After I saw The Hobbit at 48fps, I'm having a hard time watching 24fps movies. Yesterday I watched The Shining by Kubrik. It was jittery, and that's a slow film. HFR is superior to 24fps in every conceivable way. I suppose color and sound were not considered "cinematic" back in the day just like HFR now.
3D on the other hand... I wish it would die. You have to converge at a distance and focus at another, and that's really hard for some people. There are a huge number of cues[1] that are important in depth perception, but 3D movies make use only of parallax confusing the brain. The depth of field is usually shallow, and that's great for 2D, but catastrophic for 3D. In real life, objects that I make an explicit effort to focus to are not blurry, but in 3D they are.
Another annoying aspect of 3D movies is that they artificially augment the parallax to make the 3D effect more extreme. That's equivalent to objects being really close. Apart from strain on the eyes, that's really annoying for wide outdoor shots, where things should effectively be at infinity. It's like you are looking at a miniature, not at a vast valley.
HFR is superior to 24fps in every conceivable way.
Film makers have a wide variety of creative tools available to them to help them tell a story, of which HFR is one. We're talking about art, not a technical quest to reproduce reality as closely as possible.
It'll be interesting to compare this situation with what people thought colour film did to movies compared to monochrome. I can imagine people moaning eloquently about the loss of poetry in film, about how its not about the realism offered by colour, etc. ... though I do not know whether that happened. The state of 3D technology might be comparable to the realism of eastman colour.
Sure... And if I display the exact same frame twice in a row at 48fps I get 24fps.
So anything that 24fps can do, 48fps can do too.
And I don't buy the crazy idea that someone using 24fps during an entire movie would someone be the achievement of some visual art perfection.
This is wrong, wrong and wrong.
Also I have to laugh quite a bit at you describing a movie called "The hobbit" which shows dragon, trolls, elfes, magicians, etc. as "trying to reproduce reality".
Um, no. Motion blur is absolutely essential for smooth movements. Showing 48fps material by displaying every other frame at 24fps will look, much much choppier than 24fps material.
His point was that the motion of the video doesn't need to look like it's happening in person for the film to be entertaining. Just like the story doesn't have to explain why there are elves, trolls, etc. for you to accept their presence and move on. It's an artistic decision.
It reminds me of video games, in a way. GPU's are constantly being improved, and we get closer and closer to producing real-time photo-realistic graphics every day... and yet there is still plenty of room for games like Super Mario or Team Fortress 2, which don't want or need to look realistic to be fun.
Sure... And if I display the exact same frame twice in a row at 48fps I get 24fps.
So anything that 24fps can do, 48fps can do too.
I'm not sure what your point is. If a film maker frame doubled 24fps and projected it using a HFR system nobody would regard it as HFR.
And I don't buy the crazy idea that someone using 24fps during an entire movie would someone be the achievement of some visual art perfection.
This is wrong, wrong and wrong.
I didn't say that.
Also I have to laugh quite a bit at you describing a movie called "The hobbit" which shows dragon, trolls, elfes, magicians, etc. as "trying to reproduce reality".
I had the same feeling about 3D until I saw "Life of Pi" in 3D. They managed to provide imagery that wouldn't have been possible in a two-dimensional format. As with all other "tools" 3D can be used poorly, and it can be used well. As the technology matures, I have a feeling we'll see it skew more towards the latter.
Yes; Life of Pi is one of the most beautiful 3D movies I've seen, and a good story (based on an award winning book). I'm having trouble convincing people to go see it though...
I'm in the same boat (pun intended). Hardly any of my friends have seen it and I'm considering it in my list of top 10 movies of all time! It was moving, although I'm not sure if I would have enjoyed it as much if I saw it in 2D...
Another annoying aspect of 3D movies is that when you watch the non 3D version it usually is apparent the gimmicky shots only made because of the 3D version.
One very sore point I have with this film is just that.
Filmmaker here. There's a lot more to having good 3D than parallax, and 'painted on' is a necessity to get better 3D today on live-action films even if you film with two cameras.
The only films that truly have great 3D today are Avatar (in the 3D animated scenes -- most of the movie) and modern 3D animated films (Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks, etc.).
The reason is that you need different parallax settings (among other things) within the same shot. Let that sink in. There's no global setting for any of the stereoscopic cues that works well for all objects in a single image. Obviously, then, having two cameras alone doesn't really get you good 3D no matter how you do it.
Live-action recording like the Hobbit only ever gets one set of 3D settings per frame, unless you do the 3D 'painted' thing you claim sucks, and even then, the '3D painted' technique is time-consuming, expensive, and still not as good as what you can get when you're doing 3D stereoscopic rendering and can actually use different settings for different objects within the frame at the same time. FWIW, I'm certain that the Hobbit also used the '3D painted' technique. Everyone does it when they have the budget for it.
If anyone is really interested in how 3D is actually done by those in the industry, subscribe to cml-3d. The 3D supervisors post their techniques on films often; it's quite an interesting read.
Not to mention that in true 3D you would be able to look anywhere you wanted in the picture instead of what's in focus. 3D will (hopefully!) go down as one of the most ridiculous fads ever conceived.
I don't want to be a hater of something everyone around seems to love, but I really didn't enjoy the experience of Hobbit 3D HFR, it was like seeing a God of War game at times, and I felt no connection to the characters, and no emotion at all.
And I really like the LoTR saga, having seen it several times.
3D on the other hand... I wish it would die. You have to converge at a distance and focus at another, and that's really hard for some people. There are a huge number of cues[1] that are important in depth perception, but 3D movies make use only of parallax confusing the brain. The depth of field is usually shallow, and that's great for 2D, but catastrophic for 3D. In real life, objects that I make an explicit effort to focus to are not blurry, but in 3D they are.
Another annoying aspect of 3D movies is that they artificially augment the parallax to make the 3D effect more extreme. That's equivalent to objects being really close. Apart from strain on the eyes, that's really annoying for wide outdoor shots, where things should effectively be at infinity. It's like you are looking at a miniature, not at a vast valley.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_perception