Tag Archives: Avatar 2

Video of Jon Landau’s NAB keynote, discusses HFR and Avatar sequels

Posted on by
Reply

Jon Landau had a session / keynote at NAB on April 7 where he discussed his passions in filmmaking and the impact of technologies such as HFR and 3D.  He also touched on the new underwater performance capture tech that will be used in Avatar 2 and 3 and the development of their new studio in Manhattan Beach.  Watch the video of the session below:

The Hollywood Reporter has a good summary of Landau’s talk.  But there’s still no firm start date(s) for the Avatar sequels’ motion capture and shooting, and the question of whether they will be 48 fps or 60 fps still hasn’t been answered definitively.

James Cameron talks Avatar sequels in new interview

Posted on by
Reply

avatarPlay.lifegoesstrong.com has a new interview with James Cameron in which he shares some updates on the writing process for Avatar 2 and Avatar 3:

Q: Can you give us some scoop about your upcoming little film called “Avatar 2″

Cameron:  “Oh believe me, it’s not that little! It’s not exactly a little, intimate drama. I’m working on ‘Avatar 2′ and ‘Avatar 3.’ I was talking the other day with Peter Jackson and said, ‘You had it easy dude. You had the books when you did the second and third ‘Lord of the Rings.’ I have to create my own books in my head and extract a script from it. I’m deep into it and I’m living in Pandora right now. There is that start up torque where you feel it’s coming to you. Then you build up momentum. That’s when it gets fun. The characters talk and it’s writing itself. I’m almost there right now. It’s building fast.”

Q: Tell us a little bit about your life. For example, what is your writing process?

Cameron:  “As a writer, I need isolation. I’m calling you from New Zealand right now where I’m writing on a little farm. When you live in a special world like Pandora, you have to live in that world.”

Q: Do you ever feel the pressure of topping yourself? And do you have a release date you can share with us for “Avatar 2 and 3?”

A: “Pressure, no. It’s a little daunting because sequels are always tricky. You have to be surprising and stay ahead of audience anticipation. At the same time, you have to massage their feet with things that they know and love about the first film. I’ve walked that line in the past, so I’m not too worried about it. At the same time, I definitely have to deliver the goods…As for a release date that will be determined by when I get the script out. No pressure!”

Be sure to check out the full interview for talk about Cameron’s 3D Cirque Du Soleil movie (which was apparently shot in HFR 3D but never distributed in HFR), his life in New Zealand, what’s he’s learned since he was 18 and more.

Ang Lee gives his thoughts on high frame rates

Posted on by
Reply

movies-ang-lee-life-of-pi-oscarBest Director Oscar winner Ang Lee talked with ScreenRant about HFR on the red carpet of the International 3D Society Awards:

People have mixed feelings right now. I wonder how much HFR is ahead of its time or people simply don’t like the look. It’s very hard to say. We associate it with “video” looks – which people associate with bad filmmaking. It doesn’t mean that the media itself is not good. It’s very hard to say but making Life of Pi I struggled with frame rate because you don’t want the 3D to be jittery and we’re constantly rocking in the ocean. And sometimes when things go too fast I could not see the eyes – so HFR might be a idea. But sometimes when I find out how people feel about it, I think it’s possible. We’re in the early stages of 3D filmmaking – so we have a lot to learn.

It seems that Lee is mostly worried about the apparently mixed reaction to the HFR 3D version of The Hobbit (amongst critics, at least…audience responses were significantly more positive) since he acknowledges that the judder-reducing HFR would’ve been particularly helpful for Life of Pi given the many scenes taking place on the rocking ocean.

Film traditionalists have certainly slowed the momentum of the HFR format, but I expect its popularity to surge quite soon – possibly as soon as The Desolation of Smaug.  Now that HFR has already made its first splash there will be far fewer luddite hipster critics panning the movie for not being 24 fps.  And when the Avatar sequels hit we’ll be getting HFR 3D at a whole new level of clarity: many filmgoers will consider them the first “proper” HFR movies, especially if 60 fps becomes the standard for a while.

