Do movies have to be 24 frames a second?

please watch in 1080P 60 FPS so you can experience the examples I'll be showing have you ever been over at someone's house watching a movie and thought that looks way too smooth it almost looks like sports but it's not Sports it looks weird and I don't think I like it it's clear that every Trend in modern video technology from motion smoothing being the default on many Smart TVs to higher frame rate demands being put on digital cameras that manufacturers are trying to push us towards a higher frame rate experience today every new TV sold has at least a 60 HZ refresh rate meaning it can allow for a playback of up to 60 frames a second every new computer monitor has at least a 60 HZ refresh rate and many Aid Gamers will tell you that anything less than 144 HZ is useless to them and all video cameras including the one we have on us at all times can support recording of at least 60 frames a second so why a movies still all always filmed at 24 frames a second well the short answer is because that's what movies have always looked like and that's one of the things we like about how they've always looked the longer answer gets a bit more interesting one of the reasons this topic has always fascinated me is because in Australia and Europe we film our content at 25 frames a second and that single frame of difference might not seem like a lot in fact it's imperceptible to the human eye but I've had filmmakers say that they would rather shoot in 24 than 25 because 24 just feels more cinematic but forget 24 25 60 frames here's a really anecdotal example of how you've probably experienced High frame rate without even knowing it if you've ever walked through a TV demonstration area you'll see that they're always playing Nature Documentaries or sports with silky smooth action and almost no motion blow to be seen that's achieved by either filming at a high frame rate or using something called interpolation or motion smoothing to make a picture seem like it's smoother we' like a moment of your time to talk to you about video interpolation video interpolation or motion smoothing is a digital effect on most highdef televisions and is intended to reduce motion blur in sporting events and other highdef program the unfortunate side effect is that it makes most movies look like they were shot on high-speed video rather than film this is sometimes referred to as the soap opera effect that's one of the reasons if you've ever watched a movie on a brand new smart TV it looks a little bit like mush because the TV is trying to make a 24 frames image look like a 60 frames image that silky smooth action and that lack of motion blur are parts of the reason why this has always felt so in congruous to film making but does it have to over the last 15 years some of the most ambitious filmmakers in the world have attempted feature film making with higher frame rates and with one massive exception all of them have failed why to start off with let's see how we got here how did 24 or 25 become the standard for film making can high frame rate have a future Beyond it and can it be cinematic so let's go back to the beginning the very beginning welcome to the early 1900s an industry known as film making is swiftly turning from experiment to art form Australia has made the world's first ever Motion Picture feature film with the story of the Kelly gang in 1906 Alise sky blasher has become the first ever female director and will make the first film with an all black cast in 1912 a fo in his money a year earlier DW Griffith and his cinematographer GW bitzer create the first ever closeup in the Londale operator in this scene where a woman uses a gun to scare two thieves only to reveal she was actually holding a wrench all cameras for all projects at this time were hand cranked by the operator for the effective Motion Pictures to work on our eyes a frame rate of at least 14 frames is needed but because film was expensive it was frowned upon for you to crank too fast so a typical speed was between 14 to 16 frames this is how fast you had to crank these cameras now it's important to know that these weren't long films Kelly gang upon its release was 60 minutes which made it the longest film in the world at that point a fool in his money is only 10 minutes and the Londale operator is just under 17 minutes despite how short they were projectionists who also had to hand crank their projectors would often crank them faster than 16 frames because the faster the film played the quicker they could finish and get a new audience in film Mak was so knew and the fantasy of it was so divorced from anything approaching reality that no one really mind it this is a big reason the most popular films of the silent era that have lasted are comedies there's something just inherently funny about people in motion moving fast Benny Hill knew it and Charlie Chaplain and Buster ke and sha knew it too so films were between 14 to 16 frames for about three decades until somebody had a really crazy idea about what films were lacking [Music] in 1925 Four Brothers have started a movie company together and it's not exactly going well they've lost around $300,000 after getting a huge loan from Goldman Sachs one of the brothers Sam manages to convince the oldest brother Harry that they should put sound into movies and out of desperation they sign a contract with Western electric and invent what is called visaphone now getting