest promoter, Peter Jackson:
Source: Huffington Post
I’ve seen this effect on an HD TV and know exactly what they’re complaining about. It completely loses the ‘cinematic’ quality, and looks like crisp behind the scenes video. Which is kinda interesting in its own way but really takes you out of the movie.
Same here. I watched “the other guys” awhile back with these setting and the “cinematic look” was completely taken away. It was horrible…
The difference between the TruMotion (sometimes called Overscan) on the HDTVs is that they are faking visual information that isn’t there. They duplicate lines of resolution and do some other digitally magical hocus pocus that I don’t really understand to fake it. It’s designed for waching sports, not movies, because it’s easier to see the players in motion.
The thing about 48fps is that they are actually recording that visual information, not faking it. So a lot of the weird lighting issues that make that weird effect should in theory be gone, but the lack of motion blur and the SUPER hi resolution could be an issue. I mean, already I’m noticing in HD that you can see makeup smears on actors faces and on TV lots of sitcom sets look like crap, simply because a lot of talented artisans were trained for analog, not digital. When I shot my short film me and the make-up artist had to work really hard to make a basic bullet wound work in a close up, it was a nightmare in high def, imagine how hard it was to make all that orc makeup seem gritty and real in 48fps.
I obviously agreed to their comments about the quality of this type of movie, in fact I myself are not a fan of 3D because it will loose the quality of the picture that the cinema goers might find to their liking but will see how it goes from there.
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Post By Dalmatian Jaws
26th Apr
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