Interesting but very harsh. I think it’s just a matter of what one is used to. If every movie were in 48fps and they‘d switch to 24fps people probably wouldn‘t stand the sudden jerkiness of the motion.

I for myself find 48fps unnecessary either but welcome experiments with technology.

@Will Barks said:

Interesting but very harsh. I think it’s just a matter of what one is used to. If every movie were in 48fps and they‘d switch to 24fps people probably wouldn‘t stand the sudden jerkiness of the motion.

I for myself find 48fps unnecessary either but welcome experiments with technology.

I don't know if any of us will be around to see where it goes as far as usage for movies years from now. Liked I mentioned; I think it would be great for sports and those other things like that. At the same time, there's a lot of people who I know who really like the smoothing effect the newer TVs provide today, and what's really sad is a majority of those people with those sets don't really notice that there is a smoothing feature that's turned on (to give the effect of high frame rates) ...only that they said their TV always looked like that. I'll visit someone's home and see they have a movie playing and I can see right away it looks more like a cheap video rather than a high budget movie. Also, there are those who do notice and like the effect those new TV provide. But then those same people go to the movies and I don't hear any complaints from them when they see something at 24fps.

I had read there were complaints about the use of HFR on Hobbit. I for one have seen it both ways. Of course as I'm sure you know, I absolutely hated it! Then I saw it again at the drive-in at 24fps, and it looked like a real movie...everything about the movie looked magical, unlike how it looked on the HFR version. I just can't stress enough how even with the most expensive costumes and using the best actors; the HFR makes me feel I'm sitting behind the director watching him direct an actor on a set. The outfits no longer look like outfits, they now take on the looks of a movie prop, a costume of some sort. And I forgot to mention the actors also look like they're acting for the very first time, rehearsing for the first time, and/or auditioning. It's really that bad to me.

But not to argue, I have to agree with you in saying that if everything was at 48fps and suddenly switched to 24fps; people would be wondering what just went wrong with the projector and might even complain.

But I also can't stress enough that what takes place on the screen is suppose to be magical. If the frame rate is bumped up even a little bit to 30fps, it looks more like reality not fantasy. They might as well make movies using cheap camcorders...the effect is the same.

"In 2012, Peter Jackson released the first of his Hobbit films in 48 frames-per-second format—not nearly as souped-up as Billy Lynn's 120 fps, but still twice the standard 24 fps. Then, as now, critics were dismissive of the high-frame-rate (HFR) effect. It looked like a teleplay, they said, or tatty summer-stock.Oct 20, 2016" "An experimental subject might conclude, for example, that HFR is at once “natural,” “high quality” and “a fucking crime against cinema.”)"

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/movies/2016/10/billy_lynn_s_long_halftime_walk_looks_fantastic_it_s_also_unwatchable.html

No need to read from the link, it's super long, but I just found it and discovered there was a movie made with a frame rate of 120fps for anyone who might be interested.

Back to SuperFly, the HFR was fine MAYBE for the car chase scene...it still made it look cheap, but the cars did look like they were moving faster, (but it looked too much like a damn video!) Then of course they kept the HFR on for the rest of the movie.

I didn't notice. The only thing that kept bothering me as I watched the film was the atrocious acting and how cheesy it was. I've seen bits of the original film and it's overall much better. I wish hollywood would stop with all of these unnecessary remakes. I thought that death wish remake was pretty terrible as well.

@nolesjs17 said:

I didn't notice.

I take it since the movie hasn't played in a theatre for at least a month or so now; I can only assume you saw it on a home video release...either on one of the disc formats, movie channel or streaming. All of those I'm sure would not have the high frame rate I saw at a local drive-in.

I couldn't stand the HFR version of "The Hobbit" (2012) either, but I did enjoy it when I saw it at the drive-in at 24fps.

OK boomer.

@lostincinema said:

OK boomer.

It doesn't matter to me where I see it as long as it's 24fps. By odd coincidence now that I'm talking about this movie, I ordered the The Hobbit: Trilogy (4K Ultra HD) just a few days ago. Never saw the rest of the series.

I’m glad someone else is as offended by HFR as I am. Actually we’re not the only ones; in the world of (amateur/semipro) digital video production, it’s commonly understood that if you want a cinematic look you need to step it down to 24fps on final render. Go to youtube and search for tutorials on making video look cinematic, and this is the #1 tip.

