Gemini Man

KurtF

KurtF

Well-known member
Saw Gemini Man last night in the 3D version with high frame rate. They're calling this 3D+. Of the 12 or so theaters in my area, only 2 were playing the high frame rate, and those were only offering it at night (no matinee), and only for two showings each.
The look was different, maybe a bit off putting. I kept thinking I was watching a Telenovella, shot on video. It was incredibly crisp however, with sharp textures, sharp leaves, pitting in stones, small bubbles in water, sparks from gun hits, etc. The color grade was rich and saturated, especially in the Colombian settings.
The 3D sometimes worked really well, as with the dolly scene pushing into the library, which showed lots of depth. Other scenes, most notably closeups, not so much. The character's faces had some depth, but out of focus backgrounds looked like flat, painted drops. Framing that cropped the tops of heads looked a little odd. One close shot of Clive Owen worked really well, and almost looked like his face was pushing out from the screen.
Overall I would say the high frame rate did Not enhance the film. Again, I got that overly staccato, stop motion vibe from most of the scenes. Maybe that's the digital acquisition (Arri Alexa and Phantom Flex), but I don't think so. It looked like a movie shot on video. Even high frame rate acquisition on film, with a physical, rotary shutter, might not have improved the staccato flow of motion.
 
Liam Hall said:
Yeah, same here. Apparently that makes us celluloid snobs.
Click to expand...

I don't think so. I think it makes the people making the HFR films early adopters. They are in about the same space as CDs were when they first came out. Early on, CDs got a bad reputation for sounding harsh. Because they did, even if the early math showed that they shouldn't. But it was early days and people were still figuring out how to make good A2D and D2A conversions (both the algorithms and the hardware) that were leaving small but audible artifacts in both the digital recordings and the analog playback.

Ten years later and CDs sounded pretty good. Today's CDs sound really quite good, because the entire chain, from recorders to players, has improved. A lot.

I'm just saying that just because today's HFR films don't look like what you want doesn't mean that the concept of HFR is doomed. It just means that it's early days. The longer people work at it, the better it will get. If they choose to keep working at it.

There's also the fact that this is a change from what we are used to. We are very used to "what a movie should look like" and with any change the first thing we'll see are the differences. And if we don't like it it will grate on us. Such is life. No surprise there.
 
Coming from a broadcast background, I appreciate "high frame rate" and I think a lot of people dump on it unnecessarily. High frame rate has its place. Just not in "narrative" type content.
 
Bruce Watson said:
I
I'm just saying that just because today's HFR films don't look like what you want doesn't mean that the concept of HFR is doomed. It just means that it's early days. The longer people work at it, the better it will get. If they choose to keep working at it.

There's also the fact that this is a change from what we are used to. We are very used to "what a movie should look like" and with any change the first thing we'll see are the differences. And if we don't like it it will grate on us. Such is life. No surprise there.
Click to expand...

The problem with HFR for narrative is the motion cadence/motion blur. It doesn't matter how long they work at it, it's not gonna change that aspect of it.
 
I’ve worked with high frame rate film projection as well. The complaints are the same. The idea of “organic” or “rounded shutter” or anything else disappears into all that information blasting at you at 60fps or 120fps. Doug Trumbull’s system is better and more comfortable to watch, but high frame rate projection is hfrp and there’s no getting around what is in fact the point of it. Love it or don’t.
 
A better test audience would be showing HFR and 24p to say a third world country of adults who have never watched film or video before. Then let them decide what looks better without having been influenced by growing up watching 24p films.

If they decide they like HFR better, then clearly the only way to eliminate the bias and start producing HFR content without complaint would be to purge the audience of film-goers who have previously witnessed 24p. Fortunately, and I say this publicly here and now, I have never watched 24p video in my life and have only witnessed HFR video, and it looks great!
 
Ok, but I assume you’ve seen a movie sometime in your life, which means you’ve seen 24p.

There’s no such thing as “better” in this case, only different. High frame rate capture and projection is more technically accurate to what we see as humans in the natural world, but technical accuracy is not the only measure of quality. Color isn’t “better” than black & white.
 
An interesting phenomenon I discovered when writing video games / simulations: if the physics update rate is 60Hz, and the game/simulation slows down so that even one frame is effectively dropped, it's very noticeable. In the days of cartridges and optical discs (no downloadable updates), a single frame drop failed QA and the game couldn't ship.

Interestingly, when I ran the simulation at 100Hz, with a monitor refresh rate of 60Hz, the simulation could slow down quite a bit (even well below 60fps), and it wasn't as noticeable. The game/simulation was obviously running slower, however it wasn't jittery or jarring (in film language judder might make sense).

