Why is the Soap Opera Effect Considered Such A Bad Thing? - Page 8

I don't believe that 24fps has appeal for anyone, in truth. It just happens to be a frame rate that is a) compatible with every film projector and every digital projector in every commercial theater and b) requires less film stock and less digital storage for distribution.

In truth, the economics are easy to understand and virtually impossible to overcome. I know that Peter Jackson is shooting The Hobbit at 48fps, but I expect to see 24fps distribution prints, and a 24fps Blu-Ray. There is simply no way to ignore the infrastructure that's in place.

The benefits of 48fps have been championed by lots of people, among them Roger Ebert, since about 1999. Here's his latest plug:

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2011...ture_of_f.html

It's really a chicken-and-egg problem. To get funding for 48fps production, you need distribution channels for 48fps movies. To produce 48fps movies, you need 48fps distribution.

So ALL RIGHT, ALREADY. If someone offers a Blu-Ray player that supports 48fps, I'll buy it. I'll buy 48fps disks if I can't get such material streaming as well. I'll upgrade from FI to native mode 48fps displays as well.

But I'm not holding my breath. I predict a 48fps standard will take a decade to happen, and until then, the best interim solution is FI.

On that note--this may seem odd to others, but it's entirely consistent to me--I WOULD enable FI for a film that was made at 48fps but downsampled to 24fps for Blu Ray. The reason is because the FI would be my best option for reproducing the actual look of the film.

EDIT: I suppose they could also convert a 48fps film to 720p/50 on Blu Ray. I honestly don't know whether this or interpolated from 1080p/24 would look better, but I suspect interpolated would. But the studios won't necessarily do what looks better...

Your right Gary. Albeit, the film rate per se is not the real issue, it's the end result that's important.



Cheers!



Ian

I am a former motion picture projectionist. Note the word "former." As of late-2011/early 2012 the conversion local theatres to digital projection is going full steam ahead. 2K and some 4K gear is replacing the venerable old Simplex, Century, Christie and Cinemeccanicas in the neighbourhood plexes. Studios are saving a mint since there are no prints to strike and no shipping costs to and from the now-no-longer-needed film exchange houses. Snap a module in, program the trailers and that's it.

I bought a Sharp Aquos 53" LCD a few weeks ago and I despise the SOE look. It was on final-sale-closeout at a decent price and looked great in the store, but no exchanges or refunds, meaning I'm stuck with something that's horrible to watch movies on. Turn off the 120 Hz mode and have motion judder and other artifacts. Turn it on and, while smooth, it looks like a "making of" video; totally unnatural. My eye was trained on 40-50 foot wide pictures and I know what film should look like projected at (roughly) 16 foot-lamberts on a reflective white or silver screen. Frankly I am watching less TV now than ever because the image quality is just too unnatural. Plasma is absolutely the way to go, IMHO, if you're a cinephile.

Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit" was shot at 48fps native. A 10' segment was shown at Cinecon in Las Vegas this week and the response by the audience of movie professionals was almost universally bad, for the same reasons. Fast frame rates let the audience see poorly-constructed sets, bad makeup and every pore on the actors' faces. I also hate to think what this would do for adult content, to be honest. I hope I never find out!

Well, porn was the first industry to abandon film in favor of video.

Short answer to the original question: Because if it had intended to look that way, it would've been produced that way in the first place.

Film is dead.

Get over it. LOL

Jackson will fix it up before it's released. People loved the outdoor scenes, and from the couple of seconds of indoor scenes I have seen on the web, it looks like raw output with no color/contrast/brightness grading done to it.

Film may indeed be dead (from the exhibition point of view) but for recording, not just yet. Or more to the point, it shouldn't be. I don't think the level of technology or artistry is at the point where the entire process is benefitted by digital, and especially high frame rate digital. Showscan proved this to me many years ago. Douglas Trumbull's grand 60fps experiment in the 80s just never looked "right", and today's HDTV content (running movies with Motion Control/120Hz turned on on LED/LCD screens) looks worse IMHO.

I would love to see one of the old Todd-AO prints run at 30fps/60Hz again as a point of reference, but I maintain that 48fps is too high a frame rate, at least until the entire artistry of the shot is taken into account. Scenes will need to be lit differently, set decoration and construction details will need to be re-thought and cinematographers will require a far better (or at least different ) eye. I don't want a ponderous, serious artistic film to look like As The World Turns.

I'd imagine that current 3D displays and 3D BD players would be capable of 2D 1080p48 playback, right? Just a firmware update away for both pieces considering that 3D BDs already provide 1080p48 (3D)! New displays, players, and disc standards would only be the case for 1080p96 (3D).

Video is a different media than film. Just as the quality of sets, costuming, and makeup had to be improved when television made the transition from Standard Definition to High Definition, so will moviemeaking have to have higher standards than when film distribution was the norm.

