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Topic: HFR in 2013

Claude S. Ayakawa
Film God

Posts: 2738
From: Waipahu, Hawaii, USA
Registered: Aug 2002

posted 12-12-2013 02:29 PM

It looks like the list Terry had posted of theatres playing THE HOBBIT: TDOS in HFR in the United States and Canada was for last year' debut of the series. The newspaper theatre advertisements in this morning's Honolulu Star Advertiser lindicates two other complexes and possibly more in Honolulu that was not on the list will also be playing the movie in HFR.

-Claude

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Marcel Birgelen
Film God

Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012

posted 12-12-2013 02:35 PM

quote: Manny Knowles
There is no doubt in my mind that if HFR had been a "hit" when it debuted, we would have seen (a) more movies in HFR; and (b) more hype about HFR. Instead, we got ZERO other HFR movies and LESS hype about HFR this time around.

Well, there is also another important factor to consider: cost and the still highly unproven "added value". It's not particular cheap to shoot a movie in a higher frame rate. The costs of the shooting itself might not be that much higher, but the post production and CGI stuff is definitely going to weight in. Somebody had to take the risk and try this on a big budget feature and it backfired a bit.

Then there is also the limited use in distribution for the HFR version, both for the cinema market and also for the rental and streaming market. Blu-ray doesn't currently even support 1080p in 48 fps.

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Chris Slycord
Film God

Posts: 2986
From: 청주시, 경북도, South Korea
Registered: Mar 2007

posted 12-12-2013 02:38 PM

quote: Buck Wilson
Does anyone on this forum like ANYTHING? I am simply amazed at the negative aspect of almost everyone on almost everything. Jeez. Going so far as to talk someone down because of using the word 'immersive'..... Wow. I'm done.

Who was being talked down to for using the word immersive? Because the complaint started with a post pointing out Peter Jackson overusing the term, someone who's not exactly involved in the conversation to get talked down to...

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Joe Redifer
You need a beating today

Posts: 12859
From: Denver, Colorado
Registered: May 99

posted 12-12-2013 04:34 PM

OK I haven't seen the Hobbit in HFR but I hear people mentioning a "fast forward" like effect. This is weird to me. I have a videogame for the Sega Saturn that runs at either a perfect 30 or a perfect 60 frames per second. The game looks normal at 30 frames per second. This is how it appeared in the arcade in 1987. The 60fps mode seems SOOO MUCH SLOWER even though the game is actually running at the exact same speed, just a different framerate.

So why do some people experience a fast forward effect and I experience a slow down effect?

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Manny Knowles
"What are these things and WHY are they BLUE???"

Posts: 4247
From: Bloomington, IN, USA
Registered: Feb 2002

posted 12-12-2013 05:29 PM

quote: Marcel Birgelen
Well, there is also another important factor to consider: cost and the still highly unproven "added value".

I would not consider this "another" important factor. This is precisely what I'm getting at. If the HFR screenings were clearly a huge draw, the studios -- all of them -- would have pursued it more vigorously.

We had more than enough locations offering THE HOBBIT in various formats (at comparable showtimes) to get a sense of whether there was a real market for HFR.

There wasn't.

As for big budget productions -- are you saying that between HOBBIT 1 and HOBBIT 2 there were no big budget spectacles?

Special effects cost money. Stars cost money. Nothing in the movie business is cheap. Spending big money doesn't scare Hollywood Moguls if they think it'll make their product more marketable. The fact that we only see HFR on HOBBIT movies speaks volumes.

The only reason we're getting HOBBIT 2 in HFR is: Peter Jackson is forcing them to do it.

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Marcel Birgelen
Film God

Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012

posted 12-12-2013 05:31 PM

It will be hard for any of us to judge about that "old" console of yours without sufficient reference. And how can you be sure that the actual speed of the 30 FPS mode was the same as the 60 FPS mode? Maybe the console wasn't capable of maintaining the same game speed at the increased frame rate and thus slowed stuff down?

Regarding the "fast forward" effects of the last Hobbit release:

- It was mostly visible in character movements, most notably fast movements. It looked a bit like somebody pressed fast-forward for just a second. It's practically not present in any of the sweeping scenic shots or non-closeup battle scenes.
- I've stated my theory about this several times around here. I'm only guessing, but I suspect that the stuff being shown on screen actually exceeding human vision capabilities. There is probably too little motion blur in those scenes, compared what the human mind would expect for those movements and as such is interpreting the motion as being sped-up.

quote: Manny Knowles
As for big budget productions -- are you saying that between HOBBIT 1 and HOBBIT 2 there were no big budget spectacles?

Sure, there were tons of big-budget spectacles this year. Still, it takes someone with sufficient guts to pull it off though. I don't think that any big studio exec would be happy to sign off on a big experiment when 100M+ dollars are at stake. People like Peter Jackson, James Cameron, etc., they all don't really have anything left to prove and they do have the means to do it. Other directors will just be happy they do have a movie to direct...

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Victor Liorentas
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 800
From: london ontario canada
Registered: May 2009

posted 12-12-2013 05:31 PM

I think the sped up effect is caused by the 48 fps not meshing with the types of 3d systems in use with the KST.(kinda sorta thing) [Smile]

Oh and lack of masking is also a suspected cause when coupled with a lack of 35mm film! [beer]

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Marcel Birgelen
Film God

Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012

posted 12-12-2013 05:48 PM

quote:
I think the sped up effect is caused by the 48 fps not meshing with the types of 3d systems in use with the KST.(kinda sorta thing) [Smile]

No, it isn't [Wink]

. If the 3D kinda sorta thing is not in sync, you would see a massive amount of ghosting. And by the way, I've also seen it in Dual-Projector HFR 3D and it had the same sped-up look there.