24 vs. HFR preference has to do with upbringing and experience, maybe related to this: https://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/capsules/experience_rouge05.html . Perhaps those who played a lot of video games when young (60Hz) are more open to HFR film. Another aspect is 24fps keeps the mind firmly on the 'left side' of Uncanny Valley. Perhaps an improvement is to perform temporal anti-aliasing (randomly vary the frame timing slightly at playback), or maybe we need 2400+Hz to move all the way to the 'right side' of Uncanny Valley. We don't need to film at that rate, AI re-timing can provide ultra high playback rates as hardware continues to get faster.

With ultra-high frame rate playback, it's possible to vary the effective frame rate during playback, which could be an interesting effect coupled with story (somewhat possible already with 60fps playback and using 24 and 48fps drop-framed into the 60fps sequences (have tested this). With appropriate interpolation and blurring, somewhat smooth variable frame rates are possible too).
 
Last edited:
I shot 60p for work 5days a week. Then one day i went to shoot 24p.... it looked awful.

All frame rates are welcome, and JCS’s idea of variable frame rates is probably the best future for the art.
 
This debate always seems to come up.

Anyone that suggests that they don't like HFR is often called a troglodyte purist snob, usually by the same resolution evangelists that like to chase specs and would argue why 8K is better than 4K...cause it's more so it must be better right ?

I think games and HFR gaming and cut scenes have been with us for DECADES now. If it was going to take it would have. It hasn't. Audiences just do not like narrative drama in HFR.

I happen to think that there's a sweet spot for frame rates for drama. There's a certain threshold where the individual frames become "continuous", the lower level of the perception of motion. I think that there's an upper threshold too, beyond which the perception of that motion changes for many people.

What's weird is no one really even physiologically understands why we can even perceive motion from still frames. It's not persistence of vision, though the idea of an after image probably contributes. We don't even know if it's anatomical (something to do with eye physiology) or in the way the brain processes flickering images. We don't even understand it the basic science of why we can see moving pictures.

Just like that no matter how much we know it's rude and we really try not to do it, you can't help but watch a TV that's on in the background past someone in the pub.

Maybe it's like the fundamental issue face all the time in animation, the Uncanny Valley where the more human or closer to human something is, the more uncomfortable we become. "The uncanny valley hypothesis predicts that an entity appearing almost human will risk eliciting cold, eerie feelings in viewers"

I've always thought of cinema as a form of hypnosis. You go into a dark room, all other sensory input is turned down and you focus on a bright flickering object and immerse yourself. When it works you don't notice your environment, the exit signs and the popcorn detritus, you're just "IN" the movie unaware of the passage of time and along for the ride.

Perhaps HFR messes with the hypnotic effect of cinema at 24 FPS. You can still intellectually watch something, but it doesn't trigger the same deeper more altered way of watching.

I saw Gemini Man in HFR and 3D.

What I noticed was the background actors more than I've ever noticed before. How bad background actors can be.

I noticed how "real" everything looked, and honestly, I don't think we want real. We want escape, we want an alternative reality. We go to the movies to escape the real world, not to have a super enhanced version of it. I think this is why we don't like HFR in narrative drama.

I mean it felt like I really was there, in that set with Will talking like I was there while the film was being made.

I was outside of the narrative, not inside it.

I've read and heard that "action" scenes are the most HFR satisfying, but I honestly don't get that logic either.

I don't think this would be a great film even if it wasn't for HFR and 3D. I didn't feel like HFR (or 3D) added much to the experience of watching this movie and actually, I found it more distracting. I willed myself to be open and to accept it but I just kept popping out of the movie to notice it's artiface , much more than I normally would.

I can't see HFR working for narrative. I think it's beyond cultural memories, or else the gamer generation that have already grown up consuming HFR would be reacting more positively to this kind of story telling.

JB

*OH. One more thing....

Though most narrative drama is photographed at 24 FPS, it's very rare that you see it projected at that actual frame rate.

In film days a three bladed shutter on the projector meant the refresh rate on the cinema screen was 72Hz (for 24 fps material) and modern digital projectors are also screening at even higher refresh rates, typically above 120Hz.

So 24 FPS originated material is often flashed at much higher frame rates than what's inferred by the "24" number.
 
Last edited:
I think JB has hit the nail on the head. The hyperealism of HFR seems to work for gaming perhaps because of the direct engagement a gamer has. They’re IN the game. A film is a different experience, it’s a passive experience, and there seems to be a need to take some of that immediacy away for an engaging experience.
 
