Why You Shouldn't Freak Out About the Frame Rate for The Hobbit

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':

"I Wish I Could Understand": a poem

So I don't write poetry often. In fact this is the first thing I've written that wasn't a school assignment, but it was on my mind and I'm late on a post this week. So please enjoy this poem until I get up my review of Starkid's new play "Holy Musical B@man":

I don't understand how I can detest someone so much and miss them terribly at the same time.

I don't understand how I can mean it telling someone "I love you," and scream at them for destroying the person I love most.

I don't understand how someone can declare love for me and defile that which I hold most dear.

I wish I could understand.

Cause if I understood, maybe I could do something. Maybe I could escape somewhere. Maybe I could move on somehow.

I wish I could understand.
But I can't.

By - S.G. Spears

5 TV Shows You're not Watching That You Really Should Be

So I watch television sometimes. Ok many times… every day. Just today I watched an episode of Glee, an episode of Smash, an episode of How I Met Your Mother, an episode of Hey Ash Whatcha Playin (though granted that’s a web show and is only about 3 minutes long), and a ten minute clip of 30 Rock bloopers. So I realize that is an excessive amount of television for one day and if you’re at all like me you might be asking a fictional version of me in your head, “But Scott, don’t you have classes to attend and homework to do in your very busy college life?” Yes, yes I do. But also, I am a film major, so I tend not to do any of that. But regardless of how much I watch TV, there are pretty good odds that you also watch a lot of TV. A statistic I’m making up now for the purpose of this article says that Americans now spend roughly 55% of their waking hours watching TV. So in order to help support your addiction I have the top 5 TV shows you’re not watching that you really should be. Watching. Yeah. [Please note that with the exception of Smash and Thundercats, which are new shows this season, the ratings are pulled from the season-wide ratings from last season. As for the first two shows, these are the ratings of the most recent episode. For what rating actually are: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nielsen_ratings#Ratings.2Fshare_and_total_viewers]

5. Smash                                                                                                  Ratings: 2.1/5

Smash is the charming tale of Karen (Katherine McPhee) trying to make it in New York as an actress. And the less charming tale of the seedy reality she finds there when she joins the cast of a new musical about Marilyn Monroe. Joining her in the cast are Debra Messing and Christian Borle as the musical’s writers (both of whom play their characters phenomenally), the always wonderful and dickish Jack Davenport as the show’s director, and relative new comer Megan Hilty as Karen’s rival for the part of Marilyn. The show is sort of like Glee in that it is more or less a backstage musical, that is all the singing is in rehearsal or otherwise grounded in reality (again only mostly though). Unlike Glee however this show is not in the mode of comedy and mostly serves as a guilty pleasure cause, really, who doesn’t like a little melodrama now and then? Why else would General Hospital, ER, and House still be on TV?

It's lupus. (That's an over used joke)
Well that's not even a picture of Hugh Laurie
(Yeah I know that's sorta the point...nevermind)

4. Thundercats                                                                                     Ratings: 0.4/1.3

This show is the most lame-looking awesome show ever

OK so really the only reason the ratings on this reboot of the classic 80’s cartoon are so low is because it’s on Cartoon Network and not one of the major networks like everything else on this list, but still. This show is awesome. The voice cast features such great talent as Will Friedle (Kim Possible and Boy Meets World) and Emmanuelle Chriqui (Entourage and You Don’t Mess With the Zohan). And you get to watch a whole bunch of cat-human hybrids beat the crap out of some lizard-human hybrids, including Mumm-Ra (Robert Atkins-Downes, who just has a stupid amount of voice work under his belt). So whether you watched the original cartoon, or were like me and refused to watch the original cause you found the amount of kitten nudity a little disturbing, this show is for you. Cause it’s awesome.

3. Happy Endings                                                                                Ratings: 2.1/5

Image taken from some website that took it from Entertainment Weekly

Who here has seen Friends? Every one of you should be raising your hands. Who here now feels dumb for raising their hand at their computer? Now ever since Friends became basically the most successful sitcom ever, every network has tried to copy it. Every single one. Every new season a whole slew of Friends clones come out and most of them suck. However, occasionally a gem pops out. In 2005, that show was How I Met Your Mother. In 2011, that show was Happy Endings. This show is the most hilarious traditional sitcom I’ve seen since HIMYM’s second season. From Adam Pally’s slob of a gay man Max to Damon Wayans Jr.’s eccentric token black dude to Elisha Cuthbert’s – you know what I’m gonna stop there cause otherwise I’ll just go through the whole cast. Just trust me, it’s good; any show that throws out the joke “Even I think that’s gay and I had sex with a dude last night” in the first episode deserves to be watched.

Remember her? She's in this show. Watch it.

2. 30 Rock                                                                                               Ratings: 2.6/7

I assume you all know what 30 Rock is so I'm using
this as an excuse to share this lovely picture of Tina

To be fair you probably know what 30 Rock is. You probably know it has won more Emmy’s than any show should ever win. And you probably know that Tine Fey is the most awkward combination of hilarious, hot, and clumsy-librarian you’ve ever seen. That being said, why does this show have such low ratings? I am unsure why but I feel like it probably has something to do with reality TV…or medical dramas…or reality TV medical dramas. Regardless of the cause, a show like 30 Rock, which even when it sucks is funnier than some of the other (pardon my use of the word shit) shit that networks are trying to pass off as comedies.

Silly NBC, when you take a crap it goes in the toilet,
not all over Laura Prepon's career.

1. Community                                                                                         Ratings: 2.0/6

If you're thinking "Hey! that's that dude
from The Hangover 2," then get off my blog.

Hello internet. I realize I’m preaching to the choir. Cause the internet community is where Community thrives. But guys. This show is absolutely brilliant. Despite its attempts early on to shove a whole lot of content into way too little time, this show has consistently provided me with a huge set of laughs in every episode. It reference a million films a minute, it’s meta-humor rivals that of even 30 Rock, and it’s characters are vastly superior to any in any other sitcom currently on TV. So why internet, has NBC not yet decided on whether to keep the show for a fourth season or not? The answer, I think, is that you all are like how I was: just watching the show online wherever I could find it. But here’s the problem, NBC, doesn’t get money for that. And if they don’t get money from the show they won’t keep green-lighting new seasons. So I’m asking you, no I’m begging you. Help me. Watch this show on NBC. DVR it. Watch it on Hulu. Any of those will increase the show’s ratings and maybe guarantee us that fourth season. #sixseasonsandamovie

Final words

Please watch these shows. If not for your own enjoyment than do it for me so that I can keep watching them and have the motivation to continue my life and keep writing mediocre articles and internet lists like this one. And if you can only do one, please make it Community. Cause really, writing about that is pretty much the whole reason I wrote this article.