Jon Landau will deliver keynote at NAB Technology Summit; will cover “latest work on higher-frame-rate cinema”

Posted on by
Reply

nab2013Jon Landau is scheduled to deliver the keynote address at the NAB show’s Technology Summit on Cinema: Advances in Image and Sound on Sunday, April 7.  It’s very likely Landau’s talk will explore the high frame rate technology / pipeline that he and James Cameron will be using for the Avatar sequels.  Hopefully Landau will confirm that they will be making the sequels at 60 fps and that performance capture / shooting will begin soon.

Wendy Aylsworth, president of SMPTE, says of Landau:

“As one of the industry’s most successful producers and storytellers, Jon Landau is a hero to many within the NAB Show audience.  He is a champion of employing the capabilities of technology to improve the telling of a story and has inspired many to push the envelope in movie-making.” (via BroadcastEngineering.com)

Besides Landau’s talk, the following sessions will include discussion of high frame rate: (via  SMPTE’s press release):

1)  ”‘Advancing Cameras for Cinema’ will discuss developments such as higher resolution and frame rates, as well as greater sensitivity, dynamic range, and color gamut, and their potential impact both on acquisition techniques and on human perception of the on-screen images.

2) “Two subsequent sessions will take a closer look at high frame rate (HFR) motion pictures, recent research on the psychophysical audience response to HFR, and how industry producers and directors are using 48fps and 60fps content to achieve a desired emotional audience response.”

Nabshow.com describes the the Technology Summit as providing “an in-depth global view of the new wave of technology coming soon to your local multiplex, with an eye toward how it might later affect the broader media ecosystem.”

Topics Include:

  • The latest work on higher-frame-rate cinema
  • Perceptual requirements for higher quality image and sound
  • New technologies for exhibition
  • Advantages and pitfalls of 3D film conversion

The 2013 NAB Technology Summit on Cinema will be held from 8:30 am Saturday, April 6 to 6 pm Sunday, April 7 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, South Hall Conference Room S222.  The Summit is co-produced by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE).

Weta Digital’s Joe Letteri talks HFR 3D and Smaug

Posted on by
Reply

hobbit-desolation-smaugStudioDaily.com has an interview with WETA Digital head Joe Letteri where he explains how making The Hobbit in HFR 3D affected WETA’s VFX process:

Studio Daily: What was the impact of 48 fps on post-production?

Joe Letteri: In a way, it was as simple as twice as many frames, so we had to do more work. It did allow us more creativity with animation. When you have 48 frames for every second, you can handle quick changes of motion better. You can see that in Gollum. At 48, you can really define those micro expressions. At 24 fps, the expressions are softer. We capture at 60 frames per second, so we could use more of the motion-capture data.

That WETA is already using 60 fps capture adds to the likelihood that future blockbusters they work on will be made at 60 fps.  I expect announcements of more high frame rate movies soon.  If I were to bet, I’d guess that the next announced HFR movie (beyond what has already been 100% confirmed) will be X-Men: Days of Future Past.  Bryan Singer has been making a string of exciting casting and plot related announcements on his Twitter, and he previously said he had “frame rate envy” after seeing The Hobbit in HFR. So I definitely expect to see this mutant epic in HFR 3D.

Letteri mentions realism as representing the future of visual effects:

Studio Daily: Leaving the business trends aside, what trends do you see technically and artistically in visual effects?

Joe Letteri: Generally, I see more of this trend toward realism. In a way, that’s what we’ve always done. But now, there’s more acknowledging that it is what we do. There’s more of a focus on understanding and trying to apply realism. Even though it’s more complex, it gives you the ability to standardize around a known quantity. There is less guesswork when you measure the real world.

What are you excited about now?

Smaug. He’s our next big character. You just got a few glimpses of him in the first film. I love the Riddles in the Dark, and I love Smaug. Seeing what we can do with Smaug is the next thing.

As I’ve been saying for a while now, I can’t wait to see Smaug.  His reveal at the end of An Unexpected Journey was perfect: from the thrush’s leisurely flight to the The Lonely Mountain, to it knocking the seed on the wall, then the camera taking us into the huge treasure chambers where we hear the amplified echoes of the thrush’s activity as we track over the hills of gold and treasure, leading into the final push-in on the dragon’s eye as we discover that Smaug had been sleeping under the gold coins all this time. I got chills.

