The Hobbit

[_bcspace]

Legolas wasn't in "The Hobbit", was he?

No matter...would love to see Orlando again as a sexy elf!

He's in the video blog, at the end. Just hanging around it seems.

[_Analytics]

Legolas wasn't in "The Hobbit", was he?

No matter...would love to see Orlando again as a sexy elf!

He's in the video blog, at the end. Just hanging around it seems.

Legolas was from the elves that lived in the Mirkwood Forest. Even though he isn't specifically mentioned in The Hobbit, it’s plausible that he would have been there when the dwarves were captured.

[_Res Ipsa]

Possibly. Expensive TV's have a lot of features that manipulate this kind of thing.

An old-fashioned movie was like one of those books where you flick through the pages, and it shows a series of still shots one at a time. The standard for that has always been to show 24 still frames per second (fps). The way these images flick across the screen is the key feature to the way movies look on the big-screen.

The Hobbit is the first movie made at 48 fps, where it does the same general thing, but it shows 48 still images a second rather than just 24. Theoretically this will make the motion more smooth, but I haven't seen it so I'll withold judgment.

In contrast, old-fashioned TV has sensors that zip across the columns and rows of the screen in real-time--thus they aren't properly capturing still frames at all. For example, when a TV camera captures the pixel on the bottom corner of the screen, it is capturing what happened about 1/30th of a second after what was captured in the top corner of the screen. So technically, a TV wouldn't be 30 frames per second, but 30 cycles per second. (This is why on old VCRs, the picture jumped around when you paused it--there just weren't complete still frames to stop on).

Modern digital recorders will capture a series of actual frames where each frame captures a descrete instant in time. Before high-definition camcorders, the option to capture a true 24 fps (rather than 60 cycles-per-second) is one of the things that distinguished expensive camcorders from the cheap ones.

Thanks!

[_Bret Ripley]

Legolas was from the elves that lived in the Mirkwood Forest. Even though he isn't specifically mentioned in The Hobbit, it’s plausible that he would have been there when the dwarves were captured.

While Legolas isn't mentioned in The Hobbit, his father (Thranduil) plays a pretty important role.

[_moksha]

My guess is that he will bring some of the content (like Tom Bombadil) that was cut from LOTR into The Hobbit.

H.

I hope so. The Tom Bombadil story seemed much more suited for the Hobbit.

[_cinepro]

I don't understand all the frame rate stuff. Is the frame rate effect your are talking about the same thing I notice when I go to my friend's house to watch a movie on his blue ray player and HD TV and the movie looks like a live TV shot of a movie set? I find it really distracting.

Yes. That is a feature where the TV presents the original 24 or 30 frames-per-second (fps) video at 120fps. The result usually looks like a soap opera.

That doesn't mean high frame rates are bad. To the contrary, a high frame rate should be better in most respects. There's nothing "magic" about 24fps; it's just the practical application of film technology from the 20th century and the need for a standardized speed:

The human eye and its brain interface, the human visual system, can process 10 to 12 separate images per second, perceiving them individually,[1] however the threshold of perception is more complex, with different stimuli having different thresholds: the average shortest noticeable dark period, such as the flicker of a cathode ray tube monitor or fluorescent lamp, is 16 milliseconds,[2] while single-millisecond visual stimulus may have a perceived duration between 100ms and 400ms due to persistence of vision in the visual cortex. This may cause images perceived in this duration to appear as one stimulus, such as a 10ms green flash of light immediately followed by a 10ms red flash of light perceived as a single yellow flash of light.[3] Persistence of vision may also create an illusion of continuity, allowing a sequence of still images to give the impression of motion. Early silent films had a frame rate from 14 to 24 FPS which was enough for the sense of motion, but it was perceived as jerky motion. By using projectors with dual- and triple-blade shutters the rate was multiplied two or three times as seen by the audience. Thomas Edison said that 46 frames per second was the minimum: "anything less will strain the eye."[4][5] In the mid- to late-1920s, the frame rate for silent films increased to about 20 to 26 FPS.[4]

