As you might have heard, The Hobbit was filmed not only in 3D, but with
High Framerate, ie. at 48 frames per second instead of the traidiontal 24.

I had read a lot of criticism about 48 FPS making the movie look odd and
detracting from the experience, and I was curious to see this for myself.
I was dubious about the claim, and was thinking that it's simply a case
of "they changed it, now it sucks". After all, what possible harm could
showing a movie at a higher framerate do? (After all, in videogames 60 FPS
is a standard minimum framerate, especially nowadays that it's the de-facto
standard for LCD displays. Any lower than that, and it quickly starts to
look jittery.)

After seeing the movie at 48 FPS, I cannot help but agree. It was
distracting, and it made the movie look odd. The most prominent effect
was that I got the really strong feeling that the movie was being played
back too fast (even though all the movements were normal.) That might
sound amusing, but it's true. Especially in the beginning, but also at
other parts, I constantly had the same feeling as when you play a video
too fast. It somehow felt unnatural, in a way that's very difficult to
describe. (It was also an odd dissonance in perception, because all the
movements were at normal speed, yet felt like being played too fast, at
the same time.)

It's very possible that if I watched several dozens of 48 FPS movies for
an extensive period of time, I would quickly get accustomed to it, but
the point in this case is that it *was* indeed distracting, and made
following the movie harder. (After all, when you watch the movie you want
to concentrate on the contents of the movie, not on the feeling that it's
playing back too fast.)

I did a rather unusual thing, and went to watch the normal 2D version the
next day, just to compare. This decision was partially prompted by this
article:

http://gizmodo.com/5969817/the-hobbit-an-unexpected-masterclass-in-why-48-fps-fails

It writes the following:

"In the opening hour of The Hobbit shown in 3D HFR I don't recall hearing
a single sigh, or laugh. Not one. When I went to see the exact same scene
with an audience of the same size on a 2D projection - I heard regular
chuckles and laughter... why? Again more on that in a bit - but this was
palpable and very interesting for me to witness. All of the jokes seems
to be falling flat or being missed in the HFR projection."

I was curious to see if I would experience the same, and what do you know,
that exact same thing happened here too! I had read this article before
going to see the movie, and was trying to see how the audience reacted to
the humor in the movie, and there indeed was signicantly more reaction in
the 2D version than in the 3D HFR version.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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