I love Elvish. Especially 'Huge Suede Shoes'.

Loved the book, but how he thinks he can get 3 full length films out of this material is a bit of a mystery.

With regards to frame rate:

Over or under cranking has been routine in movie making since the 1930s.

The frame rate has a lot to do with the emotional response you get from the motion picture and has little to do with how we make judgement about "realism"


Slow frame rates garner soft images that are often referred to as "film like".  People often assume that film has great resolution. Classic 24 fpm film is usually shot with a slow shutter speed and each frame has a soft blur on any thing moving in the frame. Some folks think it gives a deluxe vibe, and they describe it as "film like". It's important to note that each frame can seem blurry while the motion picture or stream does not seem blurry to the viewers eyes. One can only sense the 'vibe".

High frame rates have to be shot with faster shutter speeds so you get sharper images when there is movement. It provides a more aggressive vibe that can help add tension to a sequence. fast shutter speeds are popular in sports because it makes stuff seem exciting.


The thing to appreciate is that we watch movies AFTER they have been conformed to presentation frame rates.

What that means is that there is one frame rate for capture and then another frame rate for presentation.  You can do several things when you are "conforming" to another frame rate to achieve different effects.



One of the most time honored techniques is to under crank action sequences so that they are sped up for the presentation and seem more exciting. This is done routinely but subtlety... have you ever noticed how a fight scene in a great movie seems so exciting but if you see a behind the scene video of the movie being made it seems the "fight acting" is slow and almost comical. That is the magic of under cranking.

The other famous effect is over cranking where you shoot at a higher rate and then get a slow motion effect in presentation that adds drama and seriousness to a sequence. If it's done subtler it just lends itself to the story telling and if it's done overtly it looks like "slow motion". It's a common film making technique.




If you simply shoot at a different rate with out intent to achieve a motion effect then you can use modern digital compositing tools to "conform" the source footage to some target frame rate. So for example you can shoot fast shutter speed at 60fps and later conform the whole thing to 24fps by stacking frames and throwing out info. This has some benefits for basic story telling as it gives you some control in post over the look or feel of the sequence.

It also gives you clean sharp images for digital compositing tasks such as green screen keying... the types of things that classic 24p soft look film is not ideal at.

Then after you use the sharp imagery to do all the digital post work you may conform down to 24p and purposefully "blur' it up a bit so it looks deluxe and "film like".

Conforming has been around a long time as it has been used to convert 24p films to 29.97 TV for decades. Now there are lots more reasons to conform... there is just so much variety that conforming has become sort of routine.





To make it more confusing... most actual film theaters display 24p film with double taps... in other words we see 48 flickers that are made up of 24 frames each flashed at us twice. This is totally different than the 24 24p flashes we see on our BluRay big screen TVs.... so when lots of people talk about 24p and a theatrical "film look" it can be kinda confusing to know what they think they are speaking of.



Random thoughts.


best regards,
mike

Guitarhacker


Coming soon to theaters in December

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/if-you-go-see-the-hobbit-and-wonder-why-it-looks-weird-heres-why/

apparently, they are using twice the normal frame rate of movies to shoot this which should make the viewing much more realistic. 

Film has pretty good resolution, at the regular frame rate. Like the quality of the cotton that made the film, eventually, as time went by, things changed and the needs changed. Coppola wanted to shoot stuff with a larger contrast of light and dark ... and this was a problem for film ... NOT the lenses themselves.
 
Digital Photography has made this possible. The main limitation since the beginning of "film", has always been the projector, or and the camera. Digital Photography kinda took that away when it did not have to roll the film to get the picture ... it was how many pixels did you want?
 
The fact that it states that it is "filmed" in more frames, is, I imagine, a bit ... strange ... unless we think of things this way ... video on a CD is 24 frames, on HD is 36 frames and on Blue Ray is 48 frames ... and there are not many theaters out there that can show you stuff that good ... the equipment is too experimental and too expensive to spend money on and no one can afford it.
 
I would prefer to state that this is advanceing technology in the film business ... instead of confusing frames with digital stuff ... digital does not work on frames ... anymore! ... sort of ... if you break it down it probably does, but the whole process is now so much better defined than the celluloid ... that it makes the old Kodak film look like toilet paper!

