48 fps!

I'm almost as excited to see this visual breakthrough as I am to see "The Hobbit." Who's with me?

I am, though I know many were skeptical after a 10 minutes sample several months ago.  I hope that it's more of a lack of familiarity rather than a serious problem.  My hopes remain high!

doubleofive said:

I wish there were any theaters in my STATE that were showing it at that speed!

 I feel your pain. I have to drive almost 25 min to get to the nearest place doing 48 fps IMAX 3D.

Darn So-Cal.

No matter how stupid this might sound, I think that even though this could be considered a technical step forward, I think film is film and video is video and one of the things that makes a film feel like a film is how the motion differs from reality.

I would love to see The Hobbit in 48fps after seeing the 24fps version just because I'm interested in how it would feel to watch it that way, but I'm pretty sure I will prefer the 24fps version. I can somehow imagine 48fps would look a lot like the motion interpolation effect all new TVs have. Every time I go to an electronics shop they have TVs displaying films like Avatar, motion interpolated to double or triple framerate and it looks horrible.

"The real, 24 fps version"? Seriously? What makes that the "real" one? It is being filmed in 48 fps. The 24fps will be the converted, altered, version of the movie. At this point, it is almost like preferring a 16:9 aspect ratio to such a degree that you insist on watching everything in 16:9 or wider, even if it means cropping something that was originally filmed and presented in 4:3 "so that the movie will not be ruined".

I sometimes don't get this resistance to change. Some of us in here sound like we're a few years shy of being ready to live in a nursing home. Don't get me wrong, it is great to prefer older technology, I love listening to my music (even new stuff) on vinyl, can't stand watching movies in gimmicky 3D, and am certainly a fan of film over digital. But I can certainly see the advantages of CD's and high quality digital recordings, why a lot of people find it fun to go to 3D movies, and the pluses of shooting digitally. I think it is quite ridiculous to oppose something new only because it isn't what you are used to seeing.

You_Too said:

No matter how stupid this might sound, I think that even though this could be considered a technical step forward, I think film is film and video is video and one of the things that makes a film feel like a film is how the motion differs from reality.

I would love to see The Hobbit in 48fps after seeing the 24fps version just because I'm interested in how it would feel to watch it that way, but I'm pretty sure I will prefer the 24fps version. I can somehow imagine 48fps would look a lot like the motion interpolation effect all new TVs have. Every time I got to an electronics shop they have TVs displaying films like Avatar, motion interpolated to double or triple framerate and it looks horrible.

It's not like that. Those TVs are showing 24fps and 29.97fps videos converted. The Hobbit was filmed natively in 48fps. There's not much precedent because no major movie has been released in a native framerate that high. The only conversion in the Hobbit will be if you see it at a 24fps framerate, so if there will be artifacts of any kind it will be in that version.

It's less a resolution thing and more the quality of the optics. The Episode II and III cameras had really bad sensors and only 2/3" CCDs, just like news cameras--well, the prequel cameras were news cameras, retrofitted for movie use.

As the technology gets cheaper and easier to view, 3D and high framerate filming will eventually become standard, it's just a question of whether this is 5 years, 10 years, or 20 years. It's just a natural progression in the trajectory to capture real life. First we had sound, then we had colour, then we had 3D and now we have frame rates that better approximate real life motion. Doug Trumbull has been working on a 128FPS system for about 30 years, because after years of testing he felt that was the frame rate at which it would indistinguishable from real life. He held a screening once, a tech demo, and Spielberg was there, and the projection screen was inclosed in a box. Before the film starts a man walks out in front of the screen and starts explaining the technology and what they are about to see. Spielberg says something like "when is the actual screening going to start," when the enclosure surrounding the screen lifts and reveals the man is actually a projection. He was the demo, but he was impossible to tell from real life. I want to see that, I'm excited for that day, when films are in colour, in sound, in three optical dimensions, and in real-life motion.