Letteri’s love for Smaug and his excitement regarding Smaug as WETA’s “next big character” is very encouraging, as is the implicit promise of new techniques being used to bring Smaug and his environment to life.  We’ve never had a great talking dragon in the movies, not to mention a dragon whose belly is encrusted in dazzling golden coins and gems. Can’t wait to see how WETA plays with the lighting effects.

Even if An Unexpected Journey doesn’t win the best Visual Effects award tonight, I’d bet Smaug will win it for them in 2014.

Check out the StudioDaily.com interview for a lot more fascinating VFX-related discussion from Letteri.

Interview: Don Shaw of Christie answers HFR 3D projector questions; talks future of HFR, collaborations, new demo

Posted on by
Reply

The hype surrounding The Hobbit‘s 48 fps release has naturally generated numerous questions about the technology behind HFR 3D and the future of high frame rate movies. There’s a lot of murky information out there, and answers regarding the details of HFR projection have been in short supply.

I’m therefore very happy to have had the chance to talk to Don Shaw, Senior Director of Product Management at Christie Digital, the company that has been the biggest trailblazer regarding HFR 3D projection. Don is someone who knows digital projection technology inside and out and has been at the forefront of Christie’s HFR initiatives.  See below for details on Christie’s HFR projectors, collaborations with filmmakers, the HFR marketplace, future upgrades, and more:

James Cameron and 3 Christie executives at CinemaCon 2011, where Cameron used Christie projectors to show the first ever HFR cinema content to the world.

1) How do you expect industry projection standards to evolve? James Cameron seems to still be shooting for 60 fps 3D for the Avatar sequels, and is reportedly shooting them at 4K+. Do you think there is an ultimate “endpoint” for both resolution and frame rate for film projection? NHK in Japan is working on 8K capture and display and Douglas Trumbull has talked about making a 3D movie at 120 fps. How far ahead does Christie look in terms of it’s R&D?

Don Shaw: I think the industry projection standards will evolve rapidly over the next few years, but I’m not convinced that exhibitors can afford another large-scale technology evolution just yet, except in their “premium experience” theaters… these will be spectacular. We are actively engaged in research with James Cameron’s team, Peter Jackson’s Post House (Park Road Post), and directly with Douglas Trumbull on a number of frame-rate related initiatives. I can’t say much right now, but watch for an exciting HFR demo from Christie at the upcoming NAB and CinemaCon tradeshows.

2) Some of my readers are asking whether any digital projectors (or dual projector setups) are capable of showing a 48 fps 3D movie at 4K resolution (in other words, a 48 fps 3D movie where both the left and right eye images are at 4K). From my readings it seems no current projection systems from any company can project a movie at both 48 fps and in 4K due to bandwidth limitations either in the IMBs, the projectors, or both. Please correct me if I’m wrong. If 4K per eye at 48 fps / 60 fps is not yet possible for either single projectors or Christie Duo setups, what would be required to enable it? How soon could we expect it?

Don Shaw: You are absolutely correct, there are no cinema projectors capable of exceeding 30 fps (total) with 4K content for the precise reasons that you suggest below. That means that you would need two 4K projectors to play 4K 3D just at standard frame rates. Obviously, a 4K HFR projector would require up to 4X the input bandwidth of our current cinema projectors (up to 120 fps total)… this would be a forklift upgrade (i.e. new projector) and the reality is that none of the current cinema infrastructure (IMBs, servers, routers, content delivery systems, etc) can handle this bandwidth. It will be a long time before we see 4K HFR in theaters and we currently have no plans for building such a projector for general Cinema usage. With that said, all of our 4K projectors can take 2K HFR content (up to 60 fps/eye) and will upscale to 4K. While this does not produce as sharp of an image as a true 4K source, it does provide some additional benefit and also goes a long way to reducing the “screen-door effect” that is seen when you are close enough to the screen to perceive individual pixels.

3) What has been the demand from theater owners for HFR 3D capable projectors and Integrated Media Blocks (IMBs)?

Don Shaw: Demand for HFR 3D equipment had been solid among exhibitors (globally) leading up to the Hobbit. However, I think this will calm down over the upcoming months and will probably ramp up again when we next see another HFR film release.