Bristol_Jonesey


Loved the book, but how he thinks he can get 3 full length films out of this material is a bit of a mystery.

I was not aware that they were splitting the book into 3 full length movies. 
 
that's good news/bad news.  good news is that they can keep a lot of detail of the books in the movies the longer they make the overall length of the story for the film.
 
bad news is that there's not really any good places to cut the book into 3 movies, IMO.  it's "one story"

Personally, I prefer the vivid look of older film. For example, we get an OTA channel called ME TV. I think shows like Bonanza, Wild Wild West, Daniel Boone look fantastic compared to today's shows/movies. Most have such dull colors, particularly movies. Tim Burton is one exception that comes to mind though.

Star Trek TOS really looks phenomenal to me personally. All the colorful costumes and lighting they used.

Hi Mosh,

 All the "frameworks" that digital video streaming technologies are based upon are intended to deliver discrete frames at the output.
 
 All the intermediary or edit codecs emphasize access to discrete frames.

 The low budget capture and the mass distribution codecs use technology to create the illusion that there are discrete frames because the actual presentation is still made with complete frames*.


 *please note that I have not addressed interleaved a.k.a. "i" analog video because it is quickly disappearing in distribution... and a discussion about it would only add to confusion before it added any clarification.

Bub


I was just reading that during the advanced screenings, some people are getting sick because of the way the movie was filmed ...

http://news.yahoo.com/why-hobbit-making-moviegoers-sick-150200400.html

Not surprised ... this ain't Judy Garland star-like Hollywood worship ... and some folks DO have an issue with reality! It was much easier to have the crystal and the newland music in the background and think it was all newage instead of a life the person was not happy with!
 
The frame rate is harsh visually ... and it reminds me of the older Roman Polanski films, when the camera was handheld, and did really harsh things ... that are similar to this ... when you see Tess, take a look at the camera ... in the scene ... it makes you feel like you are the rapist! And this is hard for many folks! When you see Rosemary's Baby ... bet me that you are not going to move your head to the right to see what is on the other side of the doorway!
 
It makes people feel "used" and sometimes ... scared, and it is one of the oldest tricks used in the best horror films ever done ... but you were too drunk and having sex with the girlfriend at the drive-in to admit that ... or that you noticed anything in the film ... that you don't remember! (Even I did that!!!! Might as well be honest here!)
 
Not all film makers, are about "make-believe", and Jackson is not from that club, either. He's about making that moment live as long as possible, and keeping it crisp and clear ... so we can BELIEVE the whole thing better ... and this is the history of a lot of film these days, that are not just top ten trash. This is where Hollywood is failing, and the only person that is trying to get past that is Jim Cameron, but he is now sort of like Disney ... living off one cartoon, making subsequent cartoons that are copies!

That ultra crispness just looks cheap, like direct to video movies, give me the soft film look with a bit of grain any day.

I agree. It's funny, but the better the resolution the less it looks like a movie. You become aware of things like where the lights are positioned, things you'd normally just integrate into the scene. 


I recently upgraded my TV. I was surprised and disappointed that after spending more on it than every TV I've ever previously owned combined, everything looked cheesy on it, like old Star Trek or Dr. Who episodes. I was able to blur it somewhat by lowering the contrast.


Nevertheless, I already have tickets for December 27th to see The Hobbit in IMAX 3D with my 8-year-old granddaughter. Her generation will simply accept high resolution as the norm, at least until true holographic 3D becomes available. 

bitflipper

Nevertheless, I already have tickets for December 27th to see The Hobbit in IMAX 3D with my 8-year-old granddaughter.

I am so looking forward to seeing this on the big screen in 3D.  But I'm never going back to an IMax for the experience.  Look at the screen dimensions when you're there.  It looks closer to the 4x3 aspect ratio of older televisions.  That means the version you're seeing is cropped on the sides, just like what happens when you watch cinematic stuff on an old 4x3 TV.  I prefer to sacrifice the extra height of IMax in order to see the director's/cimematographer's intent.
 
Either way, though, this ought to be one of the more enjoyable events of the holiday season.