

The Hobbit, the Uncanny Valley, and what it means for 3D - cianclarke
http://cianclarke.com/blog/?p=261

======
w1ntermute
For those interested in an in-depth look at 48 fps in _The Hobbit_ from an
artistic viewpoint, here are two good blog posts discussing its effect on
filmmaking:

[http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/18/3780274/48-fps-how-we-
acc...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/18/3780274/48-fps-how-we-accidentally-
invented-impressionist-filmmaking)

[http://blog.vincentlaforet.com/2012/12/19/the-hobbit-an-
unex...](http://blog.vincentlaforet.com/2012/12/19/the-hobbit-an-unexpected-
masterclass-in-why-hfr-fails-and-a-reaffirmation-of-what-makes-cinema-
magical/)

I've read the first article so far, which suggests that solving problems with
48 fps present in _The Hobbit_ is simply a matter of modifying filmmaking
techniques.

~~~
baddox
There are so many ludicrous arguments in The Verge article.

> For some [filmmakers], HFR will be a potential new tool in their arsenal for
> telling certain types of stories in a new and exciting way, while others
> will be reminded of why the 2D format at 24 fps has stood the test of time
> for so long.

Just like dial-up for Internet and horses for transportation stood the test of
time for so long. This is such an unabashed argument that "it should stay this
way because it has been this at for so long" that I feel sympathetic
embarrassment upon reading it.

The author's failure to be immersed is clearly due to his a priori insistence
that 24 FPS is _the way_ movie should be shot and projected. He says that
himself. But there is more:

> 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 seen with
> an audience of the same size on a 2D projection – I heard regular chuckles
> and laughter… why?

Here's why: because there are really high odds that of all the people across
the world that watched the movie in both formats, at least one person would
experience this. Why did Bob win the lottery? Is it because he's good at
guessing lottery numbers, or is it because the odds were high that someone
would win the lottery, and we chose Bob for analysis after learning that he
won? In case anyone wants a counter-anecdote, I watched The Hobbit in both
formats and there was a lot of laughter in both theaters. I don't have any
real evidence, but I suspect most showings in all formats had considerable
laughter.

> It’s like being on a film set in person: all of the magic is lost. You get
> to see behind the curtain and you’re no longer under the spell…

I think most critics and movie buffs are well aware that "the magic" comes
from the viewer's deliberate choice to suspend disbelief. If this weren't the
case, then filmmakers themselves would be unable to enjoy a film, since they
would fully understand most aspects of how the film was produced. Again, this
just reaffirms the author's own admission that he will only choose to be
immersed if a film is projected in 24 FPS.

> The makeup wasn’t as terrible as some people say, and most of the VFX were
> stunning but not all. When I saw them in 2D however – it was almost like
> seeing another film. My attention wasn’t drawn to them … As I was focusing
> on central action. That challenges the "Suspension of Disbelief" theory that
> we all need to believe what we are seeing on screen and to get lost in it…

Oh boy. The author seems unaware that all or nearly all modern theory about
suspension of disbelief places most of the responsibility on the viewer, not
the artist. No artist can forcefully make you forget or ignore the fact that
you're sitting down in a dark room with a bunch of other people.

I suppose I cannot dispute the author's claims about experiencing physical
pain from the 3D. Perhaps there truly is some sort variation in people's
visual systems that causes this. Other than the slight physical discomfort
from wearing 3D glasses over my corrective glasses, all I can say is I haven't
experienced that. If this were his central criticism, then it would be valid,
although depending on the rate of occurrence of this medical condition it may
or may not be reasonable to expect a blockbuster filmmaker to accommodate
those who suffer from it.

~~~
pretoriusB
> _Here's why: because there are really high odds that of all the people
> across the world that watched the movie in both formats, at least one person
> would experience this._

What a BS explanation of what the author describes.

This "law of big numbers" non-explanation could be used to dismiss tons of
relevant and non random events.

> _Oh boy. The author seems unaware that all or nearly all modern theory about
> suspension of disbelief places most of the responsibility on the viewer, not
> the artist._

I seriously doubt this explanation, since the audience is more or less the
same for every major movie. Yet some resonate with the majority of people and
others do not. Any references to this "modern theory"?

~~~
baddox
Are you sincerely arguing that, since this author experienced an HFR showing
with little laughter and a non-HFR showing with plenty of laughter, this is
valid evidence that the HFR format is less engaging on average? If so, that is
completely preposterous, and I'm curious how you explain that both of my
audiences laughed? Perhaps I'm the outlier, and nitrous oxide was pumped into
my HFR showing?