It’s not just film nostalgia either. There’s something about the human eye that processes 24fps differently than 30fps or higher. It’s like the sweet spot that allows visual interpolation without disrupting continuity (similar to slight blurring on closeups to make actors faces look perfect). The film industry settled on 24 after decades of experimenting so it’s not just arbitrary. But the advent of digital video created a whole new hyperrealistic medium which filmmakers have yet to explore.

As an amateur filmmaker & editor, I’ve done all the exploring I need. I’m sticking with 24 unless I deliberately want the guerrilla video look (ex: undercover documentary). It has its uses. But as you perfectly put it, it’s the opposite of suspension of disbelief.

When I got a new HD tv I didn’t realize it had a default setting to upscale all frame rates to 60. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out why all my DVDs suddenly looked cheap and low budget. If you have a tv with this feature you can do your own comparison. It’s pretty ridiculous, imagine seeing a cheap Public Access production of 2001 A Space Odyssey 😐

We are yet watch enough movies especially made in HFR so at least I will reserve my judgement until them.

All this "looking cheap and low budget" and " big budget movies look cheap" stuff is because those movies depended on INFERIOR 24fps to COVERUP their issues. HFR doesn't do that. The film making as a whole is yet to adapt to HFR and I am willing to bet they will look and feel even better when they do. It's not just a switch you flip.

My dream is to watch a WELL MADE high budget HFR action movie. When I go to the theater and see a fast moving train "jerking it's way across the screen" it's just the worst.

@rooprect said:

I’m glad someone else is as offended by HFR as I am. Actually we’re not the only ones; in the world of (amateur/semipro) digital video production, it’s commonly understood that if you want a cinematic look you need to step it down to 24fps on final render. Go to youtube and search for tutorials on making video look cinematic, and this is the #1 tip.

It’s not just film nostalgia either. There’s something about the human eye that processes 24fps differently than 30fps or higher. It’s like the sweet spot that allows visual interpolation without disrupting continuity (similar to slight blurring on closeups to make actors faces look perfect). The film industry settled on 24 after decades of experimenting so it’s not just arbitrary. But the advent of digital video created a whole new hyperrealistic medium which filmmakers have yet to explore.

As an amateur filmmaker & editor, I’ve done all the exploring I need. I’m sticking with 24 unless I deliberately want the guerrilla video look (ex: undercover documentary). It has its uses. But as you perfectly put it, it’s the opposite of suspension of disbelief.

When I got a new HD tv I didn’t realize it had a default setting to upscale all frame rates to 60. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out why all my DVDs suddenly looked cheap and low budget. If you have a tv with this feature you can do your own comparison. It’s pretty ridiculous, imagine seeing a cheap Public Access production of 2001 A Space Odyssey 😐

I've always said, HFR makes a major high budget motion picture look like a cheap video production.

When I get a new TV the very first thing I do is make sure any and all motion smoothing settings are turned off! I'm guessing TV manufacturers spend a lot of money on research and development on their features including competing with other TV brands who have their own smooth motion handling but of course most if not all of these features do nothing to really improve the reproduction of a movie or it's image quality. Things like sharpening do nothing except increase noise but some people feel the need to think they are looking at better images that way...nothing could be further from the truth. When people visit and watch movies in my theatre room, they are astonished at the image quality. Not only are things like sharpening turned off (or at neutral) with contrast and brightness set properly with most if not all image enhancements turned off. Of course after a proper calibration, people are just not used to seeing proper gray scale reproduction which doesn't distort colors...which translates to faithful filmatic image reproduction.

The best movies in the world can't be improved on in any way by being captured in HFR, in fact it takes away from the movie going experience. The Hobbit series is not some low budget piece of crap no one wants to see; it's a major Hollywood motion picture production and yet seeing it in the HFR format to me made it look like as if I was behind the director after he's just got done yelling "ACTION!" signaling the actor to perform on a stage wearing a costume (not real clothing) which really does look like a costume not some real period time piece material. The problem is the costume is suppose to look like authentic clothing from a different period of time but in HFR, it just looks like a costume and that's distracting...and seeing all these details that stand out in HFR has me thinking about everything my brain wants to take in which looks more like reality so my mind can't relax and concentrate on the story...it just can't, there's too much information blasting away in front of my eyes. With that much information blasting away, there can't be any suspension of disbelief. Movie magic simply isn't believable when there is no suspension of disbelief.