4) Which Christie projector models are capable of projecting at 48 fps 3D?

Christie’s latest digital cinema projector – the Christie Solaria One – which comes with the pre-installed Christie IMB.

Don Shaw: All Christie Solaria projectors (CP2210, CP2220, CP2230, CP4220, CP4230, Solaria One/One+) are capable of HFR at 48/60 fps/eye, assuming that a suitable IMB is installed.

5) In terms of how Christie’s products are sold to theaters, are there any projectors which are sold with HFR 3D-enabling IMB’s pre-installed, or do theater owners purchase them separately?

Don Shaw: Currently, only the Solaria One/One+ projectors are shipped with a standard IMB. All of our other projectors have an option slot where one can be easily installed by the customer or their integration partner.

6) Will future Christie projectors have the software update required for HFR 3D pre-installed?

Don Shaw: All Christie cinema projectors currently have the HFR-enabling software installed at the factory. Also, any older Series 2 Solaria projectors in the field can be upgraded with the latest software free of charge. With that said, however, you still need an HFR capable IMB.

7) I read in this The Hollywood Reporter article that Christie has an upgrade program to make older “Series One” projectors HFR capable. Could you elaborate on this? The article didn’t really explain how this works. Has it been a popular solution for Series One owners?

Don Shaw: This is incorrect information, there is no way to upgrade a Series 1 projector to HFR. At one point we explored this notion, but after realizing the huge number of parts, including all of the electronics, that needed to be redesigned/replaced, we determined that it was simply a better option (technically and financially) for our customers to replace their entire projector with a Series 2 projector.

8) What was your personal response to seeing The Hobbit in HFR 3D?

Christie Duo configuration in use at Hoyts Australia and other theatres.

Don Shaw: I loved the effect of HFR 3D for the Hobbit… especially for all of the panning landscape and mountain range scenes that really helped the audience see something that was never before possible in a movie theater.

9) What do you think is the future of HFR? Will it be relatively niche, or will everything (from Youtube to TV to movies, etc) begin to adopt it as a standard?

Don Shaw: I can really only speak from a cinema perspective and I believe that the future will see growth in HFR. However, this will require effort from the entire movie ecosystem, including studios, exhibitors, filmmakers, and equipment suppliers; everyone needs to come together to ensure HFR always means a spectacular experience and then figure out how to really educate the audience about this, rather than just throw the 3-letter acronym at them.

10) Is Christie still working with James Cameron on HFR tech? Any updates on this collaboration?

Don Shaw: Yes, we continue to work with James Cameron’s Lightstorm Entertainment on HFR. Unfortunately, I have no further updates at this time.

11) If HFR at 4K isn’t in the near term future, is there anything you can say about what what Christie is working on for their upcoming products?

Don Shaw: We are focusing on three main areas:

a. High value solutions for small market cinemas and emerging market economies. As you know, with the looming end of film, all cinemas are being forced to go digital or shut out the lights; we are doing everything we can to help these guys out.

b. Total system solutions – ranging from IMB to TMS to audio processors and everything in between. We aim to become the only “total solution” cinema equipment manufacturer; leading to greater system integration, simplicity, enhanced support, and overall better value for the exhibitor.

c. Ultra-Premium cinema solutions (i.e. laser projection).

Many thanks to Don Shaw, and David Paolini at Christie for arranging this interview.

More about Christie: Christie Digital has been at the forefront of digital projection since the beginning: they helped spur the 3D revolution and are now pushing high frame rate tech forward.  As some of you may know, Christie partnered with James Cameron at CinemaCon 2011 to facilitate the presentation of footage (medieval feast and sword fighting) at 24 fps, 48 fps, and 60 fps. See this reaction from FirstShowing.net for a representative example of the universally positive response to Cameron’s demo.

In September 2011 Christie extended its partnership with Cameron with a five-year agreement to “exchange research, testing, development and technical support on the industry’s most exciting new technology.” This will include technical assistance from Christie in Avatar 2 and 3.

Introducing HFRmovies.com

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve decided to move this site to the domain www.hfrmovies.com.

