DVD Talk Forum - The Hobbit

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Quote:

Originally Posted by whoopdido (Post 11056576)

Wow. Christopher Lee is going to be 90 years old next May. I hope he survives long enough to finish his scenes for the Hobbit.

I remember reading that he told George Lucas to shoot his scenes for ROTS first, so it is good to see him still active.

But what a way to wrap up a career. Wow.

Quote:

Originally Posted by whoopdido (Post 11056576)

Wow. Christopher Lee is going to be 90 years old next May. I hope he survives long enough to finish his scenes for the Hobbit.

He's finished all of his scenes, he confirmed it in a personal video he released a couple months ago that went up on aicn.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pizza the Hutt (Post 11138743)

He's finished all of his scenes, he confirmed it in a personal video he released a couple months ago that went up on aicn.

oh, ok, he can die then.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TallGuyMe (Post 11138759)

oh, ok, he can die then.

Bite your tongue! And your fingers...

Quote:

Originally Posted by RocShemp (Post 11138779)

Bite your tongue! And your fingers...

Really. McQuarrie is down, so two more shall follow...

I hope Lee is not one of the three, when all is said and done. :(

The man is amazing for getting solid work in. Loved seeing him in Hugo. Every little bit counts w/ Lee.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr. DVD (Post 11056343)

The Bakshi cartoon was quite a travesty in retrospect. It started out quite faithful, but then fell apart due to rotoscope overkill. I would have been interested to see how Bakshi would have finished the story. The Rankin-Bass version of ROTK, which was allegedly made to pick up where Bakshi's left, scrapped everything and omitted a lot of the characters.

yet the Rankin Bass version did a faithful version of two key scenes: the arrival of the Witch King into Minas Tirith and the death of the Witch King which retained Tolkien's beautiful dialogue (although the Witch King sounds waaay too much like a He-Man villan) There was also a wee bit more involving the Palantir

~

in regards to the topic and film on hand, Dolby's website is stating that 'The Hobbit' will be mixed in 7.1 surround sound (a first for Warner Bros. :) )

Shiiiiiiiiit....I was afraid of it looking like this. Dammit.

http://badassdigest.com/2012/04/24/c...mes-per-secon/

Quote:

Originally Posted by JayDerek (Post 11204052)

Shiiiiiiiiit....I was afraid of it looking like this. Dammit.

http://badassdigest.com/2012/04/24/c...mes-per-secon/

That's kinda what I feared.

But, what concerns me more is how well it will be converted to 24fps. They can't just drop every other frame, so there will have to be some process for it, something that combines information from two consecutive frames together. I hope there aren't any side effects from it, and it will look as if it was really shot at 24fps.

That was my fear too, and it's not too surprising. Still, if I get a chance to see it at 48fps I'll probably buy a ticket so I can experience it for myself.

Quote:

Originally Posted by whoopdido (Post 11055319)

Sorry but I didn't buy Aragorn being an Indian either.

I don't think the Jackson LOTR trilogy will hold up very well either though. Gollum already looks like a bad photoshop layer. A lot of the script and acting is clunky and awkward as well, I tried to re-watch them recently

Quote:

Originally Posted by JayDerek (Post 11204052)

Shiiiiiiiiit....I was afraid of it looking like this. Dammit.

http://badassdigest.com/2012/04/24/c...mes-per-secon/

I'd be interested to read a review by someone who's seen the similar Showscan or Maxivision48 film techs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Showscan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxivision

Quote:

Originally Posted by Drexl (Post 11204080)

But, what concerns me more is how well it will be converted to 24fps. They can't just drop every other frame, so there will have to be some process for it, something that combines information from two consecutive frames together. I hope there aren't any side effects from it, and it will look as if it was really shot at 24fps.

From what I've read, dropping every other frame is more or less what they do, although they add some motion blur to the resultant frames to get it to look more like it was shot in 24fps:
http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=55897

So, now The Hobbit is going to look like someone turned on the Motion Enhancer on my TV? Great.

I'm not a cinephile, so can someone explain to me in layman's terms why 48 fps is bad and 24 fps is good? I know in the video game industry, more frames are always good, and PC gamers want to get as close to 60 fps as possible. But movies are the opposite and want less fps? It doesn't make sense to me because video games with too low lps are choppy and look more like a slideshow. A 24 fps video game wouldn't run very smoothly. Even console games with less powerful hardware than PCs try to maintain at least 30 fps.

Quote:

The Hobbit ... Didn't Look So Good

Warners screens 10 minutes at their CinemaCon panel.

April 24, 2012

by Jim Vejvoda

Warner Bros. screened roughly 10 minutes of footage from The Hobbit today at their CinemaCon presentation in Las Vegas. The footage was projected in 3D at 48 frames per second for theater owners and press attending the conference.

