The Hobbit will be Three Films, not Two

[JimC]

One imagines the Silmarillion is next...

[Gawdzilla Sama]

He's going to mine the Appendices for the third movie, to bridge to the LOTR movies.

[Svartalf]

Third movie is likely mostly shot already... he'll have worked like he did on LotR

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Third movie is likely mostly shot already... he'll have worked like he did on LotR

All the shooting is done, editing in process now. Check thehobbitmovie.com for more details. There's a shit load of detail there.

[Svartalf]

Not interested in the process, I'll judge the end product when it's all available.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

And bitch happily along before, during and after.

[Svartalf]

The day I stop bitching, they'll put me in a box.

[Jason]

[Jason]

One imagines the Silmarillion is next...

Have you read it? I couldn't make myself slog through it, though I suspect there is some material in there for a lot of spectacular special effects.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The day I stop bitching, they'll put me in a box.

Is Friday open for you?

[JimC]

One imagines the Silmarillion is next...

Have you read it? I couldn't make myself slog through it, though I suspect there is some material in there for a lot of spectacular special effects.

Yup. An interesting read, once you get into it...

[macdoc]

came across this article just now.....

I loved the Hobbit in the new format as I'm entirely immersed all the time in high Def and high end monitors and I wondered why there was criticism of the technology

Pain of the New

New media technologies often cause an allergic reaction when they first appear. We may find them painful before we find them indispensable.

I watched the movie The Hobbit. Twice. First I saw it in its "standard" mode. A day later I returned to see The Hobbit in 3D at a high frame rate of 48 frames per second, called HFR. HFR is a cinematic hi-tech that promises greater realism. It was amazingly real. And disturbing at first.

Because 48 frames per second is just above the threshold that a human eye/brain can detect changes, the projected picture seems startling whole and "smooth," as if it were uninterrupted reality.I was surprised though that the movie in 48HFR looked so different. (The 3D did not have an effect.) Even though both formats were shot with the same cameras and lighting, they appeared to be lighted and shot on different sets. The HFR lighting in the HFR movies seemed harsh, brighter, and more noticeable. The emotional effect of HFR was disturbing for the first 10 minutes. And perplexing -- because the only thing different in the two movies was that one was displayed in the 48 frames it was shot at, and the other was computationally reduced down to the normal 24 frames per second. Why would the frame rate distort the lighting and the emotion?

I was not the only one who noticed. The HFR version of the Hobbit -- the first commercial movie to be released in this new format -- stirred up howls from the critics. Very few filmish people liked what they saw. For most it was painful. The reviewers struggle to express what HFR looked like and why:

"Audiences looking for a rich, textured, cinematic experience will be put off and disconcerted by an image that looks more like an advanced version of high definition television than a traditional movie." – Kenneth Turan, L.A. Times

"One thing The Hobbit is not is a celebration of the beauty of film. A celebration of video-game realms, perhaps." – Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer

All kinds of ailments were ascribed to it, including hard of hearing:

"I can honestly say I had a harder time hearing some of the dialogue in the 3D HFR version than in the 2D… It was like watching really, really, really atrociously bad state run TV show……High frame rates belong on bad TV shows and perhaps sports." -- Vincent Laforet, Gizmodo

My first impression, too, was that HFR reminded me of my first look at video. That theme was repeated by many. But what is it about video that we didn't like at first?

"Those high frame rates are great for reality television, and we accept them because we know these things are real. We’re always going to associate high frame rates with something that’s not acted, and our brains are always going to associate low frame rates with something that is not. If they’re seeing something artificial and it starts to approach something looking real, they begin to inherently psychologically reject it." -- James Kerwin, Movieline

"Instead of the romantic illusion of film, we see the sets and makeup for what they are. The effect is like stepping into a diorama alongside the actors, which is not as pleasant as it might sound… Never bet against innovation, but this debut does not promise great things to come." – C. Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune

What's going on here? I really struggled to figure out what was happening to my own eyes and my perception that something as simple as changing a frame rate would trigger such drastic re-evaluations of cinema?

I researched on the web without much satisfaction, since few people had actually seen 48HFR. I asked a few friends in the advance cinema industry and got unsatisfactory answers. Then I was at a party with a friend from Pixar and asked him my question: why does HFR change the appearance of the lighting? He also could not tell me, but the man next to him could. He was John Knoll, the co-creator of Photoshop and the Oscar-winning Visual Effects Director for a string of technically innovative Hollywood blockbusters as long as my arm. He knew. I'll put his answer into my own words:

Imagine you had the lucky privilege to be invited by Peter Jackson onto the set of the Hobbit. You were standing right off to the side while they filmed Bilbo Baggins in his cute hobbit home. Standing there on the set you would notice the incredibly harsh lighting pouring down on Bilbo's figure. It would be obviously fake. And you would see the makeup on Bilbo's in the harsh light. The text-book reason filmmakers add makeup to actors and then light them brightly is that film is not as sensitive as the human eye, so these aids compensated for the film's deficiencies of being insensitive to low light and needing the extra contrast provided by makeup. These fakeries were added to "correct" film so it seemed more like we saw. But now that 48HFR and hi-definition video mimic our eyes better, it's like we are standing on the set, and we suddenly notice the artifice of the previously needed aids. When we view the video in "standard" format, the lighting correctly compensates, but when we see it in high frame rate, we see the artifice of the lighting as if we were standing there on the set.

Knoll asked me, "You probably only noticed the odd lighting in the interior scenes, not in the outdoors scenes, right?" And once he asked it this way, I realize he was right. The scenes in the HFR version that seemed odd were all inside. The landscape scenes were stunning in a good way. "That's because they didn't have to light the outside; the real lighting is all that was needed, so nothing seemed amiss."

continues

http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/ ... of_the_new

[pErvinalia]

One imagines the Silmarillion is next...

Have you read it? I couldn't make myself slog through it, though I suspect there is some material in there for a lot of spectacular special effects.

Yeah, I couldn't get through it.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Some people will complain if you hang them with a new rope.

[Jason]

Darn tootin'! New rope chafes. I'll have the old use-worn rope thank you.