sounded to movies is not as easy as you'd think up to this point you'd have maybe a record player hooked up to some speakers or maybe an organ player at the front of the theater and if you were lucky whatever this guy is playing hit it [Music] Joe if any of you have ever had to manually sync footage with audio now imagine that the frame rate of your footage is manually determined by a guy with a crank and your audio is recorded onto discs that have to move at a certain speed so they don't distort there was a lot of setbacks and headaches but Engineers finally managed to get a 16in disc rotating at 33 and A3 RPM allowing 11 minutes of audio to match a standard 1000t reel of film when it was projected at 24 frames a second and so in 1927 for the first time ever someone in movies spoke wait a minute you ain't heard nothing yet wait a minute I said you you ain't heard nothing you want to hear all right hold on hold on The Jazz Singer broke all box office records at the time and it made the four Warner Brothers and their Studio a major player in Hollywood so yes the reason we film moving images at 24 FPS is ironically because of sound hilariously if the Warner Brothers hadn't been the first we could easily have been working with 20 1.33 FPS or 22.66% first televisions ran on cathode ray tubes the displays needed to match with the alternating current frequencies of the power source the problem is that in the US that frequency is 60 HZ and in Europe and Australia it is 50 HZ so now 24 frames is basically not practical American TV gets 24 to 30 frames using interlacing and Australian and European TV is 25 frames a second now television also brought challenges for mixing broadcast frame rates if you've watched television show from the 70s ' 80s and '90s you pretty much know the difference in your gut between the studio film scenes using broadcast video often at a higher frame rate like you see here with Doctor Who versus the scene shot on film at external locations where the studio cameras wouldn't be usable and of course this is a cost-saving move it's cheaper to take a film camera outside than a heavy broadcast setup and it's cheaper to use broadcast video than it is to shoot and process the entire show on film but since 2009 and there's been an evaporation of Film Production and processing it's now incredibly difficult if you live outside of the US to make feature films actually shot on film digital has truly taken over nearly all professional film Productions and the challenge seems to be who can create the most filmic imagery using digital technology but we're still using 24 as the standard which is interesting because For the First Time in 100 years you can shoot pretty much any frame rate you want depending on the effect you're after and most devices on Earth will be able to view it the most common reason you see people filming with high frame rates today is for slow motion anything above 30 FPS played back at 24 or 25 reads to our eyes as slower the more frames the slower it gets but what we're looking to find out is if there's a way to get audiences comfortable with viewing High frame rate speeds not stretched out for slow motion but played at their native speed for the entire movie 15 years ago as he was preparing to film The Hobbit trilogy with the studio that had made 24 frames the standard Peter Jackson instead opted to use 48 frames a second double what we are used to seeing but Jackson was not the first filmmaker to try and make a high frame rate movie in fact back in the late '70s Douglas Trumble who was the VFX magician behind Blade Runner 2001 and close encounters pioneered a technology called show scan that could film at 60 frames a second he intended to film 1983's brainstorm using show scan but sadly for Trumble this film turned out to be a little bit cursed first MGM had financial trouble then Natalie Wood Andis for walking were difficult and even got drunk on set while filming a scene then MGM said we don't want this 60 frames nonsense give us a regular movie and then a month before rap Natalie Wood drowned in what were accidental and completely non-suspicious circumstances Trumble show tests of show scan for audiences and fellow filmmakers who were Amazed by it it was uh astounding to see the kind of depth and dynamism that uh that came from it at this point I know of nothing else that is as exciting as inventive and is creatively stimulating as showan what seems a reasonable cost the conversion cost of the of the cinema as less than I imagined it was going to be and what is also good is the fact that they can convert back again but Trumble never got to shoot brainstorm in 60 frames a second and the experience made him quit directing movies altogether YouTuber Brian berer has done an amazing job at restoring the intended effect for a few showcase scenes [Music] [Music] Peter Jackson then had his crack with The Hobbit and making audiences fall in love with 48 fps kicking off a trend of filmmakers using frame rates in combination with 3D we're shooting The Hobbit at a higher frame rate at 48 frames per second which is twice the normal 24 frames the human eye sees 60 frames a second so 48 frames is more of a natural progression toward giving the the viewer what they would actually see in the real world the people who have seen scenes of The Hobbit at 48 frames a second often say that it's like the the back of the cinema has had a hole cut out of it where the screen is