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The Hobbit, Opinions
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  • BurnetRhoadesBurnetRhoades

    @flaschus Really? How many "light bounces" would you estimate they did use?

  • rajamalikrajamalik

    I watched Hobbit twice in HFR 3D from spi cinemas chennai. i feel its superb in details and in sharpness. the shots feels so real real life like. but i noticed some shots are really running fast a bit like we forward it in 105x the eagle shot in the climax , frudo's walk in the beginneing are all kind of fast, other than these few bugs hobbit hfr looks superb. the theatre i watched also had a DOLBY ATOMOS feature which produced a very high fidilized surround sound. the fasr away song sounded amazing. bass reflex was superb. i experianced a very realistic vision and sound. Hats off peter jackson.

  • CrazyPeteCrazyPete

    I saw it in 3D HFR and it was not what I was expecting. My assumption going into the film was that I actually wouldn't notice much, 24 fps has always seemed smooth to me so 48 fps should be a non-event for all but the most violent of camera movements. I was wrong and my feeling was that something went very wrong with production of this film. As others have observed, in wide shots it looks fine (just as similar shots from LOTRs looked fine in 24 fps a decade ago) but close ups were weird. I noticed it most with the actors hands, the way they moved was so jerky - it seemed like what 16 fps would look like with out motion blur. I also experienced what rajamalik is describing, that at points the movement on screen appeared to speed up for a few seconds in a number of places. The only exception to all the weirdness was Gollum who looked as real as any of the actors on the screen and whose unusual movement patterns seemed to play well with the HFR.

    That said, I liked the film. The Hobbit as a book always seemed better to me than LOTRs because the trilogy is such a Christian allegory and that struggle of good against absolute evil... I feel like those books take themselves too seriously as did the movies. The Hobbit probably would be better paced as a single epic film or a film in two parts but in spite of that a strong story and strong story telling showed through.

  • oscillianoscillian

    I was positively surprised seeing the HFR 3D version!

    HFR pros: Dense battle scenes with lots of movement and detail were spectacular this time around! In the 24p version I lost interest, but in 48p it got the adrenaline pumping!

    Scenes with CGI creatures look very life-like and convincing in HFR, as opposed to my previous screening.

    HFR Cons: As many has observed already, slow scenes with dialogue and little camera movement looks "fake" and pulls you out of the story. Especially the way stuff was lit could easily be spotted in some scenes. This is surely gonna push the art of realistic lighting :)

    Overall the movie was a better experience for me in HFR 3D and I'm looking forward to more of this!

    Cinematically HFR 3D demands some new rules as it almost works as a stage play. Putting stuff in the foreground, out of focus and to the side (over the shoulder type of shots) is painful to watch. Dark scenes with clear silhouettes and central action on the other hand works exceptionally well!

    I propose VFR (variable frame rate) in the same way stereoscopic 3D can be adjusted during the film, enhancing depth in slow scenes and flatten fast cutting scenes.

    Lowering frame rates in simple, slow scenes and ramping it up using HFR in dense action scenes just as in Trumbull's ShowScan technology.

    I recently saw a regular screening of Rise of The Guardians in 24p 3D with my kids and couldn't stand the stutter and blur, giving me a severe headache. With HFR, no worries :)

    This is the future of cinema!

  • flaschusflaschus

    @burnettrhoades..

    hmm.. i would say that it looked to me like min was set at 2 max was at four...

  • BurnetRhoadesBurnetRhoades

    @flaschus exactly what renderer do you think they were using?

  • seemseemoseemseemo

    this film had some very poorly shot shots @ 48fps. Now it could most definitely be that the HFR projector was somehow off, but being that all the sounds were in sync I don't believe it was the case.

  • goannagoanna

    @CrazyPete

    my feeling was that something went very wrong with production of this film

    Film shot at 48fps looks fine. (Usually over-cranked for slo-mo, but projected at 48fps it looks like smooth - motion). I won't be doing any guesswork as to what went wrong with The Hobbit's particular digital 48fps until we get our hands on some of the offending footage and view it frame by frame. Maybe it's a compression thing. Perhaps it's good old shutter speed and inadequate motion blur. Whatever happened, digital cinema hit some kind of a wall. The weird thing is they knew it early on, didn't fix it and still scored box-office record takings.

    Some people go to a night club dance until dawn under the strobes, others crack an epileptic fit.

  • AKEDAKED

    Has anybody read already a comment of Peter Jackson to the critics of his HFR version regarding lightning, grading and the "Viedeo look"?

  • fixfix

    @goanna What I have heard.. They used a 270 shutter angle instead of a 180 degree. Could be that causing the video look... who knows. As many have said, Some of the scenes worked pretty good, some didn’t.

  • DazzaDazza

    a 270 degree shutter angle was probably used to account for the loss of light of going to a higher shutter speed. Of course with any new technology I expect there to be teething problems, old habits to unlearn, new ones to learn. I expect future films will correct those faults, not neccesarily the rest of the Hobbit trilogy though. as there will probably be many scenes which were shot before those in An Unexpected Journey

  • fixfix

    @dazza No offence, but I don't follow your logic. Don't misunderstand, I respect your opinions about this, but don't understand the logic behind it.

    The hobbit is made in most controlled environments, and shoot with Red Epic (not a low light king, but not that bad either). Why should they compensate for light loss? Suddenly low light budget? I think the high degree shutter angle is done by another choice, like smoothing out the 48fps look (motion blur) to make it easier to convert it into 24p later. Or something to do with the 3d+48p look. Still think its a mistake though, and completely agree that a 48p movie can be done much better than the hobbit :)

  • No_SuRReNDeRNo_SuRReNDeR

    Did anyone notice the horrible noisy garbage in the shot where Gandolf appears from the shadow to fight that giant goblin king fat dude?... It looked like they tried to fix bad exposure in post...Idk maybe im the only person who wasnt looking at Gandalf in that shot lol.....

  • fixfix

    Ugh.. I was looking at gandalf hehe. Good call, wouldn't surprise me at all :)

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

  • goannagoanna

    I have rented the Blu-Ray. It looks vidéo-y but I get the impression most people will get involved in the story and not notice that.

    I'm not into that kind of genre - so much so that my mind wanders. Maybe I'll fast forward to a few notable scenes and watch techhy stuff before returning it to the video shop.

  • _OZ_OZ

    As with Lukas, a story with potential has gone more and more in the direction of plastic and polystyrene while dealing with subject matter that is ostensibly full of dirt, rust, and gravity. It's inherently a conflict of interest, so it falls flat. Let's not just blame it on frame rate. There are a million and one aspects of this (as with Lukas) that lean in the direction of plastic and hollow. Acting, music, lighting, blah, blah.

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