A taped intro from director Peter Jackson preceded the footage. There is no honest discussion that can be had about this Hobbit footage without emphasizing the 48fps presentation. The film was shot this way and will be digitally projected this way, as well as presented in 3D. So what does 48fps movie footage look like as opposed to your usual 24fps theatrical movie experience? In this reporter's opinion, it looks like live television or hi-def video. And it didn't look particularly good. Yes, this is shocking, but I was actually let down by the Hobbit footage, as were a number of the other journalists that I spoke with afterward.

It looked like an old Doctor Who episode, or a videotaped BBC TV production. It was as shocking as when The Twilight Zone made the boneheaded decision to switch from film to tape one season, and where perfectly good stories were ruined by that aesthetic. Here, there were incredibly sharp, realistic images where colors seem more vivid and brighter than on film, but the darker scenes were especially murky (and the 3D only dims that image even more). Frankly, it was jarring to see Gandalf, Bilbo or the dwarves in action against CG-created characters or even to move quickly down a rocky passage. The whipping of a camera pan or the blur of movement was unsettling.

While 48fps may create a more realistic, "you are there" picture quality, it actually works against The Hobbit from the 10 minutes of footage we saw. This undeniable "reality" kept pulling me out of the movie rather than immersing me fully into its world as the Lord of the Rings films did; the very fantasy element, the artifice of it all (whether it's the wigs, fake beards or CG monsters) was plainly, at times painfully, evident. There was none of the painterly gentleness that film offers a fantasy film, as was so beautifully the case with the original (shot on film) LOTR trilogy. I fully expect the 48fps issue to become the much-talked about "mumbling Bane" flap to come out of CinemaCon.

The best sequence shown was one between Bilbo (Martin Freeman) and Gollum (once again played by Andy Serkis). The latter is his old, split personality self as he debates between killing Bilbo or helping him out. Bilbo finally agrees to play a game of riddles with Gollum. If he wins, Gollum will show Bilbo the way to Bilbo's destination. If Gollum wins? Well, it makes you wonder if Hobbit tastes like chicken. One reason why the 48fps wasn't as distracting here was that it was an extended sequence, the longest by far of the clips shown from An Unexpected Journey today. The CG-ness of Gollum was more evident in this digital format than it was on film back in the LOTR trilogy, but you'd be hard-pressed not to feel goosebumps seeing Serkis back in deceitful action as Gollum.

Also back in action in the footage screened today? Orlando Bloom's archer Legolas and Elijah Wood's Frodo Baggins, although we only got a few glimpses of those two characters. There were also scenes shown between Gandalf the Grey and Radagast the Brown, as well as an action-oriented one seeing Bilbo imperiled by three giant troll-like monsters before Thorin Oakenshield and the dwarves come to his rescue. There were some moments of Ian Holm as the elder Bilbo, life in the Shire, and the heroes' journeys across the snow-capped mountaintops of New Zealand, er, Middle-earth. Jackson stressed in his intro that the footage was unfinished, and this was evident in many of the green screen backdrop scenes we saw, such as the Rivendell one between Gandalf, Elrond and Galadriel.

I didn't go into CinemaCon expecting to write anything less than great things about The Hobbit, but the very aesthetic chosen by Peter Jackson has made me very nervous about this film. It just looked ... cheap, like a videotaped or live TV version of Lord of the Rings and not the epic return to Tolkien that we have all so long been waiting for. I still have hope for The Hobbit, but I'd be lying if I didn't say my expectations for the film have now been greatly diminished.

Jim Vejvoda is the Executive Editor in charge of IGN Movies.

http://movies.ign.com/articles/122/1223523p1.html

I fucking hate that Soap Opera Effect, looks absolutely terrible. I brought over a dvd to a friend's one day and his parents had that "TruMotion" bullshit on their TV. Completely took me out of the movie, couldn't watch it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kgrogers1979 (Post 11204217)

1) Movies aren't videogames

2) Have you ever watched a live sporting event on ESPN HD? Do you want your movies to look like that?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Strevlac (Post 11204277)

1) Movies aren't videogames

2) Have you ever watched a live sporting event on ESPN HD? Do you want your movies to look like that?

1) But both movies and video games are displayed frame by frame. Like an old fashion cartoon where animation is achieved by flipping through different frames at a rapid pace. The faster you flip the frames the more smooth the cartoon looks, and slower you flip it looks more like a slideshow. I just don't get why movies are different in this regard and want a slow framerate.

2) No. I don't watch sports ever. Sports to me are about as boring as watching grass grow. But even when I am channel surfing and happen to catch a few seconds of a game, I don't notice any difference in the framerate.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kgrogers1979 (Post 11204294)

Have you ever watched the news? Or a soap opera? Do you not notice that they look considerably different than cinema?

I will refrain from worrying until I see it in the theater this December.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Strevlac (Post 11204306)

Have you ever watched the news? Or a soap opera? Do you not notice that they look considerably different than cinema?

News yes, soap opera no.

I don't notice any framerate difference between them and cinema. Do movies at the theater have a slower framerate than movies on DVD? I watch maybe one or two movies at the theater per year, so 99.9% of my movie watching is done at home. I don't know if that makes a difference or not if maybe the framerate is sped up for the home release or something.