14 replies to this topic

[EOSHD]

This film is the biggest folly in the history of cinema.

And here is why...

Cinema is not meant to be real, is meant to be an illusion of reality. An illusion of reality is more effective than actual reality. So to go and film all those fake beards and costumes and Hobbit holes and sound stages in glorious 4K 3D will give the feel of a live stage show, not a film.

I'd go so far as to say that The Hobbit is not filmmaking any more. It is theatre with a camera crew.

Nothing is implied, nothing is hidden, it is all on show.

The made up world is laid bare for all too see - those cameras will capture the actual world in which the set is constructed, and the costumes made, and the makeup glistening in the artificial glare of a theatrical set of lights.

What Peter Jackson is doing, is theatre and you will be watching a stage version.

Just look at the set and costume design in the video above and tell me the illusion is going to stick when you film it in glorious 4K. It just won't.

Especially not with that crazy fill lighting they have in every shot.

I feel distraught. Perhaps I should have a sit down and a cup of tea.

[Chrad]

Uh, really?

The resolution of this film is going to be lower than that of the great 65mm epics, which look fine.
Cinema is about suspension of disbelief. Cinema has always captured the actual world in which the set is constructed, but if the filmmaking is good enough the audience forgets about all of that and becomes caught up in the world of the story. I don't see why The Hobbit should work any differently on its audience.

[EOSHD]

The 65mm epics weren't screened in 3D 48fps!

[Chrad]

48fps isn't 'reality' either, regardless of how Jackson tries to sell it. It's just a different form of stylization. It's going to look weird, but I'm willing to give Jackson the benefit of the doubt until I've watched the whole film.

[HurtinMinorKey]

Put these tools in the right director's hands and you'll get magic. Jackson has never been cutting edge. In fact, he's kind of cheesy.

[Axel]

The resolution of this film is going to be lower than that of the great 65mm epics, which look fine.

Oh no! The resolution of a 70mm film was better than that of a 35mm film, but with the old techniques (which I love like others love old locomotives) 35mm delivered a lower resolution to the eye of the viewer than 1k. WAY lower! Don't you remember the times when television meant 480i for NTSC countries, which is still WAY lower than 480p, and you went to the cinema and didn't have the sensation of a particularly brilliant image? Despite the fact that the old screens were smaller in comparison to the auditorium? Modern projection technique is much improved, but still can't reach digital cinema. 70mm would be in the ballpark of modern 2k, IMAX a little better, but certainly WAY below real 4k.

But 4k doesn't change the look and feel of a film. Only few notice any difference, because resolution is quantitative. To see the limits of 2k being exceeded you'd need to sit so close to the screen, that the proportions get distorted, and people never choose those places voluntarily.

[MOONGOAT]

Reserve judgement.

[Chrad]

Oh no! The resolution of a 70mm film was better than that of a 35mm film, but with the old techniques (which I love like others love old locomotives) 35mm delivered a lower resolution to the eye of the viewer than 1k. WAY lower! Don't you remember the times when television meant 480i for NTSC countries, which is still WAY lower than 480p, and you went to the cinema and didn't have the sensation of a particularly brilliant image? Despite the fact that the old screens were smaller in comparison to the auditorium? Modern projection technique is much improved, but still can't reach digital cinema. 70mm would be in the ballpark of modern 2k, IMAX a little better, but certainly WAY below real 4k.

The thing is, I'm pretty sure this film will be released in 3D 48fps 2K. 48fps 4K 3D isn't supported in current digital cinema standards.

Reserve judgement.

Yep.

[Axel]

Reserve judgement.

Yes.
Within a greenscreen hell, everything looks depressingly technical and clean.

A good friend of mine is a production designer. She worked as draughtsperson for David Cronenbergs A Dangerous Method. The studio filming was done on a big soundstage in Cologne. I often gave her a ride and saw the sets. Nothing spectacular, if you see the final film, but I still have a plank from the gangway Freud and Jung passed to embark their ship to New York. Not wood, painted plaster. But looking more convincing than any real wood ever could. This is something I find very fascinating.