Suspension of disbelief allows a person to accept the impossible to be possible because when the brain doesn't accept what it's experiencing as reality, it can be accepted as a fantasy. When a movie magic moment happens in HFR, it looks fake because everything on the screen looks like reality and we all know in real life these sort of things can't happen, and it's so jarring; it takes me out of the movie...not an experience I want when I go to a movie theatre. If there is suspension of disbelief, our minds can then be fully relax and accept these movie magical moments as something that's truly happening because it is now easy at that point to be fully engulfed with what's on the screen as being pure fantasy/reality; a form of escapism which is a big part of the movie going experience which of course as humans we want to accept (to escape reality) so we let our minds believe what's happening on the screen even if it's for a moment or two or throughout the entire movie.

HFR does have it's uses however and can be great for things like Sports, TV Shows, Documentaries, News, Amusement Parks and Porn.

@thebarnman said:

@rooprect said:

I’m glad someone else is as offended by HFR as I am. Actually we’re not the only ones; in the world of (amateur/semipro) digital video production, it’s commonly understood that if you want a cinematic look you need to step it down to 24fps on final render. Go to youtube and search for tutorials on making video look cinematic, and this is the #1 tip.

It’s not just film nostalgia either. There’s something about the human eye that processes 24fps differently than 30fps or higher. It’s like the sweet spot that allows visual interpolation without disrupting continuity (similar to slight blurring on closeups to make actors faces look perfect). The film industry settled on 24 after decades of experimenting so it’s not just arbitrary. But the advent of digital video created a whole new hyperrealistic medium which filmmakers have yet to explore.

As an amateur filmmaker & editor, I’ve done all the exploring I need. I’m sticking with 24 unless I deliberately want the guerrilla video look (ex: undercover documentary). It has its uses. But as you perfectly put it, it’s the opposite of suspension of disbelief.

When I got a new HD tv I didn’t realize it had a default setting to upscale all frame rates to 60. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out why all my DVDs suddenly looked cheap and low budget. If you have a tv with this feature you can do your own comparison. It’s pretty ridiculous, imagine seeing a cheap Public Access production of 2001 A Space Odyssey 😐

I've always said, HFR makes a major high budget motion picture look like a cheap video production.

When I get a new TV the very first thing I do is make sure any and all motion smoothing settings are turned off! I'm guessing TV manufacturers spend a lot of money on research and development on their features including competing with other TV brands who have their own smooth motion handling but of course most if not all of these features do nothing to really improve the reproduction of a movie or it's image quality. Things like sharpening do nothing except increase noise but some people feel the need to think they are looking at better images that way...nothing could be further from the truth. When people visit and watch movies in my theatre room, they are astonished at the image quality. Not only are things like sharpening turned off (or at neutral) with contrast and brightness set properly with most if not all image enhancements turned off. Of course after a proper calibration, people are just not used to seeing proper gray scale reproduction which doesn't distort colors...which translates to faithful filmatic image reproduction.

The best movies in the world can't be improved on in any way by being captured in HFR, in fact it takes away from the movie going experience. The Hobbit series is not some low budget piece of crap no one wants to see; it's a major Hollywood motion picture production and yet seeing it in the HFR format to me made it look like as if I was behind the director after he's just got done yelling "ACTION!" signaling the actor to perform on a stage wearing a costume (not real clothing) which really does look like a costume not some real period time piece material. The problem is the costume is suppose to look like authentic clothing from a different period of time but in HFR, it just looks like a costume and that's distracting...and seeing all these details that stand out in HFR has me thinking about everything my brain wants to take in which looks more like reality so my mind can't relax and concentrate on the story...it just can't, there's too much information blasting away in front of my eyes. With that much information blasting away, there can't be any suspension of disbelief. Movie magic simply isn't believable when there is no suspension of disbelief.

Suspension of disbelief allows a person to accept the impossible to be possible because when the brain doesn't accept what it's experiencing as reality, it can be accepted as a fantasy. When a movie magic moment happens in HFR, it looks fake because everything on the screen looks like reality and we all know in real life these sort of things can't happen, and it's so jarring; it takes me out of the movie...not an experience I want when I go to a movie theatre. If there is suspension of disbelief, our minds can then be fully relax and accept these movie magical moments as something that's truly happening because it is now easy at that point to be fully engulfed with what's on the screen as being pure fantasy/reality; a form of escapism which is a big part of the movie going experience which of course as humans we want to accept (to escape reality) so we let our minds believe what's happening on the screen even if it's for a moment or two or throughout the entire movie.

