Hobbit in 48P Controvercy - is it a 3D issue, not a frame rate issue?

[Jos Svendsen]

Hi There,

Just read through the reviews for Peter Jacksons Hobbit-movie. Seems to be a lot of controversy regarding the use of 48P. I have seen statements that our brain are cheated into believing that a picture is "reality" above 40P. It may be so, but I have just spend two hours yesterday watching 50P footage with no problems what so ever. but I was watching 2D. Everything looked fine and smooth. The latter being the key word.

Now I sort of wonder - could it be that 48P makes the 3D experience so good that any 3D-imperfections are getting more noticed? As far as I can determine none of the reviewers has seen the movie in 2D & 48P.

[Nate Haustein]

Nope. Not for me. I saw the 3D 48p version. It still looked weird when I closed one eye and watched it in "2D" for a few moments. Planning on seeing the 2D 24p version to see what I think of it.

[Chris Hsiung]

Just to add another datapoint. I watched in 3D 24 fops and it looked like normal 3D to me. I'm going back to watch 48fps. But I've always felt blu-ray movies had that fake video look too and couldn't explain why since that's at 24fps.

[Markus Nord]

I didn’t have a problem with this movie at all. For the first time I could watch 3D without feeling seasick, I loved it. For me I think this 24/48/whatever is just something going on in the film world (and maybe most around hangarounds).

[Chris Hurd]

Be sure to read Everything you ever wanted to know about HFR and The Hobbit by our own Tim Dashwood.

[Simon Wood]

And then be sure to read this from Vincent LaForet:

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Masterclass in Why HFR fails, and a reaffirmation of what makes cinema magical Vincent Laforet's Blog

[Mark Koha]

I still prefer Christopher Nolan's approach of just making an awesome movie to get people through the door, not using the 3D gimmick.

[Joe Piechura]

I just got back from watching this. I'm still not sold on 3D at all. For me, it makes it look more fake. It doesn't look like a 3D world, it looks like two 2D images placed on top of one another. I actually liked the 48fps. But it seemed weird to me to switch for 48fps for a more realistic look, and then shoot it in 3D, which is anything but.

[Allan Black]

Just saw it with my young daughter.

I was only *really* aware of the 48fps video look on closeups of some faces, made the makeup very noticeable. No eye strain and I wear glasses.

Peter Jackson could have cut down that long charades scene, it didn't do anything apart from separating the battles.

All serial episodes should always end on bigger, better and more ferocious cliff-hangers than the Hobbit Part 1 did.

PJ should take a leaf out of the old Saturday aft movie serials, the end of this looked like the end of one complete 7 1/2 hour reel,
which is being cut into 3 equal parts.

I wonder if the birds that finally flew the Hobbit and his group to safety, are related in some way to the flock that flew in the final few frames of Avatar. First Hitchcock, then Cameron now Jackson.

Imo despite the naysayers 3D is coming of age, and faster than a lot of people thought. They're learning that it definately needs excellent
surround sound sfx and music to tie each 3D effect together.

Great to see our locals on the screen, and in the credits. We both enjoyed it.

Cheers.

[Mark Kenfield]

I saw it last night in 2D 24fps (for the precise reason that I didn't want the strange HFR or 3D visuals to spoil my enjoyment of the film), I've been worried about the book being stretched into three films (each of the three LOTR books is substantially bigger than The Hobbit - and they only made one film for each). But in the end I was pleasantly surprised, and enjoyed the film quite a bit.

Honestly my main complaint is the ridiculous choice to have the two most handsome Dwarves wear practically no facial makeup whilst the rest of their party were covered in it - it looked utterly bizarre to have two blokes who looked like regular men, and then the rest of the group looking like actual dwarves - it was distracting and a very strange choice by the makeup department - all dwarves should at least have big noses or something.

But that's my only real quibble really. Now I'm just debating whether to check out the HFR 3D version of the film just to see what impact it has visually.