The Hobbit Part 2 - HFR 3D

Tim Tyler · December 14, 2013

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug in HFR 3D was the first presentation I've seen at 48fps on the big screen.

With a run-time of more than two and half hours I expected the high frame rate effect to become less noticeable as the story progressed, but it never did. The 48fps did not make the action feel more "real" to me. In fact I almost always felt like I was watching a 50i film on a really big TV, or a great looking video game. The HFR was particularly uncomfortable during some of the hand-held camera shots, making them feel almost like TV news.

Aside from the HFR, the coverage on this film seemed more conventional and included a lot more close-ups, ECU's and standard OTS conversations than I remembered from the LoTR trilogy. During some of the more populated scenes (i.e. Watertown) there were a number of cutaway CU reaction shots of background actors that felt out of place, as if they were inserted to cover rough dialogue edits.

Dragon CGI was amazing, as was some of the fight scene choreography. I never connected or sympathized with any of the characters.

Freya Black · December 14, 2013

I hear there is some very noticeable gopro footage in the scene with the river barrels.

I suspect that Peter Jackson is one of those filmmakers who is just bored of shooting mountains of film stock and is excited by the new world of digital cameras and wants to play with them.

I wonder if one day, if film is still around, whether people will get bored of shooting on video and want to shoot film instead because they have never had the chance to try it before!

Freya

Anthony Schilling · December 15, 2013

I just watched the first "Hobbit" movie the other night and it literally made my eyes hurt. It was like watching a high gain signal piercing my brain in an unpleasant way. Camera movement didn't hold up well at all. And i really find these CGI drwan out action sequences to be nothing more than "confusovision" or simply annoying. CGI in general reminds me more of a video game than a film.

Igor Trajkovski · December 23, 2013

I was very excited when watching Peter Jackson's

production diaries for the first part of "The Hobbit".

I like the person, i like LOTR, but...

For me "An Unexpected Journey" was soo long.

Most of the time waiting something exiting to happen...

Could not figure how and why PJ expanded a (relatively small) book of ~300pages in 2 x 2.5 hour movies.

"Cut Peter! Cut" was my review the next days to friends. :)

Some satistics:

The Hobbit Part 1 169min

The Hobbit Part 2 161min

Number of Pages in book: ~ 300.

LOTR 1 - 178min
LOTR 2 - 179min

LOTR 3 - 201min

Number of Pages in book: ~ 400

I hope and encourage a Directors Cut from 90 to120min.

That is total, the entire book in one film.

Maybe world's 1st DC that is shorter. :)

Best

Igor

Jock Blakley · December 23, 2013

You know there's a third HOBBIT film coming out next year, right?

Nicolas Courdouan · December 24, 2013

LOTR 1 - 178min

LOTR 2 - 179min

LOTR 3 - 201min

Number of Pages in book: ~ 400

More like 1200 pages, actually.

Igor Trajkovski · December 24, 2013

More like 1200 pages, actually.

Yes, ~400 per 1 book/part.

Chris Millar · December 26, 2013

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug in HFR 3D was the first presentation I've seen at 48fps on the big screen.

With a run-time of more than two and half hours I expected the high frame rate effect to become less noticeable as the story progressed, but it never did. The 48fps did not make the action feel more "real" to me.

Dragon CGI was amazing, as was some of the fight scene choreography. I never connected or sympathized with any of the characters.

The HFR is very noticeable huh! works very well for credits but as soon as you're into the film. First thing my partner said was 'everything looks cheap'. Especially things that weren't 'real', i.e. CGI, make up, overly-staged lighting etc...

However, I did note that it become less of an issue as the story progressed - FWIW, I think I'll opt for it again for the last instalment.

Smaug was done well and there were some genuine belly laughs re. Bombur.

I hear there is some very noticeable gopro footage in the scene with the river barrels.

There is, not even sure if they were in 3D either...