HFR does have it's uses however and can be great for things like Sports, TV Shows, Documentaries, News, Amusement Parks and Porn.

Exactly! I watch movies to escape. If I want reality, or in this case hyperreality (see below), then I'll watch a baseball game on ESPN. I suppose this brings us to the division between art vs. entertainment. The best art films rely heavily on suspension of disbelief; they don't overexplain every detail to make it 'real'. Recently I've rediscovered Hitchcock and realized that the plots and action are downright looney BUT if we are immersed in the story we don't care. And that's the escapism which masters like Hitchcock brilliantly wove for us: putting us in a state of mind where we believe the unbelievable.

Now about hyperreality... Things like HFR and razor crisp focus and hard saturation make images pop off the screen, and there is some value to that. But when it's thrown at you nonstop for 90 mins it accomplishes the opposite of movie magic. Instead of challenging our brains to fill in the gaps (which 24fps literally does), it floods our brains with too much information so our minds switch off. Not in a good way either. I compare it to junk food with way too much salt. Our taste buds switch off because of sensory overload, and if that's our only diet for an extended period of time, eventually our taste buds get dumbed down. Eventually the only food we find enjoyable is deep salted fried foods.

The same technological revolution/corruption has been happening in the music world since the advent of digital mastering, late 90s. Albums are suddenly cranked so loud that they flood our brains. They sound 'better' in the sense that salted food tastes 'better', or HFR looks 'better' but the truth is it's just louder.

Another problem with HFR, and video in general, is that everything on the screen is in sharp focus all at once. The human eye doesn't work this way. Just like an old camera lens, we focus at specific points while everything in the periphery becomes blurred. A problem with digital video is that it captures the entire field in focus, thanks to fast frame rates, so we're presented with a flat wall of information. I think this is why it feels low budget, like a cheap documentary rather than a cinematic experience.

The cinematic experience isn't based on flooding the viewer's eye with everything all at once but rather what is selectively shown, what is taken away, and how that guides our minds beyond the edges of the screen. Think of the final scenes of Apocalypse Now which are basically Brando's head in a dark room. Our brains fill in the rest with our own imagination, and that's the cornerstone of movie magic.

24 fps accomplishes the same thing--creating gaps which our brains fill unconsciously. I'd love to see a study where electrodes monitor brain activity during, say Fritz Lang's Metropolis (22fps I believe?), vs one of these new digital productions at 48fps. I'll bet you any amount that Fritz lights up our brains like a Christmas tree whereas the new eye candy is more likely to drop the audience's IQ a few points lol

@rooprect said: Exactly! I watch movies to escape. If I want reality, or in this case hyperreality (see below), then I'll watch a baseball game on ESPN. I suppose this brings us to the division between art vs. entertainment. The best art films rely heavily on suspension of disbelief; they don't overexplain every detail to make it 'real'. Recently I've rediscovered Hitchcock and realized that the plots and action are downright looney BUT if we are immersed in the story we don't care. And that's the escapism which masters like Hitchcock brilliantly wove for us: putting us in a state of mind where we believe the unbelievable.

Now about hyperreality... Things like HFR and razor crisp focus and hard saturation make images pop off the screen, and there is some value to that. But when it's thrown at you nonstop for 90 mins it accomplishes the opposite of movie magic. Instead of challenging our brains to fill in the gaps (which 24fps literally does), it floods our brains with too much information so our minds switch off. Not in a good way either. I compare it to junk food with way too much salt. Our taste buds switch off because of sensory overload, and if that's our only diet for an extended period of time, eventually our taste buds get dumbed down. Eventually the only food we find enjoyable is deep salted fried foods.

The same technological revolution/corruption has been happening in the music world since the advent of digital mastering, late 90s. Albums are suddenly cranked so loud that they flood our brains. They sound 'better' in the sense that salted food tastes 'better', or HFR looks 'better' but the truth is it's just louder.

Another problem with HFR, and video in general, is that everything on the screen is in sharp focus all at once. The human eye doesn't work this way. Just like an old camera lens, we focus at specific points while everything in the periphery becomes blurred. A problem with digital video is that it captures the entire field in focus, thanks to fast frame rates, so we're presented with a flat wall of information. I think this is why it feels low budget, like a cheap documentary rather than a cinematic experience.

