One of the subjects that came up when Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg made a joint appearance at Comic-Con this past week was the supplemental fees charged for 3D movie screenings, reports the New Zealand Herald. Peter is quoted:

“I think the 3D situation is kind of interesting at the moment because, after Avatar, it survived for a while as this premium experience with higher ticket prices.

“But I think the audiences have now come to realise there are bad movies that can be in 3D as well and, on top of that, you’re being charged an extra $5 to see a movie that was as bad as one you saw in 2D,” said Jackson, sitting alongside Spielberg at popular culture convention Comic-Con.

Of course, the pair have a 3D film coming up, The Adventures of Tintin, co-produced by both and directed by Spielberg, and Peter is shooting The Hobbit in 3D. Spielberg added that he hoped 3D would eventually be used so skillfully that it would blend in with other film techniques and not call attention to itself:

“Then maybe they can make the ticket prices comparable to a 2D movie and not charge such exorbitant prices just to gain entry into a 3D one, with the exception of Imax, where we are getting a premium experience in a premium environment,” Spielberg said.

“But, to show a 3D movie in a similar theatre in a multiplex next to another similar theatre showing a 2D movie, [I’m] hoping some day there will be so many 3D movies that the point of purchase prices can come down, which I think would be fair to the consumer.”

But theaters aren’t charging premium prices because they assume the films are better and more attractive. They do it because it costs more to make a film in 3D or convert one to 3D. $30 million dollars more, on average for these big blockbusters. And mediocre films cost the same to make as good ones do. At some point 3D technology may become cheaper, and the price differential could disappear. That assumes that 3D is judged to be a successful technology.

It’s not just a matter of mediocre films, either. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 made only 43% of its record opening weekend gross in 3D-equipped theaters–that despite the fact that 68% of the locations where it played showed it in 3D. People who went to that film in 2D surely didn’t assume it was mediocre. On the whole, it has been getting very favorable reviews, and HP fans would surely spend the extra few dollars if they really wanted to see it in 3D.

But 3D may turn out not to be the cash cow that the studios had hoped. The decline in 3D revenues this year has been real and it has been consistent. In some, if not most cases, exhibitors are actually making more money showing 2D prints than 3D. (I’ll be posting about this soon on Observations on Film Art, my other blog, and I’ll post a link when the piece is up for those who are interested in this issue.) The explanation would seem likely to be that most people just don’t care very much about 3D.

This has yet to be confirmed, but it seems pretty plausible.The MarketSaw blog, devoted to 3D, reports:

Just heard from one of my top sources on AVATAR that James Cameron and Jon Landau visited the set of THE HOBBIT in Wellington, New Zealand this week!

According to the author, they were checking out the Red Epic cameras that are being used to shoot The Hobbit in 3D. Although it’s not mentioned, I suspect Cameron is also particularly keen to see what the footage shot at 48 fps looks like. He’s seen plenty of 3D films, but never part of a mainstream theatrical film shot at that speed–something Cameron has been advocating and plans to do for his Avatar sequels.

Speaking of which, the brief article also reports:

Further and quite importantly, they booked studio floors for AVATAR 2 and 3!

That’s pretty important, all right. Apart from the performance-capture for Avatar, which was done in Los Angeles, much of the special-effects work on the film was done at Weta. Cameron’s decision to use Avatar annointed Weta Digital as perhaps the most cutting-edge effects house in the world. For a while it was mainly Peter Jackson making effects-heavy blockbusters there. A few years ago the question was whether Peter would be the only major director keeping the post-production facilities in Wellington busy and up-to-date.

Then came Spielberg for the Tintin film and after that Cameron. There had been reports that Cameron was seriously considering bringing both Avatar sequels to Weta, which would keep it humming for a long time, even if PJ decided to make a low-budget, low-tech horror film himself–something he has occasionally expressed the desire to do.( Of course, it was announced when the Tintin series began that Peter would direct one of the planned three films adapted from the classic Belgian comics.) I’m assuming that if Cameron shoots part or all of the film there, he surely will do much of the effects work there as well.

The Weta people should have quite a bit of job security if this rumor gets confirmed.

[Thanks to Paulo Pereira for the link!]

