(Film is really dead. There are some directors still making noise about shooting on film, but it's digitized for editing.)
It just doesn't look film-y. I suspect it won't be until VR that we'll see proper high framerate.
Its just such an oddity that I don't think people will take the risk, given the expense in retrofitting cinemas. (plus virtually no TV is actually capable of properly doing 60fps)
just one point:
>Adding grain in post-processing is on the way out.
thats with us to stay. most film grain from 2008 onwards is digital (yes even on film films) because most will have gone through a VFX pipeline with DI. Grain is stripped out and put back in after.
grain is a good visual cue for a number of things, just like desaturation of colour. its a tool thats not going to go away
I too find 3D gimmicky often, but probably because the technology varies grandly between production, cameras and theater displays. On the other hand, there are 3D movies every day in every big cinemas and 3D TVs as well. So I'm not sure we can say that it wasn't a great success.
> High frame rates haven't been successful for several years
The number of cinemas that can display 48fps is not great, the number of cinemas that can display 60fps is zero? So I don't know how you can say that "High frame rates haven't been successful for several years".
Actually if you look on Youtube, high FPS videos are successful.
> At which point it will look like a youtube video to many, not like a movie in the cinema
There are some great youtube videos out there, don't know why you're saying this. Cinema is what you're defining as 24fps, sure because you're used to it. If tomorrow we start watching a lot of 60fps movies then you will define it as Cinema. Objectively 60fps is better for action movies anyway, the rest will follow.
any cinema that can do 3D can do 48FPS, at least.
RealD uses a single projector, with an electrically controlled circular polarising filter on the front.
This is why 3D in cinema for any kind of action is terrible, because you get juddering nastyness.
To get round this, some places project at 96 FPS(well I thought it was 144, but that might be the limit of the projector where I worke)
You'll have to explain to me why they weren't showing The Hobbit in 48fps then. You sometimes had to go to a different country to see it in 48fps.
3D has two major problems. First is that the technology sucks. The glasses are heavy, bulky, and don't do a particularly good job of filtering out the opposite eye's channel. Second is that filmmakers don't understand how to do 3D at all. Every 3D film I've seen loves to add parallax where there should not be parallax. They don't understand that binocular depth perception only works out to a few dozen feet, which causes anything with observable parallax to be perceived to be nearby, and that in turn causes large objects to look tiny. Seeing a spaceship or airplane or mountain that looks like a toy because the filmmakers decided to "pop" it out of the screen is the exact opposite of a cinematic experience.
High frame rate doesn't have this problem. The technology is good, and using it properly in films doesn't appear to be a failing.
Fake parallax that just turn epic scenes and scenery into tabletop models.
It's obvious, but why do they ruin their efforts like that. Don't they watch their own movies after post 3d editing?
I think even Avatar made it too far. I think I've whatched some animated films that didn't blow totally, but almost every other film that I have seen in 3d was a disappointment.
Either they are huge, to get two cameras side by side, or they have a half-silvered mirror arrangement (with colour disparity)
Add to that the rigs wobble (vomit inducing) and the distance between the cameras is far to wide, it all looks a bit poop, or requires a huge amount of post work to make fly.
So the normal thing to do is manually cut out each object (rotoscope) and adjust the divergence to place it in 3d.
every object, every frame.
it mostly looks a bit poop.
Not to mention is normally done quickly, like clash of the titans was converted in ~1 month.
for documentaries and sports, yeah, its brilliant.
But for "film"? it sucks.
why?
Because it looks like a play, but with bad acting. Everything that we have learnt, subconsciously, about film, is based on 24 FPS. Any action of any narrative substance in a modern film is linked to a slowmo. This relies on 24FPS. Because things are smooth, we register it as different.
Now, I suspect where High framerate will be a thing is in VR. But thats a new medium, in the same way the talkies were.
ultraHD is 8k @ 60fps.
its great for sports and nature documentaries. films look like plays. actors look stilted and wooden.
There is also not nearly as much tweening as you might expect. Sometimes animating on ones just cannot accurately give you the same effect as letting a persons brain fill in the missing info. Which is why watching The Hobbit in 48fps pulled me out of the movie at some points; I appreciated the extra clarity, but there were details that would have otherwise just been a blur that became distracting.
That's a good explanation which fits with my experience. I wonder, could that aspect of 48fps be mitigated by bumping up motion blur (i.e. lowering shutter speed) during such moments.
I liked it so much that I even went out of my way to buy a TV that had a built-in frame interpolation that's been said to be better than most other high-end TVs.
I assume people who think like that would be very marginal minority of movie experts. I don't believe average viewer would even think of such argument.
Personally I do think people will get over it eventually, especially for less "cinematic" stuff. Or possibly variable framerate will become a thing, and directors will choose different framerates for different effects.
Though, I heard some people say that scenes in old LOTR movies looked more realistic. This was mostly because Hobbit used more CGI though, for example orcs in Hobbit movies were all CGI but before in LOTR they had real actors to play orcs.
I personally didn't get that feeling either. Just got a feeling of "it looks better". Especially that dragon scene.
> variable framerate will become a thing
It already is a thing with slow motions, but it is not what you're thinking of.
Have you ever tried to do slow motion with a 30fps video? It doesn't look good. So your idea will probably look bad, inserting 24fps sequences in a 60fps movie will just look laggy.
Why do home videos have that "home video" look? The biggest reason is the 60 fps frame rate - it just doesn't feel cinematic. Even the 48 fps of the Hobbit films felt too "lifelike" and not cinematic enough.
A lot of prominent directors, as you've mentioned, say they'd like to move towards a world with higher frame rates. But that'll be a bitter pill to swallow for a viewing public that unconsciously believes "cinema" means 24 fps.
3D in particular is very difficult to watch at frame rates as low as 24 fps - a big reason it makes so many people nauseous, and a big reason so many directors are saying we need higher frame rates.
High resolution may not be a huge positive but it is definitely not a negative. There's nothing inherently cinematic or better about low resolution like there is about 24 fps, and if excessive sharpness feels jarring in a scene, the cinematographer can elect to use a lens with a softer focus.
And the strobing effect you mention - unless we're talking 3D (where motion blur feels wrong), a low shutter rate and consequent good amount of motion blur easily avoid strobing.