So odds are if you’ve been on the internet at all today then
you’ve heard that at CinemaCon, which is a convention put on by cinema owners,
Peter Jackson recently revealed ten minutes of footage from The Hobbit, which he presented at 48
frames per second (The Hobbit will be
the first Hollywood movie released in 48 fps). And if you’ve seen any of these
posts about this footage, you’ve probably also read an article saying how
everyone thinks the footage looks awful, like a soap opera or live broadcast. So
before I get to why you really don’t need to freak out about this, I’m gonna go
into a little detail on WHY Peter Jackson has committed this apparently
atrocious sin and what it actual means as well as what the haters are hating
on.
Other than these guys:
History! For Fun!
So real quick for those of you who don’t know what 48 fps
means, fps stands for frames per second and is the amount of images that flash
on the screen each second so as to trick your eye into thinking it’s seeing one
continuous image. The human eye blurs together images at about 16 fps and movies
are traditionally shot and shown at 24 fps. So 48 fps second then is twice as
much information for your brain to process while watching a film. Peter Jackson
asserts that this increase in information results in a far more detailed
experience in its higher quality footage and less strenuous 3D viewing
experience, which many of us would be thankful for. However that’s not the
reaction people seem to have had.
People Don't Like Revolution!
People are freaking out. Here, here, and all these here. No
journalists seem to be happy with the footage they saw. People have been
freaking out about this so much you’d think Peter Jackson added an aquatic elf
that was a really bad parody of black stereotypes. Honestly based on some of
these articles I’m surprised there wasn’t a sudden influx of journalists thrown
in prison on charges of assaulting Peter Jackson by flinging their own feces. The
basic agreement seems to be that it looked weird. A common argument also is
that the quality of the picture is so high that things like sets and CGI (which,
if it’s anything like The Lord of the Rings, are two things really heavily used
in The Hobbit) are really obvious and look out of place.
Hold On to Your Feces!
 |
| I know there's a joke here about Andy Serkis as a monkey flinging poo but I can't find it |
Now I haven’t seen the footage, so I may be wrong about what
I’m about to say and if so I’ll be the first to throw my poo in reaction to the
destruction of my beloved Lord of the Rings series, but I honestly think people
are overreacting and we really don’t have anything to worry about. Here are a
few reasons why. One, before the footage, Peter Jackson said that it isn’t
finished yet. It is partially completed footage. I’m gonna say that a third
time just to make it clear; he’s not done editing the footage. That means that
they could still have stuff to do like color correction, lighting correction,
CG imaging and rendering, all of which would make the footage a whole lot more immersive
and complete looking. Two, as some of the articles mention, people complained
primarily about the little snippet scenes that they didn’t get to see extended
footage of.The long clip featuring Gollum (Andy Serkis) and Bilbo (Martin
Freeman [who I am really excited for in this role by the way]) having a riddle
competition was fine and not as off-putting as the other footage was, which
suggests that perhaps once our eyes have adjusted to the new frame rate it
might not be as big a deal, especially considering we’ve only been experiencing
24 fps for the entire history of cinema.
 |
| This doesn't even need a punchline. |
Or maybe more complete footage such as
this scene will look better and the only problem with the other footage was
that it was incomplete. So in conclusion, let’s hold off judgment until a 48
fps trailer is released with some completed footage, keep our feces in toilets
for now, and just not freak out. Again, I haven’t seen the footage yet but really,
let Peter finish the film before you freak out.
P.S. Sorry this isn't a review of Starkid's Holy Musical B@tman! But I felt this article needed to be posted sooner. I'll post the review in the next week. As an apology please accept this random and hilarious picture I found while googling 'Andy Serkis Poo':
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