The cinematic experience isn't based on flooding the viewer's eye with everything all at once but rather what is selectively shown, what is taken away, and how that guides our minds beyond the edges of the screen. Think of the final scenes of Apocalypse Now which are basically Brando's head in a dark room. Our brains fill in the rest with our own imagination, and that's the cornerstone of movie magic.

24 fps accomplishes the same thing--creating gaps which our brains fill unconsciously. I'd love to see a study where electrodes monitor brain activity during, say Fritz Lang's Metropolis (22fps I believe?), vs one of these new digital productions at 48fps. I'll bet you any amount that Fritz lights up our brains like a Christmas tree whereas the new eye candy is more likely to drop the audience's IQ a few points lol

I've been talking about this subject on and off for some years now. Most agree with me, some disagree and there are some who can take it or leave it in a sense they could care less one way or the other. Personally I think HFR is something that will be used now and then for movies and even today when there are those who say 24 fps is old fashion (and it is...no argument about that) but it's strange (probably not so strange) in how it helps with the movie going experience. We have certainly moved from film to mostly digital capture but that doesn't mean we want our movies to not feel like movies anymore. Anything much faster than 24 fps takes us further and further away from that experience.

Yes, in a baseball game you'll want to experience reality which is why I use porn as an example of a good use for HFR including major Amusement park shows and rides...HFR has it's uses and can be a very good thing.

I like how you use Hitchcock as an example. Yes, the plots are looney (never thought about it that way but yes they are) and yet many people get caught up with what's happening on the screen because the audience is focused on the bomb under the table which is an unknown to everyone in the same room...that of course is a Hitchcock thing. Of course if the same scene/plot were to happen in the HFR format, I'd be taken out of the movie. And, because of that I really wouldn't care one way or the other of what's going on.

For example, look at the beginning of Gemini Man https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i82xURPkLWo&ab_channel=4KClipsHDR where the sniper shoots at the train. I'm not concerned about who's getting hit or what the exemplification of all that can be, I'm looking at how this looks like a cheap video production with actors playing a part. If shot or shown at 24 fps, I wouldn't think of the actors playing a part, I'd be looking at them as the characters they are...not even who (the actors) of whom they are playing, but viewing them as truly the people in this fantasy world as really being those in the movie who do those kinds of things.

That scene with Will Smith setting up the gun looks like something shot from a smart phone. In addition it also looks like something I could have easily shot myself which cheapens the production. I can't help thinking the scene inside the train looks like someone's home videos. At this point I'm not thinking of the scene, I'm thinking about things like how this doesn't look like a movie. I also feel like Will can start looking at the camera to explain why he slapped Chris Rock which of course has nothing to do with the movie. The sense of realism is enough to make it hard to believe these people can pull off the job as well or as easily as they do. There's no movie magic, therefore it doesn't seem like a movie.

One thing I never noticed about HFR in that everything is in sharp focus all at once. I think I may have chosen to ignore that. However that makes me wonder about the equipment used during the making of some of these HFR movies. Knowing about the film world, I know it's easy to create a shallow depth of field if your image sensor is big. The smaller the sensor the easier it is to have a greater depth of field. Early on, image sensors were small, then graduated to bigger sizes...matching the size of film itself and now sensors that match the 65mm film size and I think now even bigger. The bigger the image sensor the easier it is to create shallow depth of field. Of course wide angle and telephoto lens with distance to your subject still plays a roll in all that but as time has gone on, I'm guessing the image sensors used today are much bigger than the ones used early on when HFR movies were first being introduced. I may be wrong but that's my take on it. At the same time it also might be a artistic choice...choosing to make everything in focus all at once. That's something I will keep an eye on; Thank you! Another way of thinking about this is if they did use shallow depth of field with the use of HFR makes me wonder if the reality of HFR makes shallow depth of field look really odd in some way. An example of that would be the use of 3-D photography. Most of the time human vision sees everything in focus (near to far) so stereo photography looks best when everything is in focus. Of course shallow focus has been used with Stereo Photography but it look a little odd since the human eye doesn't really do the same in most cases. Peripheral vision is one thing, shallow depth of field is another.

Your example of Apocalypse Now is excellent. Even at 24 fps, all that darkness around adds even more to the imagination.