It’s evident that 48 frames per second is only the beginning of the upcoming high frame rate revolution: “HFR” is a more accurate and encompassing reflection of the scope of the tech as well as a better fit in regards to what the movie studios and industry at large are beginning to call frame rates of 48 fps and higher.

Avatar 2 and Avatar 3 are likely to be made at 60 fps. And Douglas Trumbull’s upcoming sci-fi project is targeting 120 fps. Persistence of vision (the point at which the eye perceives distinct frames as perfectly smooth motion) doesn’t kick in until 60 fps at the absolute minimum (Trumbull has said it’s closer to 64 fps), so I see constant 48 fps as a standard that won’t last long: the future will be all about 60 fps and perhaps even higher. Or, quite possibly, variable frame rates (VFR): the utilization of multiple frame rates within a single movie, or even within a single shot. To enable VFR 3D, however, projectors must be capable of delivering HFR 3D content at 60fps+. So I am personally pushing for projector tech that can do 3D at 60fps+ per eye, and at 4K per eye as well. Keep in mind that 4K per eye is not yet possible even at 48 fps 3D due to bandwidth limitations.

So welcome to HFR Movies.com: I’ll be continuing to write about everything and anything relating to HFR movies and tech. If you have an idea for an article or a piece of news you’d like to send my way, please email me at mstat1@gmail.com.

Thanks, and let us all look forward to a world without awful judder and incomprehensible action scenes!

Sample Avatar clips at 48 fps and 60 fps

Posted on by
7

Thanks to Ilya Vaisman for alerting me to the following Russian forum which has sample clips of Avatar at 48 and 60 fps along with the Inception trailer at 48 fps. Of course these clips are interpolated and not native HFR. Check out this Avatar-forums.com thread for an additional HFR Avatar clip as well as links to documentation on how to produce your own interpolated HFR videos.

(right click to download):

Avatar sample at 48 fps: http://hfrmovies.com/Avatar_48_fps_Sample.mkv

Avatar sample at 60 fps: http://hfrmovies.com/avatar_60.mkv

Inception trailer at 48 fps:

http://www.gigashare.in/15cfd

Inception trailer at 60 fps:
http://hfrmovies.com/Inception_TRLR3_720.mp4

Although Avatar looks spectacular in these HFR clips, the sequels (even moreso than The Hobbit) will be the true flagship demonstration of the potential of HFR 3D.  Keep in mind that these interpolated clips, although they do reduce strobing and judder due to the increased number of fames, still contain motion blur.  Only native HFR shot with an adequately short shutter angle can eliminate motion blur.

WETA head Joe Letteri talks reactions to HFR…and what frame rate will the industry settle on?

Posted on by
1

Director of WETA Digital Joe Letteri spoke with Movieline.com about HFR 3D, comparing those decrying HFR 3D with the people who lashed out at color films when color technology first arrived:

If you grew up seeing films in black and white and suddenly start seeing films in color, some people are going to have the reaction ‘Wow, that’s great!’ and other people are going to have the reaction, ‘That’s not moviemaking! Films should be made in black and white! You’re losing the mystery of how to deal with tonality, you’re sacrificing that to deal with color!’ But if you grew up with only seeing color, you don’t know that. Just talking to the people that have seen [HFR 3D] so far, and obviously that’s been a very limited audience, the younger ones that I’ve spoken with don’t really have an issue with it because they’re not so ingrained with what 24 frames mean. To them they’re just watching a movie.

Letteri emphasizes the significant benefits high frame rates bestow upon stereoscopic 3D movies:

I think it’s beneficial with stereo. One of the artifacts of stereo — for example, if you look at something that’s out of focus, maybe an over the shoulder shot, this is where stereo differs from the real world. In the real world, wherever your eye focuses that object snaps to focus. So if you’re looking at a big screen and your eye wanders to something that is out of focus, your eye expects it to go into focus. It can’t. So you’re sitting there focusing on an out of focus object. That’s one of the things that causes your brain [to fritz]. The same thing also happens temporally. If you’ve got an object moving across the screen in the real world your eye wants to be able to track that and your eye wants to see it in focus. But because you’ve already photographed that with this motion blur, your eye cannot focus on something in space that’s blurry. Again, in the real world you never see that. It’s one of those other things that in 3-D your brain says something’s not right here. Well, if you go to high frame right, it is in focus. Your eye can focus on these fast moving objects or even slow moving ones and the detail’s always there. So your brain can make sense of it.