The new standards for "Good Cinematography" and "Good Photography" will be different from film. Yet there will still be masters of the new medium, with skills and results that stand out above the rest of the pack.

Fox and Sony have already announced the end of movie production on film. Within a decade, movie distribution on film will also end:

Tracking When Film Distribution Ends

...and the only place where one will see actual film is in a museum.

Ironicly, that same panning judder - and general motion judder from objects moving through the frame - is the main element of "the look of film" that the people in this thread are bemoaning the loss of.

Edison made 35mm/24fps B&W film in 1896. Once "talkies" started in the late 1920's, the 24fps standard replaced several different frame rates. The film medium is approaching 100 years of age, but requires a huge infrastructure to support. We can do better and we are. Those who cannot adopt their skillset to excell in video as they did in film, will simply no longer be the best moviemakers.

It is perfectly OK to prefer film over video. It is perfectly OK to prefer vacuum tubes over solid state electronics. It is perfectly OK to prefer horses over motor vehicles.

With respect, isn't just a comparison between old and new technology, it's about which artistic expression seems more natural to the viewer--the guy paying for it. To date, costs notwithstanding, 24 fps/film has been the preferred medium and until the digital artform is perfected and the playback mechanisms are solidly in place both theatrically and in the home, I don't see discerning audiences being pleased with the high frame rate digital alternatives. Perhaps in 30 years, when the old-timers are gone or in retirement homes and the videogame generation is in full control of the medium opinions may shift.

Imagine if it became fashionable to control an automobile with a joystick instead of a steering wheel. The best drivers of old would likely have problems with it and new paradigms would be needed before it could be universally adopted. Meanwhile, 10-year-olds who perfect their gaming techniques will be more than ready to hit the roads when they're 16 and be able to control their vehicles more easily. I see the same thing in film-v-digital. The two are very different processes with a higher potential upside on the digital end, but until the last year or two, every person alive who's seen a movie is accustomed to a certain look. Perhaps when today's newborns have consumed 10+ years of video they'll embrace the high frame rate soap opera look as natural and get turned off 24fps film/plasma, much as younger audiences today cannot appreciate B&W classics.

It absolutely is about old and new technology. It's also about old and new pardigms of what constitutes "good video".

In the past, the paradigm for good video was what most resembled film as displayed in a theater. 24fps frame rates, CRT and PDP and DLP displays that formed an image from flashes of light just as do film projectors, all in a ridiculous and ultimately futile attempt to imitate the look of film in a darkened theater. Futile because film is no longer being made and theaters are converting to digital in huge numbers. In a few years there won't be anywhere outside of a museum where the "look of film" is even available for comparison.

The new paradigm is a high frame rate display that closely resembles the large venue LCD and DLP three-chip projectors in digital theaters. In flat panels there are PDPs and LCDs to choose from. I prefer LCD because of the "look" of HD video. I first saw the jaw-dropping illusion of my HDTV appearing to be a window into a remote part of the world when watching the BBC series Planet Earth on HD-DVD. Those programs were shot on 60fps HD video and the "look of film" was gone, and it was as if a piece of dirty glass that had always been there was removed, disclosing the true image.

It's not gonna take years for this to happen. For me it has been true since 2007.

I think you make some good points. I have noticed the elimination of film base projectors in almost all of the theaters in my area. However I did not know that some theaters used LCD projectors, I thought it was either 3 chip DLP or LCOS.

The look of film has become a passing thing.

You are correct, LCoS and DLP are the only techs used for showing theatrical material in commercial theaters. The only use for LCD may be one of those cheap, high-output projectors that show advertisements and trivia prior to a movie or movie trailers in the lobby.

OK, now you are just making stuff up. I understand that as an enthusiastic young videophile you are fond of the prevailing affordable technology (LCD) at the time you developed your passion for video and gaming, but you are going too far with the frivolous statements. CRT, plasma and DLP were never intended to resemble the "flashes" of light in theatres. Just the opposite, 100Hz CRT refresh rates were popular as early as the end of the last century - in an attempt to avoid the flicker associated with the technology where it was more noticeable - the PAL 50Hz countries. Your favourite technology did not have any flicker issues, but it suffered from motion smearing, hence the 120 and 240 Hz technologies of later years. The intent was not to interpolate 24 fps film material to 60 or more frames, as you seem to imply. The technical means for higher than 24 fps framerates are older than some horse carriages (you seem to love those for some reason), they were just not accepted by the filmmakers and the public. The frame rate interpolation was thrown in as one of the many cheap gimmicks in LCD displays meant to wow the non-discerning viewer and apparently seems to enjoy some success, mostly because it's turned on by default, and first time TV buyers take it for granted.
LCD display technology is not the best now, even less the best ever. Don't waste your energy writing poems about it, it will be fully replaced within the next 10 or so years with OLED or better. And kids will be mocking you for sticking to horse carriages.

