James Cameron Wants Game-Like Frame Rates for Film

[iDoom46]

Even though I still can't forgive him for that speech he made during E3 a few years back, and I hated Avatar, I have to give the man credit.
He deserves some serious respect for constantly trying to push the medium further and further, which isn't something you can really say about most movie directors these days.

 

[Shotgun Sam]

That's all well and good until you try to pack too many actors into a scene and watch the movie start chugging around 12 FPS.

Hahaha. This is exactly what I thought of when I read the topic. James Cameron Wants Game-Like Frame Rates for Film.... uhhh... so... James wants it to be pretty smooth when nothings happening and then cram a bunch of explosions and people on screen and have it drop to 10 fps... sounds good.

 

[Scars Unseen]

That's all well and good until you try to pack too many actors into a scene and watch the movie start chugging around 12 FPS.

Hahaha. This is exactly what I thought of when I read the topic. James Cameron Wants Game-Like Frame Rates for Film.... uhhh... so... James wants it to be pretty smooth when nothings happening and then cram a bunch of explosions and people on screen and have it drop to 10 fps... sounds good.

On the bright side, maybe Michael Bay will have to stop making movies if that happens.

 

[Kilo24]

...
People need to get over this bizarre belief that "more frames per second is best." 24fps and 60fps are different, and have historically had very different purposes. If you're playing games on a monitor, 60fps is fine. It looks smooth and fluid. 23.97fps is the standard for movies because they're meant to be viewed from a film projector in a theatre. Now, with the advent of BluRay technology, we're moving the theatre experience home more and more. It's still going to stay 24fps though, because as anyone who has seen a live-action film in 60fps will tell you, it looks weird.

True, though the only reason it looks weird is because we're used to 24 FPS.

IIRC, the reason 24 FPS is more problematic in games over movies is that each frame of a live action camera is automatically filmed with motion blur, whereas CGI normally generates static images. So, replicating a given live action scene in CGI will make it comparatively really choppy if you don't account for that motion blur (which I'm not precisely sure how they do, but it's probably just generating lots of frames and then averaging them to create blur).

We're not used to 60 FPS. Whatever you make in it is going to look weird until everyone gets used to it, will be more expensive for anyone that does anything to the film after it's recorded from a camera (CGI included) due to more than doubling the number of frames, force the theaters to adopt new standards, and will do absolutely nothing other than a mild increase in realism. It's like 3D, except without the dorky glasses and the actual benefit is even less.

 

[Throwitawaynow]

I have bad vision, I can't tell the difference between standard tv and HD tv.

 

[Levethian]

About god damn time.

I remember sweeping shots in LOTR or armies and cities - blurry thanks to the low FPS count.

 

[sapphireofthesea]

Here, look at this:


Now the comparision in a video game

Does that make me blind then as from what I saw I could easily run it on 24fps. I realy couldn't detect a difference.
The point you make is valid though about 24fps being a diiferent thing for movies. I just have to think though, won't this make it harder for animators or have they already switched to higher fps. Also, with games causing epileptic episodes, won't upping the fps of movies also result in this (I rarely hear of a movie causing one and never see a warning for it)

 

[bob1052]

Cameron is just looking for some new type of revolutionary technology to carry his next film so he doesn't have to worry about having any actual merit to his film beyond the camera used.

Spoken like someone whose only experience with a James Cameron film was Avatar... Jeez

What has he done that is even remotely notable that is remotely recent? Absolutely nothing.

 

[PunkRex]

That could push costs up and say what you want about pushing the medium forward, more spending is the LAST thing Hollywood wants right now.

I don't think so. Like Greg says in the article, many consumer digital cameras already have the capability to record at 60 FPS. I'm sure the expensive ones that Hollywood uses already have this capability as well. At most, they'll need a software upgrade.

I suppose, its just even if its a little amount it will really annoy the higher ups. I used to work at a cinema and even if there was a slight cost shift the bosses would go nuts about lay offs and so on. I know that Hollywood and the Cinemas are at odds with each other when it comes to making money as a they look to each other to make up for losses so even though I think it will happen it will take awhile for both parties to come round. At least this is what I know, I could be completly off, im no expert.

 

[Nautical Honors Society]

go work for kodak or something.

I doubt the nice gentlemen at Kodak would like what Mr. Cameron is proposing.

Obviously I was using that comment to exaggerate my point so yes...taking what I said out of context would make no sense.

 

[rsvp42]

This is pointless. We can't even see that fast. Unless they just want to remove motion blur?

As a film animator, I would hate to see the standard increased. Animating and polishing 24fps is already a chore, with subframe animation being limited to fixes and whatnot. I never understood this obsession with getting such high fps in games. Anything more than 30fps is visually unnecessary.

But then again, I'm the guy that doesn't give two damns about anti-aliasing, so what do I know, right?