~~~
pretoriusB
Or perhaps we need MORE tests with control groups in both showings to reach a
conclusion, instead of getting to the NON-explanation of the "law of big
numbers" that it was ..."bound to happen somewhere, man".

~~~
baddox
My claim was only that his anecdote is not valid evidence of his claim. I
didn't claim that it was statistically false, because I don't actually have
scientific data.

I'm not familiar with this "law of big numbers" term you keep using, but my
proposed explanation of the author's anecdotal evidence is valid. Like I said,
it's probably very likely that at least one viewer in the world would see both
formats and experience audience laughter in only the non-HFR showing, even if
a very large percentage of audiences in all formats laughed. It is not
evidence that, among all showings, there was less laughter in one format than
another.

------
ggchappell
Isn't the ordering of the Hobbit scenes on the graph backwards? The unfamiliar
scenes ("orc-filled battlefields ...") are more acceptable because they are
less like the real life we know & love than the familiar ones ("... a
character standing in the doorway"). So they are on the _less_ realistic
(left) side of the Uncanny Valley, not the more realistic (right) side.

Other than that, I think your argument works.

~~~
aidenn0
I think the argument is that the valley is further left on unfamiliar scenes,
as "can just barely tell it's wrong" is more wrong for those things that stuff
we know really well.

Alternatively you could say "Orcs are unreal, so there isn't an uncanny valley
at all for them"

~~~
acgourley
The orcs were mostly CG, I think that has more to do with it. If they were
people in makeup and masks, I suspect they still would have felt uncanny. In
fact, the orcs in the large battlefield towards the beginning were mostly
costumed, and felt uncanny, while the band of orcs later were CG, and felt OK.

------
siculars
I actually saw The Hobbit thrice. In IMAX 3D, "Real-3D", and HFR 3D. I do have
to say that you can tell the difference when watching in HFR. It felt as if
the video was fluid or even slightly fast forward. Like you are moving a bit
faster than you should be. Strange, but clearly the future of motion picture.

~~~
pretoriusB
HFR is nothing new. The problem is it sucks. It gives everything that is not a
fast-action scene a cheap soap opera/reality show look.

~~~
watt
HFR is just a messenger. It's no fault of HFR if filmmakers don't know yet how
to make it "cinematic". HFR is the future, it must be - and filmmakers WILL
learn how to use it.

~~~
pretoriusB
> _HFR is the future, it must be - and filmmakers WILL learn how to use it._

I fail to see why "it must be" -- or why you assume there is something there
to be learned.

Art, including cinema, is not about capturing reality perfectly.

Nobody considers a photo-perfect painting better than an expressionist
painting (except a bunch of naive people). And nobody thinks Citizen Kane is
worse than Horror Movie 2, because the latter is in color.

(Not to mention that most people are mighty fine with their mp3 or listening
to music through web streaming, when the CD standard of 3 decades ago had
better technical quality).

Now, besides the absence of motion blut, HFR doesn't buy you much. E.g.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=u...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=utQEUKMojRY#at=73)

And while the absence of motion blur can be good for action sequences, it
feels bad for normal scenes.

Even 3D games, which run at 60fps (mainly for the extra responsiveness for
user actions), have been putting virtual "motion blur" to make them look
better.

------
spoondan
Is it possible that the uncanniness of the more mundane in The Hobbit
magnifies our affinity for the more fantastical? I don't doubt The Hobbit has
improved on the technology and its applications to film. However, if the
mundane is relatively more uncanny than in other films, perhaps a more modest
improvement is benefiting from comparison to a lower baseline. That is, maybe
the lows are slightly lower, and the highs are only slightly higher.

