collider.com: High Frame Rate is just one of many technological innovations the medium of cinema has explored thus far in its lifetime. Color and sound revolutionized the making of movies in the 1920s and 1930s, while advancements in digital technology in the 1990s ensured that the wildest bursts of imagination from the world’s most beloved filmmakers could finally be realized.
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This is such an interesting article. Couple years ago, people were still talking about the animation industry producing work that are full of flaws and things that being produced are not realistic while now we talk about how the technique that we have make films too perfect that it seems to be unrealistic. This made me think about if it could be used in situations where the producer wishes to purposefully make the picture look unrealistic to benefit the production and enhance audience’s interpretation in a particular scene. One of the examples that I thought about it could be the zima blue where in the end it seems to be hyper realistic to an extent that it is no longer realistic. In this situation, by using such technique it allows the audience to see it as a realistic story while seeing the fictional part to enhance the meaning and the information told in this story.
Technology is changing every day and there are always new advancements in the world and especially in our ever-changing industry. However, sometimes technological advancements are not for the best. Sometimes, things are fine just the way they are and don’t need to be changed or improved. It seems like high frame rates and new recording technology associated with it is a perfect example of this. An extremely high frame rate is, put simply, just not needed. The same quality of “realness” can be achieved with a lower frame rate that is not only cheaper and well tested but also what our eyes have gotten used to. Simply increasing the frame rate doesn’t improve anything that needs to be improved and only serves to create video that our eyes interpret as having an “off” quality about it. I do think that improving technology is a good thing and that new technology that changes our industry will continue to be developed but this is an example of one time that an “improvement” didn’t work.
To be honest, I didn’t really notice anything particularly off when I watched ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’. In some scenes, especially the ones with combat, I agree that some actions appeared fast-forwarded as if I was being pushed along. But I thought it was partially because I watched it in IMAX. Although this article poses an interesting perspective and discussion, I still don’t quite understand its argument. I understand the difference between the various FPS and how they work, but I don’t really see the experience the author is trying to describe. Regardless, I remember when Ang Lee’s ‘Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk’ first came out and my family tried to watch it in the cinema. We wanted to see it as it was shot – with 120 frames per second, but there weren’t any cinemas near us that had projectors with that function. The only one we found was a cinema in Shanghai when we were travelling. In other words, the movie won’t be able to be played at that frame rate despite the amount of technology that was used in the production phase, unless the cinemas are also equipped with matching devices.
Before reading this article I didn’t really know about frame rate and how it affects our perception of the movie. I agree with the author that it doesn’t really belong in narrative movies but I’d love to see a documentary with a high frame rate. While I haven’t seen the newest Avatar movie I’m going to look up some clips after this to see how the flipping of different frame rates can be disorienting. I’d love to play with this effect practically (if I can get the equipment of course) - and see how it can be implemented. I’ve seen some videos in different frame rates and there is certainly some difference - but I agree that high frame rate for a prolonged amount of time can cause a headache. The intricacies of this are still lost on me to some degree but it was interesting to learn more about film making and frame rate.
I hadn’t really heard of high frame rate or what it does for movies before. I can understand why artists may choose to have this many frames per second, I can especially see its potential for video games as many are typically faster-paced than a movie. I think it is cool that the article mentioned how in one of the Spider-Man movies, they actually took advantage of this and used less frames per second to create an older look. I will say that after having seen the new Avatar, I personally didn’t notice the effects caused by the high frame rate – maybe that is the point, but I guess I didn’t think that it looked “weird” or anything like that as the article mentioned it may look off. In other films mentioned I did kind of get what they meant by looking off. I also found it interesting how having brighter lighting can assist in capturing films at a higher frame rate!
As someone who almost made the choice to go into the actual filming and editing of films instead of theater this article is extremely interesting to me. I really agree with the author in really everything that they said in this article. I was in charge of filming and editing videos and school shows all four years of high school and I can say that the frame rates that you use when making a video of any kind can make or break it. The higher you go with frame rate the more off putting the footage can be depending on what you are filming. And it is not something that only film makers can see, almost any audience can watch a film and tell that something is different if what they are watching is not in the standard 24 frames per second frame rate, especially if it is 60 or even 120 frames per second. I think that it is so interesting and amazing that something that many people think is so small can change the entire viewing experience of a film.
When Way of Water came out, one of my favorite content creators spoke about the changing frame rate in the movie and how distracting it was. In the movie, the frame rate was continuously changing, and that’s not trivial to the viewer. I really don’t know why they decided to make that choice, whereas in Spider-Verse, the frame rate changes were always intentional and specific. That movie is an artistic masterpiece, by the way, and the frame rate decisions contributed to that. In reference to video games usually having higher frame rates, he also mentioned – which I found particularly funny – that the scene in the movie of a train being derailed looked like a video game cutscene. He referred to the movie as basically the world’s most expensive cutscene. I agree with the stance that 48 should probably be removed from narrative films; 24 has objectively proven itself as the proper frame rate to make, as the article says, “unreal movie images seem real,” and messing with that balance distracts from the entire purpose of a narrative film.
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