and you're actually looking into the real world the first screenings for The Hobbit had interesting results the Lord of the Rings I think most people will agree is one of the most beautifully filmed Series in Adventure movie history there are so many compositions lighting choices camera movements and creative practical effect shots that are all motivated by the story meanwhile The Hobbit is in 48 frames because Peter Jackson and cinematographer Andrew lesny wanted to make the films feel smoother and more realistic especially for audiences seeing them in 3D and the result is movies that on any metric should look better than films made 10 years prior now by the same team with more than double the budget somehow have made movies that look worse not only do they not look better many people pointed out that at a higher frame rate the association with familiar imagery like the hobbits the Shire and rivendel made the difference feel more in congruous it's almost like an uncanny valley effect of something trying to look like Lord of the Rings but just feeling like an odd mixture of anation and soap opera David Jermaine riding for the Florida Times Union put it bluntly at 48 frames the film is more true to life sometimes feeling so intimate it's like watching live theater that closer perspective also brings out the fakery of movies sets and props look like phony stage trappings at times the crystal pictures bleaching away the painterly quality of traditional film Jackson and his team attempted to finesse the high frame rate experience over the next two films but universally audiences and critics pretty much despised it how do you feel now about the whole High frame rate I mean I don't know if you call it an experiment and do you think you'll continue working in in that format the way that I always answered that question because it's a very fair question is that to say that a 100 years ago you know movies were black and white they were silent they were 16 frames a second okay and so 100 years from now what are they going to be I I I mean I don't know and we and you know we just do not know what form films are going to be in 100 years time but but I think you can absolutely guarantee they're not going to be 24 frames a second and they're not going to be 2D so at what point between now and and 100 years do these advances actually happened Jackson's next major release the Mortal engines was released Instead at 24 frames a second audiences who saw The Hobbit in high frame rate and Standard 24 almost universally claimed that they connected more with the characters and the world when watching at regular speed as well as enjoying more of the action Peter Jackson pushed the limits farther than anyone had at that point and almost everyone rejected the possibility of it being the future of Cinema but then comes along one of the greatest filmmakers alive Jake uh you said I was quiet and modest in Brokeback Mountain it's not because of wisdom it's because I was so tired I was like half asleep when I direct that movie a man who in order directed an Oscar nominated comedic drama in his na of Taiwan before making a Jane Austin adaptation that grossed $130 million an R-rated sexual Revolution drama featuring Spiderman Frodo Ripley and Wednesday Adams a Weston starring Spider-Man and folk pop singer Jewel a wfu martial arts action epic that won best foreign film a movie about The Incredible Hulk defeating his greatest enemy childhood trauma which he then follows up with modern Cinema's greatest romantic drama about men falling in love that isn't ruined by one of them being Army Hammer we're going to talk about Ang Lee Ang Lee is not talked about in the same way that James Cameron or Christopher Nolan are talked about but he is arguably gone further than both of them in attempting to redefine what a movie can look and feel like in 2009 James Cameron attempted a full 3D release for a giant science fiction action movie that could easily play overseas and wow a global audience through the last 10 years Christopher Nolan has attempted to both film and release more of his movies in the native IMAX 1570 format and his film have all been giant Blockbusters or at the very least spectacular visual experiences and audio that deserve to be seen and heard in IMAX but in 2016 Ang Lee said I'm making an Iraq war PTSD drama set during a real 2004 Thanksgiving football game where Destiny's Child performed and I'm going to shoot the entire thing in 3D 4K at 120 frames per second that film was Billy Lynn's long halftime walk when Avatar released in 2009 the amount of 3D theaters in the world that could play it was around 1,700 about half of the 3500 it would play on during its incredible 34- we run in 2016 the amount of screens Billy link could play on in its intended 3D 4K 120 frames a second was five not five theaters five screens in the entire world and for home video releases all versions except the 3D Blu-ray are 24 frames a second which begs the question why would Ang do this I don't want people to tell me 24 frame is where it should stop The Godfather is where film history should stop let reach the limit of what human can do I just don't want to hear that I want to have my contribution my discoveries 120 is not even a lot compared to life so we still have a long way to go in terms of lifik now to be fair Billy Lyn is a $40 million drama that made about the same at the box office so it's not like there was a huge