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> The film is considered a risk partly because the hyper-reality lent by the cinematography technology [viewing at 3d, 4k and 120fps] could be unsettling to vie

> The film is considered a risk partly because the hyper-reality lent by the cinematography technology [viewing at 3d, 4k and 120fps] could be unsettling to viewers. “Test subjects that have seen some footage have commented that 40 minutes after seeing battle footage, they’re still shaking,” Ben Gervais, a production systems supervisor on the film, told Variety in April. This sounds like pure marketing drivel. Just take a look at video games and the disparity of consoles being (largely) locked around 30 fps and PC that can reach 100+ fps. While a higher framerate can give the appearance of smoother gameplay -- which is disputed beyond a certain threshold -- it never makes it "unsettling" or more realistic.

TylerE 10y ago
Video game framerate and movie framerate are not at all comparable. Movies have true natural motion blur.
- erichocean 10y ago
  > Movies have true natural motion blur. In addition, researchers have performed tests and there's something about films being as slow (motion blurry) as they are that contributes to them seeming like fiction. 24fps is the slowest you can run a film with lip sync—any slower and your brain has trouble associating the sound with the imagery. 18fps is the slowest you can run a silent film and still distinguish continuous motion. 30fps and you start to lose the "dreamlike" effect, and at 60 fields per second (television), it's lost completely.
  - kazinator 10y ago
    I've transcoded movies to 18 fps (and lower resolution) to decode on an under-powered smartphone. They were perfectly watchable. I don't remember any "whoa, odd lip sync" moments. I was pleased with and surprised by the results.
    - galago 10y ago
      The standard-known-framerates predate video--both CRT video and modern displays. Its useful to consider how a traditional mechanical movie projector worked with flashing stopped film vs. a persistent modern display. I would love to hear more from someone who understands modern video formats. Is a 'frame' still a discrete displayed entity? My understanding was that it is not in many cases.
      - TrevorJ 10y ago
        For the most part, yes, each frame is displayed as a discrete entity. NTSC (standard def TV) was an interlaced format so every other line was updated at a time, which led to a much smoother feel. There are progressive and interlaced flavors of HD, but the progressive (non-interlaced) is the most popular format for dramas, while I believe some live events are broadcast in the 1080i interlaced flavor of HD.
        galago 10y ago
        Isn't the emission of light from modern displays much more continuous, which is why cats now see what's happening?
  - aaron695 10y ago
    Cartoon have been traditionally 12 FPS?
  - agumonkey 10y ago
    Last point made me cringe so hard a few years ago when all TVs were to have their (100|200)Hz mode so every movie now looks like straight out of Pixar. Hyper smooth, hyper real and hyper fake all at the same time.
    - voltagex_ 10y ago
      That's interpolated though - I wonder what it'd look like if you had an actual 200fps source (and the ability to play it)
      - agumonkey 10y ago
        True, I forgot that. I think I've seen one 48fps (maybe first Peter Jackson effort to push this) film and the results wasn't different from interpolated 100Hz TVs, the "movie" looked like a professional documentary. Crisp and dead.
        gambiting 10y ago
        I saw the first Hobbit in 48fps and that was the first time I ever wanted to walk out of the cinema - was literally unpleasant to watch, my brain was telling me that everything is playing too fast and that audio should be desyncing from video, but it never did. Maybe I would get used to it if all films were made in 48fps, but I certainly can't recommend it after that one experience.
        agumonkey 10y ago
