
Over the Christmas holiday I saw Peter Jackson's take on The Hobbit. Twice. First in 24fps/2D, and a second time in the new 48fps/3D format. I was shocked by how vastly different were the two viewings.
What I thought of the movie itself
This isn't a review of the movie, but I will say this much: Jackson's worked hard to bring the lighter Hobbit material more in line with the gravitas of Lord of the Rings, and mostly it works.
Good Parts: Bilbo, Thorin, Galadriel and Gollum. The "Riddles in the Dark" scene is simply astonishing, offering the best Gollum performance yet. He manages to be deeply funny and terrifying at the same time. Andy Serkis and the artists/animators who create that character surely deserve an award.
Not So Good: A few things are supersized beyond all recognition, like the Dwarven realm of Erebor and the stone giants. Radagast the Brown and his rabbit sled are too cartoony for my taste, as was the big bad White Orc. (Unlike Gollum, that orc character looked very CG). Elven blades are supposed to faintly glow at the edges in the presence of orcs, not shine like lightsabers. The action sequences are a bit too over-the-top compared to LOTR, in the same way Temple of Doom overdid what worked in Raiders of the Lost Ark. As my friend Lotus observed, orcs in the first trilogy had real mass and were a real threat, whereas in The Hobbit they fly around like paper.
Bottom line: I liked the film a lot, but I didn't love it.
That was my impression of the 24fps version at any rate. A couple days later I went to the new 48fps/3D version, cautiously hopeful I'd be blown away. I was, but not in a good way.
What I thought of the new HFR (High Frame Rate) format
For me, 48fps is a noble experiment, but a failed one. On paper, it should be a big improvement. The faster frame rate makes film grain disappear, and there's a supernatural reality to the image. Everything is super-sharp, movement is very smooth. And yet...
I could barely sit through the first half of the film before I had to leave, it was that off-putting. And puzzling out the why of my reaction has occupied my thoughts for days.
The closest I can come to capturing its wrongness is this: I had the sensation of having wandered onto the set and watching the actors perform their parts in stage makeup. If you've ever seen "behind the scenes" material shot on video, it felt like that, but with super-high resolution. Specific performances I'd enjoyed in the 24fps format now felt over-acted, as if the dreamlike magic of film reality had been ripped away, to leave the actors naked on stage. I never felt an emotional connection with anything that transpired on the screen. I imagine dogs feel the same way watching High-Def TV. Lots to look at, but nothing quite makes sense.
The effect was inconsistant. A few shots really benefited from the new format, but they tended to be the wide, static establishing shots where you expect everything to be in focus. Rivendell, for example, and the beauty shot of Bag End. The close- and medium-shots, and chaotic battle scenes, however, were too sharp and rich in detail. It didn't help that Jackson chose super-saturated colors, either.
My hunch is traditional film's 24fps and tv's 30 work so well because they sync closely with the 1/25th second 'persistence of vision' effect. Perhaps those flicker rates produce a slight trance that helps the imagery go down smoothly. Whatever the case, my perceptual system did not enjoy 48fps, and I don't believe it's a simple matter of my age or lifetime exposure to the old format. It just feels wrong, wrong, wrong.
I think it must have screwed with my perception of time and space, too, because sometimes the speed of movement felt strangely accelerated, almost like video that hasn't buffered properly and rushes ahead to catch up. Yet the sound was always in synch, so I don't think it was a technical glitch.
Apparently I'm not the only one saying these things: http://gizmodo.com/the-hobbit/
I took off my 3D glasses at various points in the film to see if that might help me accept the HFR format. It's hard to say for sure, but it didn't seem to help things.
Here's another interesting thing I observed. Today's 3D technology is pretty darned good. I can watch a 3D movie with pleasure. But later when replaying such movies in my head, I don't retain the 3D aspect; it goes back to being flat images. HFR, on the other hand, was so profoundly strange that I do remember it vividly. Weird!
Good try, but no more, please
That said, I applaud Peter Jackson for giving it a college try. I'm glad I got to experience it, even if I didn't enjoy it.
Perhaps the trick to making HFR work is a new approach to directing and cinematography. More restrained camera work, subtler acting. It might make for great nature documentaries with locked-down cameras.
But I don't ever want to see another HFR movie.