 

[Kel_Sumo]

this isn't just a case of bigger number = better. I'm sure James Cameron has his reasons... and I think it might have a fair amount to do with making 3D looking better... but 24 FPS is as much a stylistic choice as it is an industry standard no one could be bothered to change.

The blurring and layering of frames to make it into 24fps is what gives film that "filmic" quality. Home video and most TV gets shot at 25 or 30 fps. And you can see the difference. It looks a little bit more like real life, but loses visual interest.

When digital tape first came about, TV jumped at it cos it was cheap and quick, but if you made a movie you shot on film, because of the visual effect. digital had a max tolerance for light and would therefore limit over exposure. This meant that you didnt have to alter lighting for every shot, just tweak a few settings on the camera. But with film you often want the bleeding effect of over exposed light and stuff. much more artistic freedom. No one demanded film makers stop using film purely because it was old.

Helicopter tracking shots at 24 fps look epic and sweeping. put em up to 60 fps and you can see every judder and it looks like something off of police camera action.

Try watching a Bourne film at 48fps. Its like having an eye hemorrhage.

Look at who else is interested: Peter Jackson and George Lucas. So the three biggest effect junkies (excluding Michael Bay) want game like frame rates to make there CG characters work better...

The big studios with the big expensive digital equipment and rendering software and legions of post production experts can probably make something spectacular out of it. But the effects that can be achieved with a bog standard film camera and a bit of know-how will be swept away.

(As a side note, look at district 9 as a great example of how a change in medium/frame rate can be a story telling device. The usual film camera set up for the "god's eye" plot driving sections, and the mini dv home video camera stuff)

 

[Koroviev]

About god damn time.

I remember sweeping shots in LOTR or armies and cities - blurry thanks to the low FPS count.

This is what came to mind when I first read the topic. I had to look away during those scenes because they gave me a headache.

 

[thublihnk]

Agh. This is way more complex an issue than is being presented here. It's an artistic choice between the three most commonly used framerates in cinematography (24, 30 and 60) and while the standard of 24 frames has been defaulted to too often, there shouldn't be a unilateral standard. Ever. Flexibility is key. While a Paul Greengrass film would probably look fantastic in 30 or even 60 frames, I'd never even think of putting a drama or a comedy in 60 frames. The clarity of action can be intensely distracting in scenes like those--I would know, I have tried to shoot them that way.

Edit: And stop using video game framerates as a comparison point, that's positively silly. Taking in movies and taking in video games is an entirely different mindset and artistic experience, and while higher framerates suit video games fantastically as they are /all/ action oriented and digitally animated, the kind of cinematography that demands 24p couldn't be further from that.

 

[rsvp42]

This is pointless. We can't even see that fast. Unless they just want to remove motion blur?

As a film animator, I would hate to see the standard increased. Animating and polishing 24fps is already a chore, with subframe animation being limited to fixes and whatnot. I never understood this obsession with getting such high fps in games. Anything more than 30fps is visually unnecessary.

But then again, I'm the guy that doesn't give two damns about anti-aliasing, so what do I know, right?

I don't even... you must be one of them console players I guess... anyway there's fighter pilots that have been tested with discerning images from over 200FPS e.g. seeing an enemy jet in 1/200 of a second and I'd wager every normal person can see a clear difference between 30 and 60FPS...

Hell when I was still playing things like Quake3, Jedi Knight 2 or CS on my old CRT there was a very clear difference between 60 and 90+ in both fluidity of the movement and reaction time of shooting someone. But you're right, you don't seem to be very knowledgeable

It depends on content though, sure a strategy or Adventure game... maybe some RPGs don't require a reaction time that high but shooters back then were a lot quicker and actually made use of mouse+kb e.g.

I play both PC and console games because fuck dichotomies.

I'm speaking from a CG animation standpoint. Having to hand animate and wrangle 60 fps is ridiculous. I'm sure I'd get used to it, but I really don't think it would add much. It's fine for games with no motion blur, but for film, anything above 30fps in most circumstances seems like overkill.

 

[Trolldor]

Lots of people may consider movies a superior art medium to video games, but I always find it hilarious how movies are doing everything they can to try and crawl out from the shadow of games.

Though I'd love to see what a movie would look like with 60 frames-per-second. It might even make 3D more bearable to look at.

Unless 60 frames per a second can solve the problem of 3D forcing the eye to behave in a way it isn't designed for, I doubt it.

 

[Nouw]

It'd be interesting to see this in StarWars.

With all the light-sabre duels and all.

 

[Baldr]

Cameron is a complete idiot. Look at a film like Avatar where there are tons of special effects and it takes hours to render each frame of film. If you triple the frame rate, then you triple the amount of rendering times, tripling the cost just on rendering and more frames means more work in Post, it will just skyrocket movie budgets.

All for what? A little bit cleaner movie. Not worth it. Not anytime soon, unless you want to pay $40 for a movie ticket.