24p material projected as 72 via three-bladed shutters is very different from 72p material presented at 72p. In fact anyone who worked early HDTV 24p knows that viewing true 24p with 24p shutter is terribly flickery. Through most of the worls 25p video is shown spread across 50hz transmission using 50i where every other line is shown in succession. In the US and a few other territories it's 24p shown across 60hz using a 3:2 pulldown. Yet it still looks like 24p because there is only so much new information being delivered to the brain as opposed to repeating information. So 24p originated material shown next to 60p originated material and both displayed at 60p look very different.

The idea of utilizing HFR projection to present variable frame rate originated content for creative purposed is very much the work that Doug Trumbull has been developing for some time. I agree that it is the most interesting use of the technology. Way back in the early 80s, Doug wanted to shoot the movie Brainstor using his Showscan process in 70mm 60p. The Brainstorm VR sequences would be shot in 70mm 60p and the conventional material would be 70mm 24p with a 3:2 reverse-pulldown utilized so that the material would play at proper speed in the 70mm 60p projection. While the tests were REALLY impressive, in the end the studio deemed it too expensive to install Showscan projectors across the country (and later the world) so Doug instead shot everything at 24p, with the Brainstorm sequences in 70mm (mostly with a near-fisheye 24mm lens) and the conventional scenes in 35mm 1.85 with black borders printed on the sides. The difference was still quite dramatic and effective but nowhere near as impactful as the original concept.

Still, and to the point, even Doug realized that shooting the entire film in Showscan would not have been the best choice artistically.
 
What I don't get is when people compare HFR to theater plays in a negative manner. Personally, the idea of seeing a theater play that has epic battles, explosions, realistic looking dragons, A-list Hollywood actors, is kind of cool to me.

I mean, just imagine being able to see the play Cats, in HFR 3D, but with CGI faces instead of makeup, and the results could be extraordinary.
 
We still know very little about how the eye and brain processes visual information, so we're still shooting in the dark in terms of why we tend to prefer 24p over 60p. That 24p displayed at 60p using pulldown still feels like film tells me that it's how motion is rendered, not the particular frame rate in and of itself that is at the root of it. If you showed someone the same, completely still image filmed at 24p or 60p, it would likely feel exactly the same. Or would it? Maybe someone should do a study of this, with brains being scanned as they look at sill images of different frame rates to see if there's any change in brain activity, to see if the actual display hertz itself is a contributing factor.
 
Our brain and visual system is really pretty damn amazing, especially when you consider how poor our actual eyes are. The image formed in them is upside down and we have a huge hole in the central part of our vision and our brain still puts it all together and makes it work. I think we see somewhere between 60 and 24 and at times our "frame rate" changes/ramps depending on what's going on. We've all heard stories and probably experienced it ourselves, where something dramatic happens(say a wreck) and people say it happened in slow motion. I've seen where they've done studies and subjected people to dramatic/frightening events and their brains kicked into overdrive and were able to process the information faster than normal essentially making time slow down/seeing things in slow motion. There are theories that this goes on with a lot of athletes during plays, as well, and that's how they are able to do some of the incredible things that they do. I've also had the perception, at times, where my real-time "frame rate" increased in really bright environments/looking at something very bright, almost like going from 24 or 30 to 60.
 
Bruce Watson said:
I don't think so. I think it makes the people making the HFR films early adopters. They are in about the same space as CDs were when they first came out. Early on, CDs got a bad reputation for sounding harsh. Because they did, even if the early math showed that they shouldn't. But it was early days and people were still figuring out how to make good A2D and D2A conversions (both the algorithms and the hardware) that were leaving small but audible artifacts in both the digital recordings and the analog playback.

Ten years later and CDs sounded pretty good. Today's CDs sound really quite good, because the entire chain, from recorders to players, has improved. A lot.

I'm just saying that just because today's HFR films don't look like what you want doesn't mean that the concept of HFR is doomed. It just means that it's early days. The longer people work at it, the better it will get. If they choose to keep working at it.

There's also the fact that this is a change from what we are used to. We are very used to "what a movie should look like" and with any change the first thing we'll see are the differences. And if we don't like it it will grate on us. Such is life. No surprise there.
Click to expand...

They've been doing it for years, though, and the reaction is always the same. It was so with The Hobbit, etc.

It's not like people haven't spent their whole lives watching HFR. They see 60 fps stuff all the time and grew up with it on TV. There's nothing new about it. We're just as "used to" 60 fps as we are to 24 fps.

We simply have preferences for when those frame rates are used, and prefer slower frame rates for movies, probably because it doesn't look live and looks more fictional, like the story is supposed to be. I don't know how many times HFR has to be tried and get the same reaction for that to become clear.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top