Cinema is about the meaning of things, or, to say with Freud, it's NOT about the cigar! Things that don't resonate in your soul don't make it to the final frame. This has nothing to do with reality, and it has nothing to do with pixel counting or frames-per-second-counting (although the different look of motion over time may have an influence on how we perceive fiction, we'll see).

There is a beautiful behind-the-scenes clip of You The Living. It demonstrates how film is "only" make believe:

[moebius22]

I heard they are processing the movie to hell after the initial fallout - thus defeating their initial intentions. Still Cameron and company will push on.

[Germy1979]

I'm not feeling this at all honestly. I agree it's goin to look weird, but it may just take some gettin used to. A big damn part of what makes a movie look like a movie is the motion. 24 frames is just fast enough to create a degree of seperation from real life perceived motion the way our eyes render it. I don't want Immersion spelled out and handed to me on a platter with the aesthetic use to capture the story.... I want the story to do it. Instead of worrying about raising the bar with a higher frame rate and breaking new ground, this will be an immediate distraction from the story. I hope nothing interesting happens in the first 20 minutes at LEAST, since the majority of film goers will be trying like hell to adjust to why this billion dollar movie looks like their iphones. Most of the audience are not movie makers... I hope jackson realizes that.

[DiverMark]

Watch this:



starting at 5:00.

I think this is all that needs to be said.

--Mark

[Axel]

Star Wars had two more all-dominant contributors. For the much underrated production design, this was Ralph McQuarrie. Without his paintings, long before anything was storyboarded, let alone built, the movie would have been only the naive B-picture it actually is.

It is important to stress, that the look & message of a film can be determined at this early stage. The artist paints a few key moments of the plot, without any respect to their logical function. And to their practicability. In the mid-seventies, the image above meant either an absurdly expensive giant set of the kind Ken Adams designed for the James Bond movies (usually the villain's headquarter) - or a much simplified trick that would betray the artist's vision and had no production value.

At this point, a few trend-setting decisions were made, and this might be due to George Lucas and his biggest achievement. Everyone of the technical staff had to become a special effects specialist. Every technique available then had to be used to transfer the pure visions without any compromises to film. In this example the actors were surrounded by a matte painting, one of the oldest tricks of cinema and faithful to the way McQuarrie conceived it. Today, of course, it would be much more easy to do this, and the camera could actually move.

The second big plus for the impact the final film had was John Williams music. It was rich, something between a russian like Mussorgsky and Wagner. I was impressed as a kid, but today I hate this symphonic kitsch.



LOTR also needs the phantastic score by Howard Shore. He really composed a symphony, with themes that move you and transport a vision. It picks up many old traditions and evocates timeless values (as knightliness). Just imagine the production diary above without the music ...

[richg101]

I watched that documentary and saw similar things to when you watch a documentary about a classic big budget hollywood film from the 1980's. To me thats gotto be a good thing. Once they slam that flat red raw through all the processing it will look a lot less theatrical and a lot more cinematic. The giant carved wood set looks amazing!

[DiverMark]

I watched that documentary and saw similar things to when you watch a documentary about a classic big budget hollywood film from the 1980's. To me thats gotto be a good thing. Once they slam that flat red raw through all the processing it will look a lot less theatrical and a lot more cinematic. The giant carved wood set looks amazing!

That was really my point. Some of those pre-production scenes from Star Wars were so bad that I can't help but laugh at them. When you add the special effects, sound effects, musical score, and James Earl Jones, it becomes an entirely different movie.

Of course, who can say what "The Hobbit" will look like? I'm just saying that at least once in the past, a movie that looked *terrible* in pre-production, looked fantastic when it was finished.

BTW, I can't even imagine what the guys who were backing this movie were thinking when they started to see some of these scenes.

--Mark