        Some people say we reject non 24 fps out of ingrained habits, I don't subscribe to this point of view. Nobody ever complained that a movie failed its purpose because it was filmed at 24fps. Tangent: so many movie are lacking in terms of set, direction, pacing, scenario.. why do people believe tech is the variable to improve...
  - MichaelGG 10y ago
    Is this a human thing, or conditioning? Higher framerates being associated with daytime TV or home recordings and all that. Has anyone done research with film-naive people (hard to find) and seen if they show a preference? 24fps sucks anytime the camera pans. Or in action movies, things just jerk around everywhere.
- macspoofing 10y ago
  Maybe but Hollywood marketing also knows how to ham it up.
- mrob 10y ago
  Motion blur is caused by the image of the thing moving on your retina. Humans are very good at tracking steady movement with their eyes ("smooth pursuit"). When you're successfully tracking something this way the image is steady on your retina and there's no motion blur on it, only on the background. Applying motion blur relative to the camera does not look the same because it doesn't react to your eye movement. Synthetic motion blur (baked into the image and visible even with static images) can be used to partly hide low framerate, and with games it would be theoretically possible to use eye tracking to show synthetic motion blur relative to eye movement, but movies have to show the same thing to everybody. The only option for realism is to increase the framerate and rely on real motion blur. 120fps is about the minimum you can get away with for this and still have it look somewhat convincing. Trumbull's Showscan tests were with untrained audiences, they didn't know what to look for. With the right test signals and trained viewers you can see differences in frame rate well into the kilohertz by examining the interaction with eye movement.
moogleii 10y ago
> This sounds like pure marketing drivel. Just take a look at video games and the disparity of consoles being (largely) locked around 30 fps and PC that can reach 100+ fps. While a higher framerate can give the appearance of smoother gameplay -- which is disputed beyond a certain threshold -- it never makes it "unsettling" or more realistic. That's not the best analogy. Video games inherently don't look realistic (currently). 3000 fps of rendered Mickey the Mouse isn't going to make him suddenly look like live-action. He will only ever be a collection of polygons and textures. Live-action movies, however, use reality as a source. Fiddling with FPS can't add more realism to reality, it only can maintain or obscure it. Ironically, that's why HFR makes many films actually look worse IMO. Ever watch a behind the scenes of a film and think, those sets look so obviously fake and those costumes look like bad cosplay? With HFR, all those painted sets and lighting tricks they use become apparent for what they actually are. Whereas before you were watching a film, now you are obviously watching actors on a set. Mission successful (or failure, depending on the perspective), realism achieved, you are now sitting on the set in the director's seat, viewing it as he saw it, instead of watching the film from the audiences' eyes. IMO, until filmmakers can get their sets/costumes to look realistic without post processing and lighting, HFR won't help. But judging from the topic of this film, the material lends itself well to HFR.
- spc476 10y ago
  Heck, I saw Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in HD several years ago and man, it looked awful. Gone was the Star Ship Enterprise, Kirk and Spock. Instead, I got a half-baked set and some old actors in obvious costumes. It was painful to watch. Ronin (the next film being shown) didn't fare much better, looking like a TV soap opera.
  - some-guy 10y ago
    If you think that's bad, watching Wizard of Oz in high definition.
  - gambiting 10y ago
    In Star Wars: New Hope, you can tell that Vader's costume is just some plastic that was very poorly painted and glued together. Only in HD you can see brush marks on the chest plate, and it pulls you out of the experience.

