When Peter Jackson first premiered footage of Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring that featured the fellowship fighting a cave troll, many viewers were ecstatic. Many praised the sneak peek and thanked Peter Jackson for bringing the world of Tolkien’s book to life.

Fast forward over a decade later. Peter Jackson premiered 10 minutes of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey to the CinemaCon audience yesterday in Las Vegas with mixed reactions. Aww, that makes me a sad panda.

So why the negative feedback? Because Peter Jackson is shooting the film in 48 frames per second. Tradition film shoots in 24 frames per second, giving us that film look and movement. Now with it being shot in 48 FPS, the movie gets more detailed and the movement feels like you’re watching movies with motion interpolation at a Best Buy store.

“It looked like a made-for-TV movie,” said one projectionist, who requested anonymity because of his affiliation with a competing studio. “It was too accurate — too clear. The contrast ratio isn’t there yet — everything looked either too bright or black.”

Here’s Bad Ass Digest’s comment:

“…it has that soap opera look you get from badly calibrated TVs at Best Buy. The footage I saw looked terrible … completely non-cinematic. The sets looked like sets … sets don’t even look like sets when you’re on them live, but these looked like sets. The magical illusion of cinema is stripped away completely.”

So apparently the film is looking too real. It’s so real that we’re disgusted by the details on an actors face and the set. I can kind of understand why they would say this. If something is too detailed, we’ll be able to notice that it’s a set, or if an actor is wearing makeup. My solution? Watch The Hobbit on your smartphone.

I originally thought that using 48 frames per second would help with the problem of 3D movies looking dimmer because a person had to wear 3D glasses. But now we’re faced with another problem. Let’s hope that Peter Jackson and the crew realize this and figure out a way to combat this.

Source: LA Times

John “Spartan” Nguyen

John “Spartan” Nguyen is the editor-in-chief at Nerd Reactor and is based in Orange County, CA. He is a graphic designer and illustrator.

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