Remember when THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY came out? Remember the while who-ha in regards to film being shot at a whopping 48-frames-per-second? The world was in uproar as to why the new technology was being used, despite the fact that you could march on down to your local multiplex and still have the choice of viewing the film in the new higher frame rate format or the old 24-frames-per-second one. Very much like you have a choice of viewing a film in 2D or 3D. Well, as much as Peter Jackson got excited about projecting at a higher frame rate, another has gone one step further? James Cameron.
The word around the campfire is that Cameron’s people are holding meetings with tech folk about potentially screening the two planned AVATAR sequels at a huge 120-frames-per-second. Take that Internet. A guy named Douglas Trumbull has developed a new way of projecting a 3D, 4K image at 120fps on conventional digital projects, and producer John Landau, who worked with Cameron on TITANIC and the first AVATAR.
Trumbull had this to say:
I know that Cameron is a huge advocate of high frame rates. The use of high frame rates for Avatar would be very appropriate and very successful. I don’t know if Cameron is interested, he’s in seclusion writing the screenplay for Avatar, [but] I am talking to Jon Landau, and we plan to have a screening [of UFOTOG] soon. If directors like Cameron, J.J. Abrams, Peter Jackson want this, then I think we’ll start getting some traction.
FYI, UFOTOG is a short film that has already used the technology, which is being referred to as MAGI.
Personally, I’m not loving the sound of this. 24fps makes films look like films, and any faster a frame rate reduces that experience for me. It’s very much like watching a movie on a 100hz TV; the clarity is great, but not the same. Whether this new 120fps projection resembles anything like that is yet to be seen, but this jury is definitely still out.
Thoughts?
AVATAR 2 and AVATAR 3 will be shot back -to-back and released in 2016 and 2017 respectively.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
Jesse C.
Sep 23, 2014 at 1:27 pm
There are three AVATAR sequels planned, not two as the article states. The three films will be shot back to back to back…
Nate
Sep 24, 2014 at 6:58 pm
Normally 24 FPS is important for that “cinematic” experience, yes, but with large amounts of CGI and 3D projection, the higher frame rate is more than welcome. Personally, my eyes hurt for the first 30-40 minutes of a 3D film, and many of my friends and family complain about anything from what I experience to outright motion sickness. As any gamer or enthusiast familiar with high-framerate applications will tell you, framerate is the problem here. When the framerate is to low, your brain doesn’t have enough information to stitch all of the frames together effectively. In 2D movies, this is handled with artificial motion blur to simulate what each frame might look like if it were filmed live-action. We’ve gotten exceedingly good at this in 2D films, mostly becuase, unlike gaming, frames are rendered in advance and don’t require any extra effort on the playback side of things.
However, I think that a higher framerate will ultimately be the greatest benefit to 3D movies, as it will remove much of the discomfort for many, and may help the medium move from a gimmicky big-name feature, to something more accessible to the masses.
Ian Hawley
Oct 25, 2014 at 8:50 am
“Like watching a regular film on a 100HZ TV” what nonsense.
Shooting at higher framerates reduces motion blur for a given frame, because a faster shutter speed is required – a 100 HZ TV is just refreshing the picture at 100 HZ, typically with some interpolation between frames.