The Hobbit loses Guillermo Del Toro

Looks like fun to me, but alas if you didnt like the original lotr movies u arent gonna like this one

Howard Shore talks about his process for the score in video here: http://insidemovies.ew.com/2012/12/05/the-hobbit-score-howard-shore/

Some HFR impressions.

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I was lucky enought to see a screening of the Hobbit on Warner Bros. lot Monday evening. I won't go into details about the story, but I wanted to comment on the 48 fps.

When the film first opens I was taken back by how different it did look. It was shocking to say the least. It is so crystal clear. You can see the details of the characters and surroundings down to a single blade of grass. I will agree with Peter Jackson that it took sometime for me to get comfortable with the change. I wasn't until at least an hour into the movie that I started to forget about the new frame rate and was able to be in awww by how beautiful the film looked. I also think that with F/X heavy CGI films the 48 fps really made everything look real. It was much harder to notice a distiction between what was real and what was CGI, it all looked real, even the CG characters. As for people that say they are getting motion sickness, I call BS on that one. The actions scenes don't have the jerkiness or roughness that they have with 24 fps. Everything is very smooth and when the action gets quick there is no blurring or "what was that", you are able to see everything in very high clarity.

This process also helped the 3D as it didn't give that darkness that 24 fps 3D movies have. Everything was bright and looked amazing.
Overall, I like the new frame rate. I didn't notice any issues with it and as many have said it's like when you went from a standard TV to HDTV. The technology will grow and can only get better. I can't wait to see the film again in 48 fps.

EW cover

And another review:

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The short version is this: If you hated the other films, there will be nothing more for you here. You'll find the character tedious, the storyline predictable, the farcical elements too broad and the musical moments appalling. For the many, many fans of the original trilogy, however, you'll find an enormously comfortable setting, one that's easily the equal of the other films in the series.

It took many paths to get here, but The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey lives up to even heightened expectations following its Best Picture-winning sibling. It's a film that feels like it was always meant to exist, living comfortably as part of the greater whole while not coming across as redundant or repetitive. It does what so few sequels/prequels do, making you hungry for the next of the series, while still making you appreciate very much what has come before.

In the end, there's little more than can be asked for from a film of this type. And that, I'd suggest, is more than enough to recommend it for a wide audience.

Those blue Gollum eyes make me want to puke.

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Why, despite the furor, Jackson believes in 48fps and high definition frame rates.

 

The levels of detail are similar to 'The Lord of the Rings.' The HD cameras you see more so you can see more detail but fortunately the team we have in New Zealand – the WETA Workshop, who design everything – have always wanted to put in a lot of detail. To me, fantasy should be as real as possible. I don't buy into the notion that since it's fantasy it should be unrealistic. The levels of detail are very important. The 65mm films that people used to shoot in was virtually a high definition of the film world, very fine grain film stock. And when we were setting out to do 'Lord of the Rings' we explored doing it in 65mm. The camera equipment was very cumbersome and we were going to have to develop the film in America even though we were making them in New Zealand… But it was something I wanted to do in that time. That big screen epic experience, the more immersive it is, that's the sort of thing I like.

 

About the divisive reactions to 48fps thus far

I'm fascinated by the reactions. I'm tending to see that anyone under the age of 20 or so doesn't really care and thinks it looks cool and doesn't really understand it. They think the 3D looks really cool. I think 3D at 24 frames is interesting but it's the 48 that allows the 3D to achieve the potential that it can achieve because it's less eyestrain and you have a sharper picture which creates a more dimensional world.

 

The history of it was that I had seen a couple of high frame rate movies. I remember going to Disneyland and seeing the Star Tours ride, which is a high frame rate film, where you're speeding in the "Star Wars" spaceship. And I had experience with it a few years ago – I directed a "King Kong" attraction for Universal Studios in California, which was a 60-frames-a-second 3D surround film on the tram ride. And I thought, Wow, this is so cool, I wish we could do a feature like this! But the mechanical projectors in the cinemas around the world were locked into 24 frames.

 

But the advent of digital projects allow for this to happen. The editor we worked with went to a technical convention and he said, "If you're interested in a high frame rate, now is the time, because the projector manufacturers can probably do it and the cameras are going to be able to do it." So we decided to take the plunge. Warner Bros. was very supportive, they just wanted some assurance that the 24 frames version would look absolutely normal, which it does. But once they were happy with that, they were happy, but we had to push that button that said "48 frames." When we started filming there probably wasn't a cinema in the world that could project 48 frames in that format. It was a leap of faith.

