48fps The Hobbit - First Review

[Gabriele Turchi]

No, you wouldn't have to. Because EPIC uses an electronic shutter, you can shoot at 48fps but still maintain very close to a "standard" 1/48th sec exposure time. So, if you then chose to drop every other frame at film out you will have a 24 fps 1/48th sec motion blur product....

oh...i thought that shooting 48 and keeping the option to go 24 , means use a 1/96 sec shutter .....

so you are saying that 1/48 is the right one to use if than we drop every other frame ?

thanks
g

[Scott Crawley]

Today, apple released the trailer for John Hillcoat's new film Lawless. The film was shot digitally on the Alexa. Compare it to the trailer for Public Enemies which was also shot digitally but uses that awful 360 degree shutter effect.

One looks normal, the other looks odd even though the use they same technology.

What does this have to do with The Hobbit? It wasn't shot with a 360° shutter. It's an apples and oranges comparison.

What's the 360 degree shutter supposed to do, exactly? I'm going to plead ignorance here and ask for a bit of help.

I'm not very experienced with a rotary shutter, but I will try and help.

The 360° shutter is relative, so it is tricky to explain what it does in general terms. A 360° shutter is no shutter at all. It never closes, making your shutter speed equal to the frame rate; at 24 FPS it is 1/24th of a second and at 48 FPS it is 1/48th of a second. So if you were comparing a "normal" exposure of 180° @24fps (1/48th) to 48fps @ 1/48th you would be looking at a 360° shutter, or an exposure twice as long as you expect, so you would see more blur than you expect.

Is that right or exactly wrong?

[Bill Anderson]

Dylan goes electric ( :

[Jaakko Rinne]

This technique is NOT the same as LCD TV motion interpolation though. I totally agree that is a terrible idea.

Not the same technique, but it produces the same kind of smooth soap opera motion. And if you're used to looking at films with motion interpolation, you won't mind 48fps.

[Steve Pool]

For me 48fps is terrible. For this simple reason: it kills the suspension of dis-belief. Cinema is an abstraction of reality, it has to be if we are to believe in aliens, dinosaurs and gremlins...
If the image is too life-like it destroys the illusion, high resolution can hamper that goal too, but 48fps is the surest way to break the spell - and as others have mentioned, cheapen a movie. 24fps is a step closer to our imagination...

I'm very glad Ridley Scott chose to shoot Prometheus in 24p. That is one great looking trailer.

[Andrew Rieger]

What does this have to do with The Hobbit? It wasn't shot with a 360° shutter. It's an apples and oranges comparison.

I was not comparing Lawless to the Hobbit, I was comparing it to Public Enemies. Sorry if I did not make that clear. Both Lawless and Public Enemies use digital cameras to shoot films about gangsters during the depression. One opts for a more traditional 180 degree shutter (Lawless) while the other tries to shake things up with a 360 degree shutter (Public Enemies) which produces very ugly digital looking images. Lawless looks normal and quite pretty in my opinion while Public Enemies looked like crap, so much so that it ruined my enjoyment of the film. The example was designed to illustrate the fact that making a big change to the way a film appears to the audience can have a negative effect on the film if the audience hates the look. The 360 degree shutter did nothing for Public Enemies except make it look ugly and it sounds like 48fps has done the same thing with The Hobbit. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[Andrew Rieger]

+1 to what Ketch said. People are used to 24, it'll take them a while to get used to 48. People who are used to watching films on their home plasmas and LCDs with motion interpolation won't notice anything.

I can't tell you how many times I have been over to people houses to watch something on their new plasma and they complain about how odd movies look. I tell them to turn of the interpolation feature and bam, suddenly they realize how bad it looked before.

I am used to 24fps and I am not ashamed of it. Jackson, Cameron and Lucas can tell me till their blue in the face that higher frames looks better but I will still think it looks like crap. What we need are higher resolution projectors, not higher frame rates which represent motion in an odd and distracting manner. Distracting is never a good thing. You should never be thinking about how odd the footage looks.

[Thor Melsted]

Other advancements in motion picture history that met with mixed reaction:

Sound.
Color.
Digital.
3D.

Why should a frame rate change be any different?

[Thor Melsted]

the long dark path that ruined James Cameron

With all due respect Mr Rieger, but I honestly can't take you seriously after that sentence.

[Steve Marshall]

Hmmmm, I'm kinda of the opinion if it isn't broken, don't fix it.

2D 24fps definitely isn't broken.

However 3D at 24fps is broken - it looks bloody awful. Upping it to 48fps will solve it's problems. But will it actually make 3D good? I'll wait until I see it - but I doubt it.