expectation for the film to perform like there was with Avatar or Interstellar but it is interesting to look at Billy Lynn as a kind of Milestone example of what high frame rate does well and maybe doesn't do well now keep in mind I have seen Billy Lynn on home release at 24 frames a second I have been able to watch parts of it online at 60 frames a second I have never seen the 3D 4K 120 frames version because basically nobody has the only way you can even watch bilin in a high frame rate on home viewing is if you buy the 3D Blu-ray first the good every single practical effect whether it be fireworks smoke dust or explosions feels visceral in a way that you've rarely felt in a movie before the movement is incredibly sharp and you can forget you're watching actors especially when the movement of the camera is also motivated by them there is a huge immersive quality when everything is practical and believable from the art direction to the behavior and now we got to talk about the bad anytime someone speaks with their mouth visible it feels weirdly out of sync you think I'm going to fight the Americans with a pistol hey and these papers he was a colonel in the military these are his personal things his memories movement motivated by the camera and not the characters is extremely distracting when the intensity dip action can feel slow and sloppy and lastly any use of CGI looks bad even basic green [Music] screen taking all of that into consideration it's time to talk about angle's next movie Gemini man like Billy Lynn Angley chose to film at 4K 120 frames a second in 3D but unlike Billy Lynn more screens could now support it in fact instead of five a whole 14 screens in the world could show G man as it was intended and it's at this point in the video where I'm proud to share that I am one of the lucky few who was able to see Gemini man at 2K 60 frames a second about half of what Angley intended or quarter if you consider that I was also meant to see in 3d but oh my God I can't imagine watching Gemini man in 3D this movie is insane everything we talked about in Billy Lynn that works effects being practical a real focus on believable movement minimal CGI all of this Gemini man does was worse Gemini man was released 3 years after Billy Lynn and it looks and feels 10 years older everything about the way the film be Haze as an action movie feels off it might have helped if this was a John Wick style Showcase of stunt performers and actors able to do physical action with them but because Will Smith is playing the lead role and a CGI double of himself almost all the action between them involves digital doubles that stand out as incredibly distracting and the worst part is that unlike Billy Lynn this is a Will Smith action film that cost $140 million every single person going to this movie knows what Will Smith looks like knows how he punches knows how he looks shooting a gun and how his face moves and this film truly embodies The Uncanny Valley in a way you can only appreciate by watching it as intended they could clone a person you think they'd clone more doctors or scientists not me I could have Clon Nelson Mandela Nelson Mandela couldn't kill a man on a moving train from 2 K away there are parts of this movie that feel like arcade games I used to play before seeing a movie but there are still parts of it that look and feel incredible the opening fight before CGI Will Smith is revealed is actually quite effective and this practical Courtyard explosion feels visceral and Powerful some of the bike action is incredible until it descends into CGI soup Gemini man cost an absolute fortune and it flopped badly Angley has not made a movie in 5 years and it will be interesting to see if he continues making films at a higher frame rate or if he goes back to Standard 24 for his next film but from Peter Jackson and angle's massive gambles on high frame rate we can clearly see what the issues with the format are action being either too smooth or lacking in threat issues with actors performing dialogue that feels floaty and not connected to their voices familiar imagery making us notice differences that affect our opinion of the quality of the film movement of both the ACT and Camera feeling too alien or unnatural especially if they're disconnected but sadly there's just not a more technically obsessive filmmaker who's willing to invest the time or effort into solving these issues so I guess High frame rate is just going to wait is that theion no buet too steep no se too deep who's that it's him James Cameron in the leadup to Avatar 2 James Cameron made it clear that he was dead set on filming at a higher frame rate well I think we're either going to go 48 or 60 48 for 60 for Avatar or you just the standard we we haven't uh we haven't decided yet and and I want I want Buy in from other filmmakers from the exhibition Community what the best answer is you know we did this big frame rate demonstration and we showed 48 and 60 they're both highly Superior to 24 what I think is clear is we've got to get off 24 whether we land on 48 or go all the way to 60 that's what we're in discussion of right now but when Avatar 2 rolled out a full 11 years after that interview an interesting thing happened if you're watching Avatar 2 at home there is no high frame rate the movie is entirely 24 frames a second but if you went to see the movie in 3D there are moments where the film changes into beautiful Crystal Clear 48 frames a