 

 

But the thing to realize too is that it's not an attempt to change the film industry. It's another choice. The projectors that can run at 48 frames can run at 24 frames. You can shoot a movie in 24 frames and have sequences in 48 frames or 60 frames within the body of the film; you can do all the shutter angle effects, the "Saving Private Ryan" strobing effects. It doesn't necessarily change the way films are going to be made but it's another choice filmmakers can have. For me it gave it more of that reality, that immersive-ness. It makes it feel like you're leaving the cinema seat and becoming a part of the adventure.

I've been watching it for a year watching hours and hours and hours of it. With 3D, your left and right eye are seeing two different pictures. And with 24 frames you're getting strobing and motion blur, your brain is trying to put this stuff together. And the more artifacts in the capture, your brain is struggling to resolve those two images. And 48 frames reduces those artifacts and makes for a smoother picture. As human beings we always have resistance to things that are different. I was a Beatles fan and I remember in the eighties when CDs came out and there was a sound of vinyl that people loved and suddenly CDs were threatening the sound of vinyl. I remember reading something that the Beatles said that they would never have their albums on CD because it was too clear and all the bad notes would be exposed. So you're never going to hear a Beatles tune on CD. There was all this hysteria.

one of the things i'm not quite clear on is that from what i've seen of the trailers and stuff in 24 fps it looks totally normal. But they couldn't have achieved this simply from dropping 24 out of the 48 frames, because when you shoot at 48 frames each 'frame' is being recorded at a shutter speed essentially at half the time, so you wont naturally get the same motion blurring you would if only 24 frames were recorded per second. I wonder if they digitally added in some kind of simulated motion blur to get it to look normal? Otherwise i would imagine just dropping 24 of the 48 frames would make the film seem choppy and not similar to what we are used to as a 24 fps film

Yeah I'm not sure how exactly converting 48 to 24 works but I imagine the motion blurring is due to non existent motion between two frames that your brain adds. So I don't think adding extra blur is necessary.

60 fps is where it's at:

Watch how the 60fps looks sped up on the first watch, then notice how it becomes more normal and clearer

i noticed in the 60 fps one the bike actually lands. So 60fps must extend the length of a scene and allow you to see more. Which explains why the Hobbit is taking 3 movies to finish.

  On 12/6/2012 at 1:14 AM, compson said:

Yeah I'm not sure how exactly converting 48 to 24 works but I imagine the motion blurring is due to non existent motion between two frames that your brain adds. So I don't think adding extra blur is necessary.

that's what i thought at first but after going into some digital video forums this is not the case. Motion blur in 24 frames is 'printed' onto the frames themselves, you can see it on your own by going by frame by frame on a quicktime trailer for example. The reason for this is that the shutter speed is slower for a 24fps video, wheras if you just remove 24 frames from a 48fps video you'd only be getting 24 frames of video recorded with half the shutter speed of a normal 24fps recorded video

and not to be a nitpicker but to me that video of the bike looks exactly like what i referred to above, as if they filmed both examples in 60 fps but then just removed/dropped frames to bring it down to 24(in the first example) which gives it an artificially jittery look more than a normal video recorded in 24fps. The other examples posted earlier in this thread seem more genuine like 2 side-by-side cameras recording in different frame rates

Hm, website says:

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HFR also minimizes the appearance of motion artifacts — especially when viewed in a theater. Moving objects may strobe or have a “picket fence” appearance as they traverse a large screen. At 24 fps, a 50 foot screen shows an object as jumping in 2 foot increments if that object takes one second to traverse the screen. This can appear as “judder” with fast panning and other types of camera movements.

Also, the above examples are not the result of a 3:2 pulldown from 60 fps to 24 fps; each was shot independently using the same shutter angle and pan rate.

Using Red Camera

  On 12/6/2012 at 3:34 AM, Awepittance said:

 

  On 12/6/2012 at 1:14 AM, compson said:

Yeah I'm not sure how exactly converting 48 to 24 works but I imagine the motion blurring is due to non existent motion between two frames that your brain adds. So I don't think adding extra blur is necessary.