------
michaelfeathers
I wonder whether the problems that people are seeing with 48fps are genre
specific? Sure, we've conditioned ourselves to dreamy visuals created by lower
frame rates, but losing that might affect fantasy more (particularly when
special effects can't be masked as well), and drama where a "cinematic" feel
is expected. Maybe 48fps would feel perfectly natural in a comedy or a
situational horror film?

~~~
mminer
I predict that a film's frame rate will become simply another choice for the
cinematographer to make. Just like different film stocks and processing
techniques are employed for different genres (e.g. bleach bypass in war
movies), perhaps the FPS will indeed become genre-specific like you suggest.
Debate about whether 48 is superior to 24 is misplaced -- it's an aesthetic
choice, and the fluid movement that comes with additional frames works well in
some scenarios but not in others. Many shots in The Hobbit looked terrible,
perhaps demonstrating that 48 is not the ideal frame rate for an epic fantasy,
but for some films it would be quite suitable.

------
Fargren
Ok, has anyone tried selecting the text on that blog? The effect made me feel
as though I was drunk. Why does it do that?

~~~
KwanEsq
Because for some reason they have applied a text-shadow effect with a colour
of #fff (white). So normally it is invisible against the also white
background, but once you select you put the selection colour behind it causing
the shadow to show up.

------
chrisringrose
I think the arbitrary choice of 48fps is the problem. I know it's easier to
down-convert to 24, but it seems 48 just isn't right for our eyes.

The human eye can process about 60fps. I love the idea of more frames, but
60fps might be better, and eliminate the "fast-forward" jittery look.

~~~
MattDL
The 60fps myth should be wearing thin by now, and I'm sad to see it repeated
so often on HN.

I don't have the relevant links available to me currently, but suffice to say
the eye can pick up on far, far more than 60 fps.

The fast forward look is just an adjustment period, you experience the same
watching videos of games at 60fps (even though they're played in 60fps
normally, it's a very odd thing).

~~~
chrisringrose
Ah, fair enough - thanks for the correction. However, the problem still stands
that 48fps still doesn't look "right" to most people. I saw The Hobbit, loved
it. And I want a faster frame rate than 24 - I think it can add to the
experience. But for whatever reason, 48 just never looked ..... "Right." And
I'm not alone.

------
geuis
There's no uncanny valley here. I just got back from seeing the movie an hour
ago, so I'm speaking from very fresh perspective.

I saw it in 3D at 48fps. Both completely killed the movie. In the very opening
scene where Bilbo is picking up the book, it looked too fast. It was the
opposite of "smooth".

I don't care about the technical arguments about how more frames per second is
smoother. It doesn't look right subjectively. I don't know if its interlacing,
or that it was high fps combined with 3D, but it continuously kept pulling me
out of the story and taking notice of how fake everything looked.

Everything that was epic in Lord of the Rings just looked phoney. It was
incredibly easy to see the CG effects on the orcs, goblins, and wargs.

I'm thinking about seeing the movie again in a week or so, but just the normal
24fps, non-3D version.

I really hope this _isn't_ the future of movies, because it looks freaking
awful.

~~~
baddox
I agree that there is no uncanny valley, but I believe that critics'
complaints (and perhaps your own) stem not from independent comparisons of
both 24 and 48 FPS to some ideal format, but rather from an assumption that 24
FPS _is_ the ideal form.

If you believe that the purpose of a film format is simply to convey moving
images to the viewer with as much fidelity and control as possible, as I do,
then 48 FPS is objectively better (and 96 FPS would be better still, although
there are obviously diminishing returns). The other opinion, which is that 24
FPS has some inherent artistic merit that makes it the ideal format for
cinema, is bizarre and incomprehensible to me, and that type of argument could
be (and probably was) used to argue against audio ("talkies"), color, surround
sound, digital color correction, etc.

I saw The Hobbit both in 3D HFR (digital projection) and 3D IMAX ("real" IMAX,
70mm film projection, in 24 FPS). The difference in fidelity to me was smack-
in-the-face obvious. HFR just looks so much better. In 24 FPS, the strobing in
any shot with camera movement is so bad that it feels more like a camera or
projector malfunction than a format that some people genuinely prefer for
artistic reasons.

I definitely hope HFR is the future of cinema, just like I hope high
resolution LCD displays become even more widespread, cell broadband networks
get faster, digital cameras get better and higher resolution sensors, etc. I
believe all these things are strictly better. To me, arguing that 24 FPS is
better than 48 FPS is as bizarre as arguing that everyone should still use
dial-up Internet just for the experience and so they will not take the wonder
of the Internet for granted.

~~~
reneherse
>If you believe that the purpose of a film format is simply to convey moving
images to the viewer with as much fidelity and control as possible, as I do,
then 48 FPS is objectively better

As used in the current film, 48FPS diminishes _selectivity of detail_ , one of
the most important attributes of any artform. In this film it is ALL detail,
ALL the time.