second but here's where we get to one of the biggest issues of modern Cinema amazing imaging technology is used but there's no clear separation of those parts from other parts of the film there are moments in Avatar where shot a will be 24 frames shot B will be 48 and then shot c will be 24 again this is because Cameron and his team found that having high frame rate in specific shots reduce the amount of people experiencing motion sickness while watching 3D we tried to decide how to apply it and the rule was whenever they're underwater it's 48 frames boom just don't even think about it some of the flying scenes some of the broad Vistas benefit from 48 frames if it's just people sitting around talking or or you know walking talking whatever relatively slowly evolving images it's not necessary in fact it's actually sometimes even counterproductive because it looks a little too glassy smooth right it feels similar to how Christopher Nolan will intercut IMAX 1570 with Panavision 570 film and how you see the screen going from a square to a letter box right in the middle of a conversation you're trying to follow Avatar is like this except it's during the middle of a fist fight or a train exploding or a scene meant to remind you that you're watching an indigenous genocide I'm not going to lie I found this extremely distracting the first time I saw the movie the second time I appreciated it a lot more I do wish that beside the opening scene we wouldn't have experienced High frame rate again until they dropped into the water for the first time I honestly believe that for a whole generation of audience members who had never seen images like this it would have felt like the transition to color in The Wizard of Oz now keep in mind this is all only for the 3D versions of Avatar 2 the home releases all at 24 frames a second the underwater scenes in Avatar 2 were graft taking in high frame rate and I did miss them when I watched the way of water at home so why did Cameron do this why spend a huge amount of Technical Resources and budget to film at 48 frames render everything at 48 frames finish everything at 48 and then convert everything back to 24 when it comes to the home release the one thing I will say pretty definitively 48 frames doesn't benefit a 2d movie very much if at all it's really about making a better experience in 3D because people used to complain about 3D oh I don't like 3D it gives me a headache well why well you drill down on it this is why it's that it's that strobing the 48 takes that out I also think that after seeing Angley and Peter Jackson get significant backlash for how the high frame rate affected both critics and audien's enjoyment of the films he may have thought of it as less of a selling point however there's an interesting opportunity that Cameron may be able to attempt he has three more Avatar movies coming out there five five he has five more avvatar movies coming out if he wanted to he could subtly increase the ratio of high frame rate footage across the 3D journey of those movies which would probably be one of the only ways to get a mass audience on board with high frame rate as a concept regardless I think Avatar the way of water is the best experience of high frame rate that I've seen so far but it's not perfect and I think it's a bit of a shame that filmmakers are using High frame rate to support a 3D workflow instead of what I see is the more interesting appeal of it as its own format in two dimensions I don't see it as a a format it's not a format like 70 mm it's a tool it's an authoring tool so what can we learn from other mediums of Storytelling in how they use this technology modern video games are expected to perform at a minimum of 60 frames a second and most Gamers push them much higher there's an endless content stream of Gamers flexing maximum specs the highest refresh rate and frame rates that honestly might be unnecessary there is a clear Advantage for gamers that play multiplayer to having the extra perceptional advantage of clearer motion and smoother action but interestingly there's a group of people who do not seem to enjoy higher frame rates in gaming and that's game developers when it comes to cutscenes huge technical games that proudly show off their graphical Fidelity will cap their cut scenes at 30 frames a second which is close enough to 24 or 25 that it basically reads like a movie and that's the point these developers have the option to render cut scenes at 60 frames per second and some choose to but the vast majority don't this tells you a lot about what some of the most talented cinematic designers in the world think about high frame rate storytelling then again it does also possibly have something to do with gameplay being an experience where you control the camera and where it goes that disconnection is smoothed over by you being a part of the player experience blur Studios who have done High frame rate tests with Douglas Trumble in the past are also the studio behind many of the best video game cinematics and love death robots and it's fascinating that I have not seen a single episode of Love death robot Bots or a video game cinematic they've done above 30 frames a second but now to the polar opposite of the frame rate experience Sports as we said at the start the biggest proponent of high frame rates both in television and Camera manufacturing as well as user experience and features are sports most live broadcasts are able to