This is a wonderful story from Greg Miller at WIRED, that examines how we perceive high frame rate. The question is will our perceptions change the more we see high frame rate movies. Ultra High Definition is betting on it as the next phase of UHD will present everything at high frame rate.
For Filmmakers, Higher Frame Rates Pose Opportunities—And Challenges
BY GREG MILLER
A still from a scene shot by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to systematically test the effects of various tech parameters for filming and projecting movies. ©A.M.P.A.S.
HOLLYWOOD, California—When The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey hit theaters in December 2012, audiences had an option they’d never had before: Some theaters were showing the movie in a new format with double the standard number of frames per second. Controversy immediately ensued. Critics complained the higher frame rate gave the movie a strangely fake appearance that made it hard to watch. Director Peter Jackson defended the format and used it again in the second installment of the Hobbit trilogy, The Desolation of Smaug.
Higher frame rates are just one way this new generation of technology is presenting new opportunities—and challenges—for filmmakers, says Andy Maltz of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Maltz is the managing director of the Academy’s Science and Technology Council, which is studying how technical details like frame rates, dynamic range, color gamut, and resolution affect the cinematic experience.
The motion control rig used to film The Affair. ©A.M.P.A.S.
At a recent event here hosted by the Academy, the audience got a preview of some of this work, which will be made available to filmmakers, equipment manufacturers, and researchers this fall. To study how various tech parameters affect a movie, the council commissioned a four-scene script and shot it over and over again. So far they’ve shot 38 versions of the first scene using professional actors, who hit the same marks every time, and motion control rigs to keep the camera angles exactly the same.
The film is called The Affair, and Maltz acknowledges it’s not exactly Oscar material. The scene screened at the event takes place at an art gallery reception, and the action (such as it is) involves a waitress delivering drinks. What made it interesting was seeing it projected at four different frame rates.
At the standard 24 frames per second, the video looked… well, normal. “This is what you’ve experienced your entire life,” said Tim Smith, a psychologist at the University of London, who was onstage with Maltz during the presentation. At 48 fps, the rate Jackson used in The Hobbit, the scene looked more like real life and somehow less cinematic. There was less motion blur: Glass vases on a table in the foreground and the text on a poster in the background stayed more sharply focused as the camera panned to follow the waitress. At 60 fps, a rate James Cameron reportedly considered for his upcoming Avatar sequel, this was even more true. Tiny movements like leaves blowing in the breeze on trees outside the window were sharp enough to be strangely distracting. At 120 fps, even jitter in the camera rig became noticeable.
“Because you’re getting a lot more information, any inconsistencies in the movement or problems in acceleration are going to be accentuated,” Smith said.
When Smith asked for a show of hands after the screening, a solid majority of the audience indicated they preferred the 24 fps version. “In terms of the information coming into your visual system, more should be better,” Smith said. At higher frame rates, it’s easier for your brain to detect motion between frames. “That’s why motion looks crisper and you see harder edges on the objects,” he said. “This is a more accurate representation of what was in front of the camera when it was captured, but that’s something we’re not used to seeing in the context of film.”
It may work better for some genres than for others, Smith says. The difference is most pronounced when there’s a fast-moving object on the screen, he says. “It may be good for sports or action.” The same effect could be distracting in other situations, however. Directors have long used motion blur as a tool to focus viewers’ attention (it’s hard to look at things that aren’t in focus). When everything is in focus, people may tend to look around the screen more, Smith says.
He hasn’t yet tested this directly with high frame rate footage, but he’s found something analogous with 3-D video. Smith does eye tracking research to study what people look at as they watch movie clips, and he’s found that when people watch 3-D movies their eyes tend to wander more than they do when they watch the same clip in 2-D. “As soon as the background becomes more salient you’ve got more variation in where people look and the director starts to lose control,” he said. In other words, people explore a hyper-realistic 3-D film much as they explore reality—and less like the carefully scripted experience most directors are trying to create.
Check out the full story here:
http://www.wired.com/2014/09/cinema-science-frame-rates/