In the film, this breakfast scene lasts 90 minutes

Most of the directors with a big boner for 3D – James Cameron, Peter Jackson – claim many of the problems people have with 3D – that it’s disorienting, that it’s hard to follow quicker camera movements – can be solved with higher frame rates. But when Peter Jackson debuted some 48 fps footage at CinemaCon (twice the normal 24 fps for film) back in April, the response was, shall we say, mixed. He later declined to show any 48 fps footage at Comic-Con, and now Variety reports that the 48 fps version, at least in the case of part one of Jackson’s now three-part Hobbit series “will go out to only select locations, perhaps not even into all major cities.”

Just don’t let Peter Jackson hear about this, he might try to shoot a whole other version.

According to source familiar with Warner’s release plans for Peter Jackson’s first “Hobbit,” the HFR version will go out to only select locations, perhaps not even into all major cities. People who have seen much of the film in 48 frames-per-second 3D tell Variety the picture now looks vastly better than the test footage shown this April at CinemaCon, which had not yet undergone post-production polishing and got a mixed reception from exhibitors.

In case you’re wondering, yes, “HFR” does seem to stand for “high-frame rate.” Real scientific, there, guys.

But the studio still wants to protect the format by going into a limited release for the HFR version, hoping to test the marketplace and expand the HFR release for the second and third installments — provided auds are enthusiastic. As of now, there are still no theaters ready for HFR projection, though some require only a software upgrade that will be ready in September. Warners is satisfied with the pace of efforts to ready theaters for HFR.

Considering these audiences are people dying to see nine more hours of Hobbitry, yeah, I’m guessing they’re going to be enthusiastic.

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"Whoa, this weed is really self-indulgent."

 The Hobbit is by far my favorite of the Tolkien books, and my only sticking point in seeing the movie (beyond general hobbit-fatigue) is that it’s going to be split into two movies, with the first part reportedly being two and a half hours long. Five hours for The Hobbit seems… long. Director Peter Jackson recently screened footage at Comic-Con, where he was asked if he was planning to split The Hobbit further, into three movies– wait, WHAT?! Jesus, why would you ask that?!?

“That’s a discussion we’re having, yeah,” Jackson said. “We have certainly been talking to the studio about some of the material we can’t film, and we’ve been asking them so we can do a bit more filming next year. Which, I don’t know what would come of that, whether it’d be extended editions or whatnot. But those discussions are ongoing.

“I’d like to shoot a bunch more material that we [couldn't] shoot. There’s so much good stuff in the appendices that we haven’t been able to squeeze into these movies,” Jackson said, referring to the appendix sections found at the end of “The Return of the King” detailing more background on Middle Earth and its history. [Hitfix (with video)]

Oh sure, the appendices, there’s great stuff in there. And hey, what about the dust jacket copy? That’s gotta be worth two more films, easy. Look, I know there isn’t much to do in New Zealand, but Jesus, man, learn to edit. Warner Bros, for their part, deny that there’s any talk of turning it into a trilogy. Thank God.

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"Come at me, nerds."

Don’t ask me why, but the quickest way to get people on the internet riled up is to either misidentify some piece of comic book trivia or to start talking digital video formats. Case in point, at least for the latter, a Cinemacon event back in April where Peter Jackson presented some footage from The Hobbit in 48 fps, which was either the look of the inevitable future, or the stupidest thing since pet rocks, depending on which side of the strictly-enforced, binary hate-matrix you fell. Sadly, it seems Comic-Con won’t have the opportunity to host the latest battle in the Great Frame Rate War of 2012, as Peter Jackson and Warner Bros have decided not to screen their Hobbit footage in 48 fps at all. Hope you’re happy, nerds, now you’re on time out.

From an interview with LA Times’ Hero Complex:

Jackson: I think it’s more about protecting the downside, rather than helping the film in any significant way. There is a huge audience waiting to see “The Hobbit,” and any positive press from Comic-Con will truthfully have little impact on that. However, as we saw at CinemaCon earlier this year, with our 48 frames per second presentation, negative bloggers are the ones the mainstream press runs with and quotes from. I decided to screen the “Hobbit” reel at Comic-Con in 2-D and 24 frames per second, so the focus stays firmly with the content and not the technical stuff. If people want 3-D and 48fps, that choice will be there for them in December.

Right, because a 10-minute show reel at a comic book convention is a perfect showcase for the content and story, not a place for people to dork out on eye candy. It’s amazing how quickly studios have gone from pandering to the Comic-Con crowd like it was the end-all, be-all bellwether of mainstream movie tastes, to treating it like the lose-lose collection of amateur and professional cynics that it is. Trust me, I am that audience. Studios should never listen to me. About anything. You’d hope that if Jackson was going to shoot the movie in 48 fps, he’d believe in it enough to screen the footage in 48 fps, but I can’t say as I blame him. At Comic-Con it seems like you either get bad buzz, or good buzz that’s largely meaningless. If Comic-Con buzz translated to box office, Scott Pilgrim would’ve made more than Avatar. I wish it would have, but me flailing my flabby arms around spazzily doesn’t make it so.

For years, James Cameron has been telling everyone who would listen (mostly his army of high-priced whores) that a lot of the early problems people had with 3D – that it required slower cuts and camera movements because of strobing and blurring – could be solved with higher frame rates, which is relatively easy to accomplish (your TV is already capable of doing much higher than film’s 24 frames per second, for instance). Peter Jackson explained last year:

Looking at 24 frames every second may seem ok–and we’ve all seen thousands of films like this over the last 90 years–but there is often quite a lot of blur in each frame, during fast movements, and if the camera is moving around quickly, the image can judder or “strobe.”

Shooting and projecting at 48 fps does a lot to get rid of these issues.  It looks much more lifelike, and it is much easier to watch, especially in 3-D.

Jackson put his money where his beardy mouth is, shooting The Hobbit at 48 fps, and today Warner Bros debuted some of the footage at CinemaCon.

Peter Jackson said in a videotaped message that he hopes his movie can be played in 48fps in “as many cinemas as possible” when it opens on Dec. 14.
In his message, Jackson stated that higher frame rates could make cinema “more attractive,” especially in 3D as it is “more gentle on the eyes.” He added that 2D at 48fps also looks “fantastic.”
The clarity Jackson described was visible in the presentation, but since the clips were described as “a work in progress” Warner did not screen footage that was fully color-corrected, or featuring completed VFX work.

And if I could sum up the collective reaction, I’d say it’s something along the lines of “OH MY GOD A WITCH, BURN IT!”

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