support a maximum of 60 frames a second in fact this mix of high frame rate has created some interesting challenges for filmmakers when it comes to using Sports footage and storytelling a show that does use high frame rate mixed with 24 frames a second incredibly well is drive to survive the show will often interchange between sports footage at high frame rate with dramatic dash cam footage at around 30 FPS or professional cameras at 24 or 25 and it never once takes me out of the experience which leads to the most obvious use of high frame rate for filmmakers today if you're like me and love to watch travel films on YouTube you probably know the filmmakers Jacob and Katie Schwarz about 6 years ago I came across this video they filmed in Morocco is this not incredible does this not feel immersive do you not genuinely feel like you know more of the texture vibrancy and movement of this place than you may have at a standard frame rate to me this evokes the work of Ron Frick or the que of squaty Trilogy the space that high frame rate is absolutely destined to become a tool for Creative filmmakers to use on a massive scale are documentaries now I think it's worth flagging that Jacob and Katie have avoided a few of the pitfalls that Jackson and Lee fell into the biggest one being that we don't see people talking we barely even see faces the motion is always smooth and motivated by the people in the scene which brings us to a place where I absolutely feel high frame rate should be used why is planet Earth season 3 not in 60 frames a second and more importantly why isn't it streaming anywhere in Australia currently come on BBC the ability to see the world differently is what this technology was made for last year we saw viral videos of audiences reacting to Darren aronowski 18K 60 frames per second documentary postcard from Earth as their cameras flew across the mountains and showed the audience the world in a way they'd never seen before but at the end of the day why is this important movies aren't going to get much bigger in terms of size or resolution than Christopher Nolan film on IMAX they aren't going to get more dimensional than James Cameron single-handedly carrying 3D with Avatar they do however have the potential to become clearer and closer to the ways we actually see the world but I don't think that's necessarily what we want when we see movies despite living in a time where we have better color correction better lighting equipment and better tools for viewing images than ever before there's a reason filmmakers deliberately degrade their films in post to make them seem more textured there's a reason cinematographers take older vintage lenses over more optically perfect modern l aners I think fundamentally we don't want films to feel real we want to experience a story a fantasy whether it's saving our best friend from the clutches of Darkness or turning the tables on an abusive authority figure there is a relationship we have with the way that movies feel that is sacred our souls have been filled up with memories that are shown to us at 24 frames a second and when you cross beyond that something wild happens the screen starts to vanish from the movie the fantasy evaporates ironically things that we are used to seeing being in the real world Human Action human faces buildings Vehicles anything that we feel grounded in everyday reality by become really easy for us to spot in a high frame rate when it feels off an actor is obviously acting a vehicle is obviously CGI makeup can't be used because the cameras can see it on Billy Lynn the production designer Mark fredberg realized that a set wall he would typically paint two or three layers on needed to be coed in dozens of layers upon layers because otherwise the camera could see that it looked artificial when we watch High frame rate we are no longer seeing fantasy we are seeing reality and to often with these films we are seeing reality trying to emulate a fantasy this is probably why Avatar was the easiest film to get on board with high frame rate it has the disadvantage of being a world we have seen before but a world that is not our own and with the benefits of being completely alien and mostly computer animated Cameron and his team can dial up or down the intensity to suit the high frame rate format the fantasy of high frame rate is not the fantasy of every other film where a traditional film is about showing us things that are familiar but different and unexpected you cannot show us anything familiar in high frame rate without our brains feeling what is wrong about it what you can do is show us something in a way nobody has experienced it the conversation around High frame rate is far too often about software and hardware and not about the reason for using it Billy Lynn wouldn't have changed much if it was made at $10 million with a traditional framewor rate but I'm glad that Ang Lee pushed for it because now we have a case study for how this technology Works which is all he ever wanted in the first place Gemini man did not need to be 3D 4K 120 FPS on top of all the other challenges that film faced but I honestly doubt I would have paid to go and see it in high frame rate if not for the way it was filmed Avatar 2 did better than most people expected and I highly doubt anyone who didn't enjoy the high frame rate sequences will swear off seeing Avatar 3 because of it when it releases in 2 to 5 years time so is there a chance the