For an analogy, think of it in literary terms: 48FPS is akin to a writer
endlessly pouring over every minute detail of his scene, at the expense of
plot, characterization, theme, etc. In literature, that might become a
hallmark of style (Dickens), but even so, when the plot needs to move, one
dials down the descriptiveness. In film, we're swept along at the movie's
pace, and there isn't always time to process the blanket intensity of detail
at 48 FPS. It can easily draw our attention to non-essential parts of the
shot, and overwhelm visual attention at the expense of auditory story-
tracking.

FWIW, I saw the film in 48 FPS 3D, and I truly tried to be as open minded and
objective about what I was viewing, trying to approach the content, style, and
technology on its own terms. (I find this is often the way to get the most
enjoyable experience out of a movie.) There were moments when I found the
level of detail breathtaking. Unfortunately, there were more where I found it
to be distracting, and the motion strangely awkward. For the most part, I did
appreciate the lack of motion blur on panning shots.

Perhaps what is needed is a new method of dialing the detail up or down within
the shot when using HFR, beyond the current means of focus, depth of field,
and lighting. Like a painter selectively using detailed rendering techniques
on different faces within a scene, filmmakers shooting at 48 FPS could then
more easily direct their audience's glance and attention according to the aims
of the narrative.

But as in any art, there's no easy answer here. It's always going to be about
tradeoffs.

~~~
Wintamute
It's not only to do with the film-makers ability to craft, or dial-down the
perceived detail overload in 48fps. It's just as much to do with the viewers
expectations and experience. Can you imagine showing a recent 24fps
blockbuster action movie to a 1920s silent film cinema go-oer? The special
effects, quick cuts and loud soundtrack would have given them incredible
sensory overload. They would have left the cinema totally overwhelmed. I'm not
saying 48fps is a similar level of advance, but it's the same principle. Not
only do film-makers need to learn the new craft, we also need to learn to
watch it.

~~~
baddox
I agree, and I can't help but think that the anti-HFR crowd is almost
certainly putting themselves on the wrong side of history, like a (perhaps
hypothetical) critic who claims that no one ever wants to hear actors _speak_
in a cinema.

------
Tloewald
So ... Shame about the script.

------
martinced
Can we play 48fps on our computers? I mean: is there a common video format
supporting 48fps and a common media player (eg VLC) able to play at 48fps?

If so, the following movie would be great: make several types of animations /
sequences (both filmed and 3D and, if possible, a mix of both) but... On the
left part of the movie you show it at 48fps while on the right part of the
movie you show only, say, even frames (hence showing each even frame twice and
skipping every uneven frame).

That would be a great "visual explanation" as to what 48fps does.

~~~
beemoe
The "even frames" method of comparison you describe is flawed. Motion blur is
very important to our perception of motion, and is the reason that motion at
24fps can look great on exposed film (lots of blur) and terrible in video
games (no blur). When you skip half of the frames you have thrown out motion
blur information that could have been present had the lower-rate source been
created at that rate in the first place.

But yes, It would be neat to experience some legitimate side-by-side
comparison of frame rates / motion blurs. Such a comparison has subtleties
that make it hard to do fairly and cheaply.

<http://100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm> (edit to fix small
typo)

~~~
gwillen
Might this be the reason that I've heard complaints about choppiness of pans
in The Hobbit at 24 fps? (When they show a 24 fps version of a 48 fps movie,
do they just drop half the frames?)

------
pretoriusB
> _The reason action packed scenes and panning scenery all retain their
> authenticity is these scenes are unfamiliar to us. I’ve never encountered a
> battlefield of orcs, and I’ve never flown across the landscape hugging the
> ground in a helicopter. We have no prior experience which tells what these
> scenarios should look like._

That's not exactly what the "uncanny valley" theory says, though.

It's about realistic vs cartoony versions of things, not about familiar vs
unfamiliar things.

~~~
baddox
Well, the uncanny valley does rely on the adaptation of human brains to
quickly judge familiar things. Human faces are the most obvious and common
example, because the human brain and visual system has unsurprisingly adapted
to be extremely fast and aggressive at recognizing facial features. The effect
will never be as strong with something like, say, the face of an aardvark,
because everyone _sort of_ knows what aardvarks look like, but few people are
familiar enough to instantly recognize deviations and thus interpret the image
as creepy or disturbing.