Daniel Singer · December 26, 2013

To my eye, the HFR makes everything look like a video game somehow. I watched both film in HFR and I must say that I really don´t like it mostly. To me, it IS useful for extreme long shots or wide shots. In shots like this it is pleasing to my eye because there is less or no jitter when panning or tilting. But in medium or closer shots with a lot of movement it really looks awful and tv-news like... And as you already mentioned, HFR combined with handheld work really doesn´t work in any way for me.

Actually, I´m a fan of Peter Jackson, but I can´t really understand why he cut this awful GoPro shots into the chase. It really caught my attention and it took me a few seconds to "be" back in the movie.

Igor Trajkovski · December 26, 2013

You know there's a third HOBBIT film coming out next year, right?

I didn't till watching today "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug Production Blog #11 (2013)" where PJ mentions it... :)

rik bakshi · January 5, 2014

Watching this film I realized that the brain becomes drowsy when things move faster than it can receive...maybe my brain was slow, but I hold HFR responsible flatly because this has never happened before ...changing topic, I found this movie has richer characters than the previous installment, so I rate it somewhat higher.

John Paul Palescandolo · January 5, 2014

I saw An Unexpected Journey in IMAX HFR 3D and the HFR footage is really weird at first, but I did get used to it. However, yes, the HFR footage makes you aware that you're watching a movie filmed on sets. I saw The Desolation of Smaug in regular IMAX 3D and found the motion to be much more natural. There is definitely GoPro footage in the river sequence.

I should've seen the end coming, but I totally didn't. Shortly before the movie cut to black at the end, the lights in the theatre came on.

Me: Did they just turn on the lights?

Girlfriend: Yes

Me: Why?

Girlfriend: Because the movie is over

Me: Ugh!!!

Keith Walters · January 5, 2014

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug in HFR 3D was the first presentation I've seen at 48fps on the big screen.

With a run-time of more than two and half hours I expected the high frame rate effect to become less noticeable as the story progressed, but it never did. The 48fps did not make the action feel more "real" to me. In fact I almost always felt like I was watching a 50i film on a really big TV, or a great looking video game. The HFR was particularly uncomfortable during some of the hand-held camera shots, making them feel almost like TV news.

Somewhere in the last 70-80 years of TV broadcasting, people apparently forgot that the only reason TV was ever broadcast as 60i (or 50i in Europe) was to minimize screen flicker, scan line visibility and power line generated magnetic interference, on CRT TV sets. Interlaced scan TV is better for slo-mo replays in sports, but apart from that, nobody has ever successfully demonstrated that unbiased audiences actually prefer higher frame rates to 24p/25p origination.

It's not like it was never possible to prove this either. The viability of 60Hz interlaced scanning was exhaustively tested in the1930s using specially modified film projectors to simulate an interlaced scan on large screen CRT TVs (that did not actually exist at the time). The 6MHz NTSC TV channel bandwidth was worked out as the best compromise between image resolution, interlace artifacts and the number of channels that could be fitted into the existing band space.70 years on it's still being used in many parts of the world.

High frame rate film is nothing new either, but nobody was able to convince investors or the industry that it was something that the average moviegoer was likely to get excited about.There were schemes to use a variable frame rate just for action sequences, but nothing came of that either.

Nate Opgenorth · January 25, 2014

I hear there is some very noticeable gopro footage in the scene with the river barrels.

I suspect that Peter Jackson is one of those filmmakers who is just bored of shooting mountains of film stock and is excited by the new world of digital cameras and wants to play with them.

I wonder if one day, if film is still around, whether people will get bored of shooting on video and want to shoot film instead because they have never had the chance to try it before!

Freya

Same with Michael Mann....I'm not sure how he went from making a movie as great looking and awesome as "Heat" and then makes a movie about John Dillinger with a High Definition Camera and makes it look all videoy (I loved the story just the cinematography was bad) and don't get me started with Miami Vice....although I love Collateral's look. Humans often do things just to be different for a multitude of reasons, I just hope they can realize when a journey is less about style and more about switching it up just to switch it up they can say "Jeez maybe I should go with what looks like cinema".

Edited January 25, 2014 by Nate Opgenorth