By the way, this has been tried before by Douglas Trumbull and his insane Showscan format. I've always wanted to see that. Now I'm not so sure.
What I thought of the movie itself
This isn't a review of the movie, but I will say this much: Jackson's worked hard to bring the lighter Hobbit material more in line with the gravitas of Lord of the Rings, and mostly it works.
Good Parts: Bilbo, Thorin, Galadriel and Gollum. The "Riddles in the Dark" scene is simply astonishing, offering the best Gollum performance yet. He manages to be deeply funny and terrifying at the same time. Andy Serkis and the artists/animators who create that character surely deserve an award.
Not So Good: A few things are supersized beyond all recognition, like the Dwarven realm of Erebor and the stone giants. Radagast the Brown and his rabbit sled are too cartoony for my taste, as was the big bad White Orc. (Unlike Gollum, that orc character looked very CG). Elven blades are supposed to faintly glow at the edges in the presence of orcs, not shine like lightsabers. The action sequences are a bit too over-the-top compared to LOTR, in the same way Temple of Doom overdid what worked in Raiders of the Lost Ark. As my friend Lotus observed, orcs in the first trilogy had real mass and were a real threat, whereas in The Hobbit they fly around like paper.
Bottom line: I liked the film a lot, but I didn't love it.
That was my impression of the 24fps version at any rate. A couple days later I went to the new 48fps/3D version, cautiously hopeful I'd be blown away. I was, but not in a good way.
What I thought of the new HFR (High Frame Rate) format
For me, 48fps is a noble experiment, but a failed one. On paper, it should be a big improvement. The faster frame rate makes film grain disappear, and there's a supernatural reality to the image. Everything is super-sharp, movement is very smooth. And yet...
I could barely sit through the first half of the film before I had to leave, it was that off-putting. And puzzling out the why of my reaction has occupied my thoughts for days.
The closest I can come to capturing its wrongness is this: I had the sensation of having wandered onto the set and watching the actors perform their parts in stage makeup. If you've ever seen "behind the scenes" material shot on video, it felt like that, but with super-high resolution. Specific performances I'd enjoyed in the 24fps format now felt over-acted, as if the dreamlike magic of film reality had been ripped away, to leave the actors naked on stage. I never felt an emotional connection with anything that transpired on the screen. I imagine dogs feel the same way watching High-Def TV. Lots to look at, but nothing quite makes sense.
The effect was inconsistant. A few shots really benefited from the new format, but they tended to be the wide, static establishing shots where you expect everything to be in focus. Rivendell, for example, and the beauty shot of Bag End. The close- and medium-shots, and chaotic battle scenes, however, were too sharp and rich in detail. It didn't help that Jackson chose super-saturated colors, either.
My hunch is traditional film's 24fps and tv's 30 work so well because they sync closely with the 1/25th second 'persistence of vision' effect. Perhaps those flicker rates produce a slight trance that helps the imagery go down smoothly. Whatever the case, my perceptual system did not enjoy 48fps, and I don't believe it's a simple matter of my age or lifetime exposure to the old format. It just feels wrong, wrong, wrong.
I think it must have screwed with my perception of time and space, too, because sometimes the speed of movement felt strangely accelerated, almost like video that hasn't buffered properly and rushes ahead to catch up. Yet the sound was always in synch, so I don't think it was a technical glitch.
Apparently I'm not the only one saying these things: http://gizmodo.com/the-hobbit/
I took off my 3D glasses at various points in the film to see if that might help me accept the HFR format. It's hard to say for sure, but it didn't seem to help things.
Here's another interesting thing I observed. Today's 3D technology is pretty darned good. I can watch a 3D movie with pleasure. But later when replaying such movies in my head, I don't retain the 3D aspect; it goes back to being flat images. HFR, on the other hand, was so profoundly strange that I do remember it vividly. Weird!
Good try, but no more, please
That said, I applaud Peter Jackson for giving it a college try. I'm glad I got to experience it, even if I didn't enjoy it.
Perhaps the trick to making HFR work is a new approach to directing and cinematography. More restrained camera work, subtler acting. It might make for great nature documentaries with locked-down cameras.
But I don't ever want to see another HFR movie.
By the way, this has been tried before by Douglas Trumbull and his insane Showscan format. I've always wanted to see that. Now I'm not so sure.