By Rom Watson
c. January 9, 2014
Composers decide which notes to play and which notes should remain silent. Painters decided which colors to put on the canvas and which colors should remain on the palette. All art forms require determining which details are necessary and which are not. This is particularly evident in the medium of film.
I recently saw The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, and I saw it in 3D with the 48 frames per second format. (48 fps is twice the rate of most films.) This was my first experience with the higher frame rate, and I didn’t like it. Many times during the movie the 48 fps made it obvious that I was watching actors playacting on a set. Most movies consist of actors playacting on a set, but I was never so aware of it before. It was distracting.
Why would the filmmakers deliberately use a technology that made the movie look like theatre? Isn’t the point of movies to be more “realistic” than theatre? To do what theatre can’t? Maybe they thought the movie would be better if the viewer could see more detail. However, showing an audience too much detail diffuses the impact.
Seeing this movie with a higher frame rate made it obvious that the supposed “reality” of the movies is a myth. A myth perpetuated by 24 fps, which is what the film industry has used for many decades. (Vincent Laforet’s article on Gizmodo expertly explains the technology used when filming at 48 fps. He had a very similar reaction to mine, by the way.) As I understand it, 48 fps more closely duplicates what the human eye is used to seeing. Eliding 24 of the 48 frames to which the eye is accustomed apparently coats the visuals with a patina of unreality, which we have grown used to over the decades. This makes it easier to suspend disbelief and empathize with the story.
Like 24 fps, black-and-white film and animation also coat the visuals with unreality.
Though certain film directors have been justly praised for their deliberate and thoughtful use of color in their films, most of the time . . .color is an unnecessary detail.
Animators cannot draw every line that would appear in nature. There simply isn’t time. So for their art they must choose which lines are necessary and which are not. By simplifying the visuals, many unnecessary details are left out.
Removing what is unessential clears the way for the viewer to focus on what is essential. The story.
Movies pretend to be more realistic than theatre and other methods of storytelling, but they’re not.
It turns out that the magic of the movies lies not in the movies themselves, but in the audience. The magic is our willingness to suspend disbelief and enter the world of the story. And the path into that world is easier to navigate when it’s not strewn with unessential detail.
It ALL relies on the audience… for every form of art or expression… otherwise… just a tree falling in the forest… does it make a sound if there is no one to hear it? 8^)
Hi Rom,
You are absolutely correct in your description discussion of the magic of movies. 48 frames per second includes detail that is not required to tell the story. But of course you could eliminate all pictures and still tell the story…in a book, or eliminate more details and tell the story in a synopsis, or more perhaps with greater artistry, in a poem.
Which details are necessary to make the film most effective, and which are superfluous or even troublesome because they get in the way?
When 3-strip Technicolor was first perfected some critics suggested that it was unnecessary for most stories, and therefore the extra expense should be saved for only those tales where color would be important. People were perfectly happy with black and white films most of the time, and only big blockbusters were produced in color. That was in the 1930s. Over time, however, tastes change. We live in a world of color. And today some critics maintain that a black and white film is an unnecessarily and artificial stylized product of an artistic elitist, and (distressingly to me) many children seem turned off by films that are not in color. So some of these artistic choices are based on what we’re used to, not really what is or isn’t essential for story.
Peter Jackson and his fellow “48-framers” understand that we’re used to film that run at 24 frames per second, but they believe that over time we’ll get used to the greater detail of the faster projection speed, and eventually we’ll prefer the greater clarity and get turned off by the slightly blurry motion of images produced by the slower standard.
Do the computer generated effects appear hokier at 48 frames per second? They probably do to our eyes today…but they will get better with time, and we will also become used to them. Go back and look at the visual effects in classic sci-fi and fantasy films like King Kong or Forbidden Planet. These effects were hailed in their day and accepted by the audiences that first saw them. But if you produced identical effects in a movie today, your film would be laughed out of the theaters.
Some film aesthetics may be immutable truths, but a tremendous amount of what we perceive as pleasing is based on subtly shifting standards of what we have come to accept as “believable fantasy.”
Will Jackson prove right? 10 or 20 years from now will we want to see all our dreams depicted at 48 frames, and reject the old standard as “old fashioned?” I don’t know. But I suspect it may be possible.
Hugh,
Thank you for taking the time to write such a knowledgeable and well-thought-out response. Your’re right. Tastes do change. It will be interesting to see what audiences will come to accept as standard. Time will tell.
Thanks again,
Rom