TylerE 10y ago

Video game framerate and movie framerate are not at all comparable. Movies have true natural motion blur.

erichocean 10y ago
> Movies have true natural motion blur. In addition, researchers have performed tests and there's something about films being as slow (motion blurry) as they are that contributes to them seeming like fiction. 24fps is the slowest you can run a film with lip sync—any slower and your brain has trouble associating the sound with the imagery. 18fps is the slowest you can run a silent film and still distinguish continuous motion. 30fps and you start to lose the "dreamlike" effect, and at 60 fields per second (television), it's lost completely.
- kazinator 10y ago
  I've transcoded movies to 18 fps (and lower resolution) to decode on an under-powered smartphone. They were perfectly watchable. I don't remember any "whoa, odd lip sync" moments. I was pleased with and surprised by the results.
  - galago 10y ago
    The standard-known-framerates predate video--both CRT video and modern displays. Its useful to consider how a traditional mechanical movie projector worked with flashing stopped film vs. a persistent modern display. I would love to hear more from someone who understands modern video formats. Is a 'frame' still a discrete displayed entity? My understanding was that it is not in many cases.
    - TrevorJ 10y ago
      For the most part, yes, each frame is displayed as a discrete entity. NTSC (standard def TV) was an interlaced format so every other line was updated at a time, which led to a much smoother feel. There are progressive and interlaced flavors of HD, but the progressive (non-interlaced) is the most popular format for dramas, while I believe some live events are broadcast in the 1080i interlaced flavor of HD.
      - galago 10y ago
        Isn't the emission of light from modern displays much more continuous, which is why cats now see what's happening?
- aaron695 10y ago
  Cartoon have been traditionally 12 FPS?
- agumonkey 10y ago
  Last point made me cringe so hard a few years ago when all TVs were to have their (100|200)Hz mode so every movie now looks like straight out of Pixar. Hyper smooth, hyper real and hyper fake all at the same time.
  - voltagex_ 10y ago
    That's interpolated though - I wonder what it'd look like if you had an actual 200fps source (and the ability to play it)
    - agumonkey 10y ago
      True, I forgot that. I think I've seen one 48fps (maybe first Peter Jackson effort to push this) film and the results wasn't different from interpolated 100Hz TVs, the "movie" looked like a professional documentary. Crisp and dead.
      - gambiting 10y ago
        I saw the first Hobbit in 48fps and that was the first time I ever wanted to walk out of the cinema - was literally unpleasant to watch, my brain was telling me that everything is playing too fast and that audio should be desyncing from video, but it never did. Maybe I would get used to it if all films were made in 48fps, but I certainly can't recommend it after that one experience.
        agumonkey 10y ago
        Some people say we reject non 24 fps out of ingrained habits, I don't subscribe to this point of view. Nobody ever complained that a movie failed its purpose because it was filmed at 24fps. Tangent: so many movie are lacking in terms of set, direction, pacing, scenario.. why do people believe tech is the variable to improve...
- MichaelGG 10y ago
  Is this a human thing, or conditioning? Higher framerates being associated with daytime TV or home recordings and all that. Has anyone done research with film-naive people (hard to find) and seen if they show a preference? 24fps sucks anytime the camera pans. Or in action movies, things just jerk around everywhere.
macspoofing 10y ago
Maybe but Hollywood marketing also knows how to ham it up.
mrob 10y ago
Motion blur is caused by the image of the thing moving on your retina. Humans are very good at tracking steady movement with their eyes ("smooth pursuit"). When you're successfully tracking something this way the image is steady on your retina and there's no motion blur on it, only on the background. Applying motion blur relative to the camera does not look the same because it doesn't react to your eye movement. Synthetic motion blur (baked into the image and visible even with static images) can be used to partly hide low framerate, and with games it would be theoretically possible to use eye tracking to show synthetic motion blur relative to eye movement, but movies have to show the same thing to everybody. The only option for realism is to increase the framerate and rely on real motion blur. 120fps is about the minimum you can get away with for this and still have it look somewhat convincing. Trumbull's Showscan tests were with untrained audiences, they didn't know what to look for. With the right test signals and trained viewers you can see differences in frame rate well into the kilohertz by examining the interaction with eye movement.

moogleii 10y ago

> This sounds like pure marketing drivel. Just take a look at video games and the disparity of consoles being (largely) locked around 30 fps and PC that can reach 100+ fps. While a higher framerate can give the appearance of smoother gameplay -- which is disputed beyond a certain threshold -- it never makes it "unsettling" or more realistic. That's not the best analogy. Video games inherently don't look realistic (currently). 3000 fps of rendered Mickey the Mouse isn't going to make him suddenly look like live-action. He will only ever be a collection of polygons and textures. Live-action movies, however, use reality as a source. Fiddling with FPS can't add more realism to reality, it only can maintain or obscure it. Ironically, that's why HFR makes many films actually look worse IMO. Ever watch a behind the scenes of a film and think, those sets look so obviously fake and those costumes look like bad cosplay? With HFR, all those painted sets and lighting tricks they use become apparent for what they actually are. Whereas before you were watching a film, now you are obviously watching actors on a set. Mission successful (or failure, depending on the perspective), realism achieved, you are now sitting on the set in the director's seat, viewing it as he saw it, instead of watching the film from the audiences' eyes. IMO, until filmmakers can get their sets/costumes to look realistic without post processing and lighting, HFR won't help. But judging from the topic of this film, the material lends itself well to HFR.

spc476 10y ago
Heck, I saw Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in HD several years ago and man, it looked awful. Gone was the Star Ship Enterprise, Kirk and Spock. Instead, I got a half-baked set and some old actors in obvious costumes. It was painful to watch. Ronin (the next film being shown) didn't fare much better, looking like a TV soap opera.
- some-guy 10y ago
  If you think that's bad, watching Wizard of Oz in high definition.
- gambiting 10y ago
  In Star Wars: New Hope, you can tell that Vader's costume is just some plastic that was very poorly painted and glued together. Only in HD you can see brush marks on the chest plate, and it pulls you out of the experience.