We are on a trajectory for as complete an immersion as possible, and these seem to me to be pretty obvious routes. Some people have this knee-jerk "ah, it's a fad" mentality but I don't get that, it's seems more that people just don't like change, even when it increases the immersion of the film. Eventually they will accept it, just like all the people who thought sound was ruining films dealt with it. That, by the way, is true, there were huge amounts of people who felt that sound betrayed the very foundation of motion pictures, because it was a visual medium done in a certain style where people didn't speak. Same with colour, because black and white was seen as more artistic and proper--colour was a gimmick; and it sort of was. But ultimately it made the films more realistic, and that's what won the day.

The problem with high frame rate in the past was projection, and it still is today. But when we were dealing with film, you would have had to replace the entire projector. Now that we are in the age of digital projectors, it might be possible to just update or mod the existing hardware--I'm assuming that is what is happening with the Hobbit, it would be doubtful so many theaters would install new projectors just for one film. It's also easier to build cameras with higher frame rates now that we are digital, whereas in the past with 35mm cameras the entire thing had to be gutted from scratch.

I'm very interested to see what 48 fps looks like. I will be seeing the 24 fps first, however, so it will be cool to compare. 

As for my opinion on the format at this moment, I have a feeling I will still prefer 24 fps, but, well, you never know.

As for where it's going? Well, once it's all digital projection, it will be easier to show 48 fps films movies everywhere. I don't see it as a 3D add-on experience type of thing, I feel like it will end up being a director's preference type of deal, with some 24 and some 48. I would be surprised if it didn't take off after the Hobbit, but I have a hard time believing it would ever completely replace 24 (or 30, I guess).  

Well the thing to remember is, why do you think 24 FPS was chosen as a standard? No, really, this seems like a stupid thing to even ask, but if you know movie history it may make things I say a bit clearer.

Back in the early 1900s, there was no standards for movies. It was a new, experimental technology, and people were branching out and doing all kinds of weird things with it, many of which never survived or caught on. One of the bigger thing was frame rate. There was no standard for frame rate. Most early films shot in something like 18 or 20 FPS. At the time, when you projected it, the motion wasn't totally smooth, it was slightly staccato. But now the standard is 24 FPS, so those old 16 and 18 FPS films are played back at 24 FPS. This gives the sometimes comical effect of fast-motion. That's the reason many old films look sped up.

Why choose a frame rate that, when projected natively looks jerky, or when projected back at the current standard of 24 FPS looks fast? Money. Film is very, very, very expensive. Five minutes of film costs about $1000 for raw stock, and another $1000 to develop and transfer--in today's dollars. At least it did when I worked with 35mm some brief years ago. They could have filmed in 24 FPS, instead of 12, 16, 18 or 20 FPS. They could have also easily filmed in 48 FPS--and they did. But it was so expensive, if you made a feature film that way the costs would skyrocket. They chose an under-24FPS rate at first because it was cheap. It was affordable. So what, it looks a bit jerky, people will be wowed anyway and this is a good compromise. Around the 1920s, as the medium matured and a whole industry sprouted, they had to decide on standards. So, what was the standard frame rate? They chose 24 frames per second. NOT AT ALL because it was ideal, or realistic. They chose that rate because it was the best compromise between affordability, and realism. It wasn't all that realistic, but it was halfway there, and it was a fraction of the cost of filming in something like 60 FPS, which most of the nice looking video games of today run at.

So, from day one it was an arbitrary figure based on financial compromise. But, since we are raised from birth exposed to this on a daily basis it seems "natural" to us. It isn't. There is nothing "natural" or "right" about it, it's an arbitrary decision, but we are just used to it. 30 FPS looks ugly, because it's too little an improvement. 48FPS might just be enough of a difference to cause a shift in perception. I would prefer Dougie's 128 FPS standard, since we aren't printing film anymore, but at least 48 FPS is a doubling of what we have now, and just enough in the "realism" zone to qualify. 24 FPS looks "nice," but that's subjective, it's mainly because we have been raised from birth to look at that, but the history behind that standard is really due to financial issues.

Do U have proof to back that up????????  Please give 10 reasons why I should believe you!!!!!!!

Actually, that really is interesting to know :)