His point regarding the ability of HFR to mimic the eye’s tendency/ability to track and bring into focus fast-moving objects is interesting…not only does HFR result in smooth motion during action sequences (especially helping with the choppy motion found in 24 fps 3D movies), but it also reduces eye strain by allowing the eye to do what it would do during real-life fast movement: track objects on the screen. The primary cause of eyestrain in stereoscopic 3D is the eye’s inability to bring blurred objects into focus. While HFR 3D doesn’t solve the issue of the inability to focus on background objects during a shallow focus shot of, say, a character’s face, it does allow the viewer to focus on fast moving objects. And if the viewer chooses not to focus his/her eyes on, for example, an arrow flying across the screen, the brain will create its own motion blur just like it does in real life.

I think 48 fps still isn’t quite high enough to 100% fix the issue of blur during movement. Douglass Trumbull, Letteri and others seem to have reached a consensus that at 60 fps+ (especially 64 fps+) movements on screen are interpreted by the brain as real:

Jim [Cameron] is considering 60 fps [for Avatar 2]. That’s closer to where persistence of vision almost disappears. In fact, these discussions came out of when we noticed the effect of that in Avatar. And we were brainstorming with Jim on how to fix it — well, this is inherent in the photography and the only thing you can do is go shorter shutter, but that introduces strobing, or you can go higher frame rate. We started experimenting with higher frame rate [from a standpoint of] how do we solve the problem? It looks like something happening live.

I really want to know the exact number the industry will settle upon for HFR. Will it be 60 fps, which is perhaps a few frames per second shy of the point where increases in frame rate become unnoticeable by most? Will it be 72 fps or 96, which are multiples of 24, thus allowing for accurate downconversion to 24 fps? Or will it be 120 (a multiple of both 24 and 60), allowing for easy downconversion to both 60 fps (for TVs) and 24 fps (for film projection)? I don’t see it going higher than 120 fps per eye any time in the next decade. At that high of a frame rate even the most hardcore videophiles would be very unlikely to notice further increases.

In any case I think it will benefit the future of high frame rates as a format if a standard is chosen relatively soon.

2 more Hobbit clips; VFX supervisor Joe Letteri talks HFR 3D

Posted on by
2

On the eve of the US release of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey we have two new clips. First up is a conversation between Bilbo and Gandalf, via Comingsoon.net/iTunes Movie Trailers:

And Peter Jackson has posted a clip from the classic ‘Riddles in the Dark’ chapter on his Facebook. Check it out:

I can’t wait for this scene: I’m blown away by the quality of WETA’s work here, and Andy Serkis has reportedly (and from what I can see in the above piece) turned in another brilliant performance.  This sequence will also serve as a great showcase for HFR 3D: as Serkis has said, HFR 3D takes the reality of CG characters to a whole new level:

“The wonderful thing about 48 fps is [how it handles] the integration of live action and CG elements; that is something I learned from The Hobbit.  We are so used to 24 fps and the romance of celluloid … but at 48 fps, you cannot deny the existence of these CG creations in the same time frame and space and environment as the live action. It works incredibly well.”

Comingsoon.net has a very interesting interview with ‘Hobbit’ VFX Supervisor Joe Letteri. They get into the topic of HFR 3D and preparing their pipeline for 48 fps:

CS: The other big factor was the fact Peter shot in 48 frames per second, so is all the software your animators use capable of doing 48? 

Letteri: It wasn’t two years ago but by the time we started, we made sure that it was. We talked with everyone that needed to be involved, both for in-house software and anything we were working with externally, like talking to Foundry, to let everyone know this was coming, just like we did with stereo when we did “Avatar.” When we started rigging everything up, we just started prototyping it and showing them what we did and we got them to add that into the released versions of the software, so the same thing happened here. Again, we were ready to go when the production started.

Letteri has some interesting thoughts on how the 48 fps will affect different types of moviegoers, admitting that some viewers may simply be too nostalgically attached to the “film look” (judder, strobing, motion blur) to truly accept and appreciate the 48 fps:

 CS: What’s the general reaction to 48 frames per second among the FX people you work with? Does that seem to be something that will continue into the future and does it help enhance the FX and 3D of it?