When sound film was introduced in 1926, variations in film speed were no longer tolerated as the human ear is more sensitive to changes in audio frequency. From 1927 to 1930, the rate of 24 FPS became standard for 35 mm sound film;[1] a speed of 456 millimetres (18.0 in) per second. This allowed for simple two-blade shutters to give a projected series of images at 48 per second. Many modern 35 mm film projectors use three-blade shutters to give 72 images per second—each frame flashed on screen three times.[4]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_rate

The problem is when lower frame-rate material (like that from a Blu-ray or broadcast) is displayed at 120hz. Modern TV's just don't do it well.

I've seen two films that were actually filmed at 30fps and projected that way: "Oklahoma" and "Around the World in 80 Days". The effect is magnificent. So I was cautiously optimistic about The Hobbit. But those reports from the UK aren't encouraging.

[_cinepro]

And here's the verdict from the review in Variety:

More disconcerting is the introduction of the film's 48-frames-per-second digital cinematography, which solves the inherent stuttering effect of celluloid that occurs whenever a camera pans or horizontal movement crosses the frame -- but at too great a cost. Consequently, everything takes on an overblown, artificial quality in which the phoniness of the sets and costumes becomes obvious, while well-lit areas bleed into their surroundings, like watching a high-end homemovie. (A standard 24fps projection seems to correct this effect in the alternate version of the film being offered to some theaters, but sacrifices the smoother motion seen in action scenes and flyover landscape shots.)

[_LDSToronto]

I don't understand all the frame rate stuff. Is the frame rate effect your are talking about the same thing I notice when I go to my friend's house to watch a movie on his blue ray player and HD TV and the movie looks like a live TV shot of a movie set? I find it really distracting.

Yes. That is a feature where the TV presents the original 24 or 30 frames-per-second (fps) video at 120fps. The result usually looks like a soap opera.

I've seen this effect when I pass the TV section in Costco. All the new 120 and 240hz TV sets display movies in a way that makes it seem as though someone used a high-def handicam to film. It looks really strange.

I think this new effect works well with sports and animated movies, but not so much with regular movies.

H.

[_ludwigm]

... 120 and 240hz ...

It looks really strange.

... and can cause epileptic seizure.

Side effect of our civilization...

[_MeDotOrg]

I'm kind of ambivalent when it comes to a lot of new technology in film making. I find it draws attention to itself rather than to the movie. When I saw 'Hugo' in 3D I was dazzled by the effects, but I was watching the effects, they weren't the movie.

If anyone has not seen it, please rent a copy (Blu Ray if you have it) of Lawrence of Arabia, if nothing else, just to see what a REAL army looks like instead of a CGI army. One of the last great spectacle movies made without CGI. (As I was writing this I just remembered Attenborough's 1982 Gandhi, which would also qualify).

We've been watching movie action at 24 fps all of our lives, and that speed is what our mind's eye accepts as reality. If you look at Nick Park's claymation or Ray Harryhausen's amazing Sinbad movies, what's missing is the blur of 'real' action. Somehow it doesn't look quite real to our eyes. It will be interesting to see if the lack of blur at 48 fps appears less real or more real.

I'm a little leery of 'The Hobbit' being made into 3 movies. I think it's always preferable to pare down a script than to bulk it up. I'm afraid this will morph from 'The Hobbit' into 'The World of JRR Tokien'. The Hobbit had a much different feel than Lord of the Rings. It was a third person narrative with a light touch, a tale rather than a myth. It doesn't feel like there are three movies in it.

But I'm really glad to see that Fran Walsh and Phillipa Boyens are back as the screenwriters. They have an encyclopedic knowledge of Tolkien and were brilliant at splicing bits of dialog (Like the opening lines of the prologue for LOTR 1) into other areas. If anyone can pull off making this into 3 movies, they can.

For those who have not read the book, I would recommend 'The Hobbit'. It is a light, easy read, and does not require the investment of Lord of the Rings.