Items filtered by date: November 2012

Every once in awhile, people try something crazy and new with cinema. From sound, to ultra-widescreen, Technicolor and 3D, to anamorphic projection, digital surround, digital 3D and even smell-o-vision (currently in Korea only), many of these innovations have been great improvements. Last weekend, the first change in close to a century in the frame rate that commercial cinema is projected in came to light with Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit.

High Frame Rate (HFR) projection is supposed to bring a more natural look to film, to smooth out the bumps in pans and vista shots, and to improve the 3D experience by having a lot more frames of information to keep the illusion alive. Anyone who knows me will tell you I’ve been really skeptical as to whether this would be an improvement and not a hot mess in an epic film like The Hobbit, especially since I saw a piece of the early test footage about six months back. Was I wrong? I hoped so.