Letteri: Well, it solves one problem in 3D, which is motion blur. If you tend to be prone towards motion sickness when you see something really blurry in 3D, this really alleviates that problem, but it does change the look of the film because everything looks hyper-real. Yeah, as Peter mentioned, and I’m hearing the same thing too from the few screenings I’ve been to, when you talk to people, the more familiar you are with film and the more nostalgic you are for film, the harder it is to let go, and after a while, you can’t let go, and you take it for what it is. Anyone who I talked to who is younger who is used to seeing film in any number of different ways says it’s like really not even noticeable, not really a big deal.

Letteri tells us that James Cameron is still shooting for 60 frames per second for the Avatar sequels:

CS: Have you had any conversations with James Cameron yet on whether he might shoot on 48 as well? Has he seen “The Hobbit” yet?

Letteri: Jim’s still thinking 60, because it’s a persistence of vision artifacts and to quote Doug Trumbull and the studies he’s done, he says it tends to go away at around 64. I tend to agree with him from the tests we’ve done. We’ve gone to pretty high frame rates and after about 64, the returns are pretty minimal and to tell you the truth, the difference between 48 and 60 is not as noticeable as the difference between 24 and 48 so for practical reasons, we decided to go with 48 because asking the theaters to have projectors and servers that could handle 60 was not really practical in the time frame we had for “Hobbit” plus it would have meant even more work, double the amount of work, that we were already committed to at 48 frames.

CS: You also have two more years and movies for people to get used to it and it to become more available projection-wise.

Letteri: You have a choice. My recommendation would be that if you’re not certain that this is something you really want to see, see it in 24 frames, and if you want to see the film again, which I hope you do, then give it a try at 48, so that way you get the whole experience. Honestly, people have told me that seeing the 48-frame version of the movie, even though it might have taken them a few minutes to get used to it, when they went back and saw the 24 frame version, it felt like a step down. Even though initially they had the experience of “This is what I’m used to seeing” but I would say that if you’re curious, maybe go the other way, maybe go 24 and then 48.

CS: I might have to see it three or four times in every possible permutation to figure out which one I like.

Letteri: It’s interesting because I still like going back to… because we have to watch every version of it as well before it goes out the door, and it’s really interesting still looking at the film version of it and what’s interesting is that–as nostalgic as I am for film and a lot of people are–after you see the digital and you go back to look at the film, you realize how flickery it is and how jittery the projection is, stuff that when you watch film for 20 or 30 years, it looks fine, you never think about it. As soon as you compare it to what it could be, suddenly the deficiencies become glaringly obvious and I suspect that’s what people are seeing when they go from 48 to 24. Sure, it’s a different look, sure you’re seeing more detail then you may have expected going into it, but you’re seeing it like it’s happening.

I’d love for Cameron to make Avatar 2 & 3 at 60 fps or higher.  Cameron is a film technology pioneer, giving us the first major use of CG in The Abyss and creating the first stereoscopic 3D showcase with Avatar (along with numerous performance capture innovations), so creating the Avatar sequels at an unprecedentedy high frame rate would fit right into his pattern of innovation.  And I can’t think of a better flagship to show off the benefits of HFR 3D than the exotic landscapes, flora and fauna of Pandora.  Since Avatar is nearly 100% CG, the complaints of makeup and sets looking “bad” in HFR will be a nonissue (I’m sure they’ll develop techniques to improve the look of human actors and constructed sets when shot in HFR 3D in the next few years as well).

I do wonder though why Letteri said that making The Hobbit at 60 fps would have been “double the amount of work” of making it at 48 fps.  Wouldn’t double the work be 48 * 2, or 96 fps?  Anyway, the more interesting question about 60 frame per second movies is how a 24 fps version would be extracted to feed theaters that haven’t upgraded, since 60 isn’t a multiple of 24.  Maybe Cameron is planning on only showing Avatar 2 & 3 in HFR 3D?  Or perhaps he’ll decide to go for 72 fps (which would allow a 24 fps version to be created by taking every 3rd frame)? I’m hoping we’ll hear more from Cameron soon.