 

that's what i thought at first but after going into some digital video forums this is not the case. Motion blur in 24 frames is 'printed' onto the frames themselves, you can see it on your own by going by frame by frame on a quicktime trailer for example. The reason for this is that the shutter speed is slower for a 24fps video, wheras if you just remove 24 frames from a 48fps video you'd only be getting 24 frames of video recorded with half the shutter speed of a normal 24fps recorded video

 

Yeah that makes sense, which is why even Avatar in 3D had this problem where if the black lizard panthar is running across the screen, you'd focus on it solely, making the surrounding plants/trees naturally blurry, but because its going at 24fps the panthar would still not be in focused, creating artifacts that your brain doesn't understand. So perhaps for the Hobbit they did apply some blurring so that it doesn't appear jittery, but I really dont know at all about that process. I do know that I can take footage at 60 or 30 fps and convert it to 24fps and it doesn't look messed up or anything weird.

  On 12/6/2012 at 4:33 AM, compson said:

Hm, website says:

 

Quote:

HFR also minimizes the appearance of motion artifacts — especially when viewed in a theater. Moving objects may strobe or have a “picket fence” appearance as they traverse a large screen. At 24 fps, a 50 foot screen shows an object as jumping in 2 foot increments if that object takes one second to traverse the screen. This can appear as “judder” with fast panning and other types of camera movements.

 

Also, the above examples are not the result of a 3:2 pulldown from 60 fps to 24 fps; each was shot independently using the same shutter angle and pan rate.

 

Using Red Camera

strange, maybe it's just the resolution or the camera but the 24 fps version looks far choppier than it should even at that rate

Since i've never tried doing any kind of step down conversion i really have no first hand perspective on this, but i'd be surprised if for the Hobbit production it was as simple as just halfing the amount of frames on screen to get it to appear like a classic 24fps film.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PldFcW3GHFc&feature=share&list=UUzNWVDZQ55bjq8uILZ7_wyQ

I think this is the coolest thing evar, probably because I don't know much about film. But it strikes me as like when Ocarina of Time said 'Hey, let's make the sun cast a hexagon flare on the 'camera' and it became more 'realistic'-looking to the player, or when the wolf scenes in Twilight Princess added those grainy floating bits to simulate what it is like for humans to look in dim light.

Prediction: Gaarg will see the movie the very first showing it's released and then tell us how shit it was!

flol at gandalf wearing 3d glasses @ 2:40 in first vid

Is it me or did PJ get fatter as filming progressed?

  On 12/6/2012 at 7:43 AM, azatoth said:

Is it me or did PJ get fatter as filming progressed?

he wants to fit in with the dwarves...

Re: motion blur and 24p/48p

I'm also worried about 24p version, like awepittance says. Unless they recorded everything with 1/48, which would technically be possible and would give us every second frame equal to what a standard 24p film with a 180deg shutter has. But I doubt they shot in 1/48 probably more like 1/96, seeing how they keep bragging about reduced motion blur. So like robbie says, apart from MCFI magic there really isn't anything they can do to show that first half of a 24p frame. So it's either a 1/96 saving private ryan strobefest, or made up blur, or 48p abomination. It's a huge shit sandwich and you're all gonna have to take a bite.

And what the fuck is up with that 3D dimness argument, please remind me - why is 48p supposed to show a brighter picture?

And those RED hfr samples are so full of shit don't even let me start on it... you're watching 24p source on a computer lcd that's refreshing at 60Hz - OF COURSE IT'S CHOPPY the playback software is doing the 3:2 pulldown to match the refresh rate!

  On 12/6/2012 at 1:14 AM, compson said:

I do know that I can take footage at 60 or 30 fps and convert it to 24fps and it doesn't look messed up or anything weird.

  On 12/6/2012 at 5:21 AM, encey said:

I think this is the coolest thing evar, probably because I don't know much about film. But it strikes me as like when Ocarina of Time said 'Hey, let's make the sun cast a hexagon flare on the 'camera' and it became more 'realistic'-looking to the player, or when the wolf scenes in Twilight Princess added those grainy floating bits to simulate what it is like for humans to look in dim light.

 

Prediction: Gaarg will see the movie the very first showing it's released and then tell us how shit it was!

Quite true. I'll see it on the 13th, and rant my ass off.

Unless I like it of course, there is always a chance...

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A note up front: I opted to see The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey at 24fps, rather than the intended 48fps. I hated the High Frame Rate technology when I first saw it displayed at CinemaCon this year, and so I decided I’d rather experience the movie first, and worry about the presentation later. I will eventually revisit the movie at 48fps.