high frame rate will have its moment like 3D and IMAX Douglas Trumble certainly thought so immersion is very much on my mind as a filmmaker because that's what I get excited by and that's what I love to do and so I've been exploring this for the last 50 years and trying to figure out how do you tell an immersive Story how do you switch the Cinematic language to embrace the presence of the audience we experiment with actors with with sets with props with cameras with lenses with screens with projectors with microphones and this is a laboratory of trying to discover the future of Cinema or a future of Cinema I don't want to change the whole industry I think it's just fine but if you want to make an immersive experience the director and the writer have got to think about it differently it's a different art form I think with the right story there's a huge amount of potential for a filmmaker to alter the way we view the world to incredible effect and if that's successful then maybe a shift will start 3D was horrendously misused after Avatar's success and it's unlikely it will ever become the default option for Blockbuster movies that IMAX has now become for so many films and movie goers the way I see it high frame rate doesn't need uncomfortable glasses or giant screens it doesn't even need advanced technology I'm filming it right now and you're watching it we've had the ability to film and play back at high frame rates for more than 50 years and I think it's fascinating that more filmmakers haven't tried to experiment with it it clearly is a hurdle the very few want to try and clear and as far as audiences are concerned High frame rate films are less in demand than HS tapes it'll take an incredibly artistic and Powerful opportunity to make a mass audience Embrace High frame rates so here are some pictures for how movies could benefit for scenes or entire films from using this format imagine a film like strange days or Inception that relies on memory or dreams well actually this is what Douglas Trumble was attempting with brainstorm and you can see the example here from Brian Ben's YouTube channel of how that might have felt again this is only doing sections of the movie but it's a start I think there'd be something incredibly interesting about watching a historical drama or a play esque film something like a 12 angry man or a little women where you're just watching human behavior or to take a recent example the zone of Interest the way that film inherently forces you to look at human behavior would be fascinating to watch in a context where you're seeing the true to life motion of them plus it adds that extra dimension of watching something from World War 2 that feels contemporary and modern it doesn't feel like we're so distant from it one of the things that Billy Lynn showed High frame rate doing well is making a war film feel incredibly intense the fact that you are constantly locked into the behavior of these soldiers makes it feel really uneasy when you watch them walk through a room or break open a door in a way that you're used to in every other kind of War film an obvious match for high frame rate that some filmmakers have started to experiment with is horror one of the better moments in Gemini man is when the clone of Will Smith has to use heat vision and it just made me wish that there was a predator movie shot at high frame rate using example from video games Mass Effect has these wonderful cutcenes that play with higher frame rates and make you feel super uneasy even brainstorm has a sequence where Louise Fletcher records her own death and later on there are many scenes that could play out incredibly effectively as high frame rate horror experiences and the last is a genre which doesn't really exist anymore and no one really is asking for it to come back but if you're going to bring back step up bring it back in high frame rate let's see how human bodies move at 60 frames and above all of these are wonderful but let's be honest the main way that high frame rate is going to be used is documentaries and I've got a few ideas for those as well Ron Frick and the team behind Baraka and samsara should be getting funding from the United Nations to make one of these every 10 years I don't want him to start shooting High frame rate I want him to do exactly what he's doing but somebody else should be making these just give Jacob and Katie Schwarz money they're already doing it some of the most beautiful footage I found in my search for this video was of surfers and I think a surfing documentary at 4K High frame rate would be breathtaking like we said with planet Earth anything to do with animals is always going to be more evocative at a high frame rate you're just able to pick up on so much more nuances of how they behave and notice all of the different interactions they have with each other this technology exists every one of us can use it and I'd argue that we're overdue for a filmmaker who isn't Ang Lee to give it another shot I guess we'll just have to wait and see but in the meantime please turn off motion smoothing on your TV I'm Byron Wild and thank you for watching [Music]

Channel: Byron Wylder

Views: 538

Keywords: filmmaking, history, film, filmmaking at 120fps, high frame rate, Ang Lee, Peter Jackson, James Cameron, Douglas Trumbull, digital, DIY, creative, video, documentaries, 3D, HFR, 4K

Id: 0flV3pgUhtA

Length: 38min 10sec (2290 seconds)

Published: Mon May 06 2024