I hope this was enough to prove that technology has nothing to do with your preference for soap opera look of movies.

BTW, the Planet Earth HD-DVDs that impressed you so much, is 1080p 24fps, converted from the original 1080i50 (standard hi-def video framerate for former PAL countries) video material. Whatever it impressed you with wasn't the framerate.

Whaaaaaaaaaat? He's never done that before

I still can't see how The Hobbit can be more than peripherally related to any of this discussion.

I don't like DNR, but that doesn't mean I hate grain-free digital films. I don't like torch mode but that doesn't mean I hate vivid, high-contrast films. I don't like zoom/stretch mode, but that doesn't mean I don't like movies shot natively in 16:9. And I don't like frame interpolation, but that doesn't mean I don't like high-framerate movies.

The objection to frame interpolation is ultimately about fidelity, not framerate. I hope The Hobbit does well and ushers in a new era in high-framerate filmmaking. And I hope frame interpolation dies a rapid death. I have no idea where this puts me in the horse/car analogy spectrum

^^ +1... my first +1 post of the year


Agree the higher frame rate was to reduce retina persistence and increase LCD response time that cause "smearing". The artifacts in LCD has a lot of causes that is being improved over time. So I wouldn't call it gimmick in a sense. It was developed to bypass LCD Tech inherent shortcoming but introduces new ones due to low native frame rate. With 48fps native the SOE effect would be much reduced.

Very well put. I wish more people here could realize that the connection between high native frame-rates and frame interpolation doesn't exist at more than a superficial level.

quote Andrew Jackson ''we are certainly going to experiment with different finishing techniques to give 48 frames a look that is more organic''[. If you dislike frame interpolation you probably don't like 48 fps, both tend to look fakish, it's a higher frame rate thing.

As long as there is LCd there will be frame interpolation.

I don't see a new era in high framerate filmmaking any time soon.

Again, the two are similar only on a basic level. Capturing motion as it actually occurs at a higher frame rate will yield a different look than does frame interpolation. This is because FI has to make assumptions about the motion of an object when it decides where to place that object in the artificial frame(s); unfortunately most objects don't move linearly or even in the same fashion, so the FI result usually deviates from what would actually happen in real life. This is partly what contributes to the "strange" look of FI.

FI does not equal higher capture frame rates, period. I am 100% for offering the latter as a tool for directors. I am 100% personally against using the former, because it is a band-aid (and a poor one at that) for fundamental problems with LCD and how 24fps film captures quick motion.

I don't know about that. To me "The Matrix" in interpolated 60fps looks exactly like the "The Days Of Our Lives" in native 60 fps.

+1 nevertheless folks who don't like real higher frame rates have simular complaints as folks who do not like fake higher frame rates.

Which "folks", and what higher frame rates? There is very little theatrical material captured at high frame rates, so it's not possible for "folks" to comment on something that doesn't exist. The jury will remain out until such material becomes available to the general public.

No, I think the complaints are just poorly articulated, which makes them sound similar. When people say FI makes movies look like a soap opera, there is an unspoken second half of that sentence: "...and I know this movie isn't supposed to look like that." If the movie is SUPPOSED to look like a soap opera and the TV made it look like a soap opera, the complaints would not happen.

When people (and I'm assuming you mean the handful of people who saw the limited preview screening) say The Hobbit looks like a soap opera, the unspoken second half is either "...and I don't like that look" or "...and I'm not used to that look being used for films", which is a different thing entirely (i.e. the complaint about FI is based on an objective assessment, the complaint about the Hobbit is entirely subjective). Why they don't like it is probably a whole range of things, but the "cheapness" of the look is certainly a factor--it's a look already familiar to the viewer from another context, e.g. cheap TV production and cheap HDTV gimmick. If they associate the look with "lavish immersive film production", that factor may disappear over time.

Either way I agree there's a superficial similarity in the complaints, just as there's a superficial similarity in the appearance of the two techs, but dig a little deeper and they're really quite different.

What does that mean?

What about PDP?

"Organic" is certainly a meaningless phrase that can mean just about anything, but I'm taking it to mean basically any sort of post-production manipulation that would result in a more visually pleasing image.

My guess is that everything was shot super-well-lit and super-sharp-focus, and they still plan to bring the exposure down and add blur where they feel it's appropriate. I'm hoping those two issues were large contributors to the negative reactions so far.

Higher (native) frame rates movies seem to be like watching TV in the movie theater at times, one could watch a 48fps movie and objectively conclude that this is the case. Bringing the TV experience in the movie theater is not appreciated by insiders.

I do not see the look/appearance of a 48fps film or frame interpolated stuff as being a superficial part, its a essential part of the experience.