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Carsten Kurz
Film God

Posts: 4340
From: Cologne, NRW, Germany
Registered: Aug 2009

posted 12-12-2013 05:56 PM

quote:
- I've stated my theory about this several times around here. I'm only guessing, but I suspect that the stuff being shown on screen actually exceeding human vision capabilities. There is probably too little motion blur in those scenes, compared what the human mind would expect for those movements and as such is interpreting the motion as being sped-up.

Our natural vision is faster than 24 and 48 fps. Why should something slower than natural vision exceed our vision capabilities?

The problem is not the amount of 'data' in HFR. The problem is that the 'missing data' in lower frames rates allows to establish the suspension of disbelieve. HFR simply looks natural. But we are not going to the movies to see something natural. We want to see fiction. If we point a HFR camera to a movie set, the result will not show the movie, but the movie being shot. As if being on set physically with the actors and props would give the better movie experience?

Claiming that HFR can only be better because 48fps is the higher number is plainly wrong. Cinema is not image analysis but entertainment.

Did people give up painting when photography turned up? Are comics 'inferior' compared to film or photo?

- Carsten

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Marcel Birgelen
Film God

Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012

posted 12-12-2013 06:19 PM

quote: Carsten Kurz
Our natural vision is faster than 24 and 48 fps. Why should something slower than natural vision exceed our vision capabilities?

Yeah, I know that people smarter than me claim that the threshold is somewhere around 60/70 fps for most people. You can easily test this with an old CRT monitor with adjustable refresh rate, it seems to be mostly true if you ask me.

And although this "flicker fusion" starts only around 60 fps, that doesn't mean we can easily distinguish different frames at lower frame rates, since we've been looking at far lower frame rates for decades...

But maybe my formulation was a bit brain dead here. What I wanted to point out is that, due to the fact that there are more frames now, there is less for your brain to fill in (mostly like you already put it).

The problem probably is, that the motion blur that is being depicted, is to less than what an average person would see at the speed of the object(s) involved.

So, this tricks your brain into perceiving this object moving at a faster speed than it actually is.

quote: Carsten Kurz
Claiming that HFR can only be better because 48fps is the higher number is plainly wrong. Cinema is not image analysis but entertainment.

I would be happy if we could find a solution to retain the current "cinematic look", but fix the few remaining issues of the "good ol' 24 FPS". If that happens to be an unsolvable problem, imho, we can burry HFR somewhere deep and forget about it.

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Carsten Kurz
Film God

Posts: 4340
From: Cologne, NRW, Germany
Registered: Aug 2009

posted 12-12-2013 06:50 PM

One of the most fascinating aspects of HFR is that it looks perfectly brilliant with panoramic shots of landscapes, etc. And then it completely sucks with human (and probably animal) action in a fictional context. There is something very strange about our perception there. I would love to see more and different types of footage to reason about that.

Of course I will watch the Hobbit in HFR. Not because I love HFR, but because I love to hate it.

- Carsten

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Manny Knowles
"What are these things and WHY are they BLUE???"

Posts: 4247
From: Bloomington, IN, USA
Registered: Feb 2002

posted 12-12-2013 08:28 PM

quote: Carsten Kurz
One of the most fascinating aspects of HFR is that it looks perfectly brilliant with panoramic shots of landscapes, etc. And then it completely sucks with human (and probably animal) action in a fictional context. There is something very strange about our perception there.

I had ^this same reaction/observation.

I think it really does make things appear "more real" -- but the problem is that it ends up revealing the reality that the sets, costumes and makeup are fake. It looked like "filmed theatre" to me.

Perhaps that's what they "fixed" this time around. More realistic sets, etc. Or clever ways to direct attention away from some of the fakery.

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Dave Macaulay
Film God

Posts: 2321
From: Toronto, Canada
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 12-12-2013 08:35 PM

After seeing the test HFR stuff (identical from last year) and the movie itself, the old test trailers still have an unsettling "giant TV" look. The new movie has sort of the same look but the edge is taken off, it isn't as strange looking. Much of - most of - this movie is very dark and to me the live action well lit outdoor stuff was most weird in Hobbit 1.
Anyway... I didn't really mind the HFR look for the first movie although always aware of it. In this one the video look was pretty quickly forgotten.

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Justin Hamaker
Film God

Posts: 2253
From: Lakeport, CA USA
Registered: Jan 2004

posted 12-12-2013 09:44 PM

After watching the 48FPS trailer linked farther up the thread, I really lean toward HFR just being something new which our eyes and brains are not used to. In some ways I would compare it to how something at 16fps makes movement seem a bit stiff or robotic. We are so used to seeing things at 24 or 30 fps, that something different looks unnatural.

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Harold Hallikainen
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 906
From: Denver, CO, USA
Registered: Aug 2009

posted 12-12-2013 10:39 PM

Isn't reality "infinite frames per second?" Our brain SEEMS to deal with that ok, so I don't think the HFR look is too much information for the brain to handle. I the real world, we generate motion blur on our own. Why do we apparently have to do it in movies? How we interpret images (and motion) is really interesting. So, is HFR like looking out a window, or like watching TV?

Harold

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