As the film was shot at 48fps, it had to be digitally downgraded to 24fps. This process includes adding fake motion blur and other digital tricks. My experience with 24fps, optimally projected in 3D, was as positive as any other modern digital film.

So yeah they added motion blur, as I said I wasn't sure. And yes I shoot digital 60fps and vimeo/youtube down converts it to 30 fps, there's definitely a difference between them, but its not as if the footage becomes wanky

Regarding the clip, go take a look at any 24fps panning or fast action sequence and its gonna be blurrier and choppier compared to a faster frame rate. That's the point of the clip and why its not viewable on youtube or vimeo because they don't display at 60fps.

And from the reviews people have said the image is brighter and sharper at 48fps, more clarity in colors which would make it brighter? Point is I am interested in seeing it myself, maybe twice and deciding what I think of this becoming a new thing for big movies like this.

Don't get why people seem so opposed to giving something a chance. It's just a hollywood fantasy film with new tech, gonna be fun for what it is. Sorry some of you seem offended by any form of positive outlook regarding it lol

Ok, I see no point in arguing with you about the technical aspects.

As for the movie, I'm absolutely not going to pay $15 at midnight on the 13th to see the movie. I will probably see it eventually and probably won't be disappointed, because I hate it so much already. "It's just a hollywood fantasy film with new tech" is precisely what I hate the most about it and also the LOTR movies. Great fantasy works like Tolkien's shouldn't be treated like this.

If this was a generic fantasy story with dragons and knights - I'd gladly go see it in 3D/48, just as much as I like a rollercoaster ride in a theme park.

Why pay to see something you already hate? I get that you are a big LOTR fan and imagined something way cooler when you read the books, but thats generally the case with most adaptations of books and especially dense books.

the only evidence i have to claim that the 24fps version won't look 'weird' or abnormal is that all the trailers and clips released look perfectly fine as far as a standard 24fps movie is concerned. If they did add fake motion blur or whatever, they've done a good job of making it appear as if they haven't. But i'll probably see it both ways to make a final judgement.

I'm excited to see the film for many reasons, among them i still feel like WETA does more convincing cgi and compositing work than any other company working today, especially on Peter Jackson films. They raised the bar with Fellowship of the Ring, and while some of the cgi looked dodgey in King Kong and in the Hobbit trailer i think the whole will be greater than the sum of it's parts.

I don't really have the same faith in directors like James Cameron or George Lucas to raise the bar technically speaking like PJ has repeatedly. Although what saddens me about 2 more Hobbit films is its probably very unlikely PJ will ever make another movie as modest as Heavenly Creatures or Forgotten Silver again. I'm actually pretty excited by people saying this causes nausea and feels too much like a Disney ride, since at least for 3d movies the first person extreme camera sweeps seems to really make new style 3d effective. Most of the time i feel like 3d is a waste and that includes Hugo, Prometheus, Avengers and practically every 3d movie i've seen since Polar Express (which was a shit film but acted like a first person point of view ride during the train sequences).

I guess i'm one of those gimmick lovers that enjoys when things pop out at you or you feel virtual tactile sensations of flying or falling. For me almost without fail the intro graphics to 3d movies where they dazzle you with particle animated logos exploding always have more impressive 3d than the movie itself. It's a huge waste of the format imo, and i could understand why so many people complain about the trend, because the execution is very impotent compared to the potential.

I recently re-watched the LOTR trilogy and its amazing how much worse some of the CGI has gotten since I remember it being. Still enjoyed the series, I think the Two Towers is my favorite of the three. The whole thing is corny and heavy handed, but after a few smokes and some good candy or something its a fun film to watch with a few friends. Tolkien laid out a pretty interesting universe that reflects a lot of things going on in the world today, so its also interesting to watch them and pick up on symbolism and themes, add your own sub-text to the scenes.

Lucas failed at CGI, but Cameron still has it completely imo. Avatar was very introductory and definitely lacked interesting characters or plot. But please go back and just watch the final battle sequence in Avatar and tell me its not entirely surreal how the CGI takes on a physicality that almost looks like an elaborate claymation. I hope Avatar 2 will be 60fps and will be very different aesthetically , like some kind of continuation of plot where the main characters gain new Avatars of other alien creatures on different planets. Because I think in terms of technical , Camera is the best, he just has been lacking with art direction/writing.