I just caught up with a story on the Red Epic cameras, posted about a month ago by FilmContact.com. For those of you who know at least a little about digital photographic technology, it gives a pretty good summary of the capabilities of these cameras, which Peter Jackson’s team are using to make The Hobbit in 3D. The decision to film at 48 frames per second rather than the standard 24 has rightly caused considerable excitement in the industry. As with LOTR, PJ and company will undoubtedly have a major impact on film techniques of the future.

The author explains in terms that are fairly easy to follow just why we can expect to see very high quality images once The Hobbit hits theater screens.

[Many thanks to David Ivory for calling my attention to this story!]

After a long silence punctuated by an April Fool’s entry, Ian has put up another post. It’s mainly about what’s going on in Wellington now that Martin Freeman has left New Zealand, as had been planned, to film his scenes for the second series of the TV show Sherlock. I quite liked the first series, where Freeman plays Watson, and am looking forward to the three next shows.

Ian gives some pretty good hints as to what is being filmed in Freeman’s absence, including scenes with Radagast the Brown. Not surprisingly, none of the photos of the other cast members he talks about come from the Hobbit production itself.

I’m puzzled about the array of Hobbit links listed on the index page, though. Ian himself seems to have two titles for his own blog, “Ian McKellen’s Hobbit Movie Blog,” which is clear enough, and “Notes from Imladris,” which seems like an inappropriate title, given that so little of the book’s action takes place in Imladris (i.e., Rivendell). Clicking on either of these links leads to the same list of entries.

What’s more, “The Hobbit Blog,” the official blog of the film (which so far mainly links to things posted elsewhere, mainly on PJ’s Facebook page) is listed twice, once as “The Hobbit Blog” and once as “The Hobbit,” in the gold font familiar from the LOTR credits. Finally, there’s a link to PJ’s Facebook page. I’m not sure what Ian’s blog’s name really is. No doubt there’s some risk of people confusing it with “The Hobbit Blog” run by the studio publicists. “The Grey Book II” would seem a logical one. The original “Grey Book” and “White Book” still make a good read when one is suffering a bout of LOTR nostaligia.

In reporting on the National Association of Broadcasters convention, which is meeting this week, Variety had this to say:

Certainly there’s a sense of real change in the air, especially after Monday’s 3D television pitch by James Cameron and Vince Pace. Along with growing acceptance of 4K, Sony’s new F65 camera showing off 14 stops of dynamic range, new TVs and digital cameras that display a wider range of colors than before, there’s some real momentum behind improvements in sound and picture that have been on technologists’ wish list for years — in some cases, decades.

But this year’s biggest leap forward seems to be in the move to higher frame rates. Cameron has been evangelizing the idea for years, and Doug Trumbull, who pioneered the idea with Showscan in the 1980s, presented an updated concept, Showscan Digital, at the Digital Cinema Summit on Sunday. Then Peter Jackson confirmed rumors that he’s shooting ‘The Hobbit’ at 48 frames per second, in addition to 3D.

While some people still love the 24 frames-per-second look, the shift to higher frame rates doesn’t need to incite a debate like that surrounding 3D. What’s more likely is that that filmmakers and all manner of content creators will now choose their preferred frame rate based on the look they want to achieve, much as they now choose a color palette and filters.

I’m not sure why some people are so enamored of 24 fps, a filming/projecting rate chosen in the early days of sound filmmaking. As you’re watching a film in a theater, 24 frames are projected on the screen per second. In the interval when the film is moving to the next frame, a shutter crosses the lens, and there’s a tiny moment of darkness on the screen. It’s too tiny for our eye to notice ordinarily, although in very bright scenes one can sometimes see a distinct flickering. The same is even more true when a silent film is projected at 16 or 18 or 20 fps, since the tiny moment of darkness is slightly longer. In short, by projecting twice as many images per second, the filmmakers can cut down even further on the length of split-second of darkness.

Shooting more images per second also minimizes blur. In shooting 24 fps, the film is exposed long enough that rapid movement in front of the camera will blur, especially if it’s moving from side to side. (You can easily see just how blurry individual frames can be if you freeze-frame a DVD during a movement of quick action and then go through frame by frame. There’s a lot of blur!) By making the exposures of the frames half as long, the camera can minimize the blurring.

The Variety report suggests that professionals in the film and television industry see shooting at increased frame rates like 48 fps is a very major development, and once again Peter’s team is leading the way.

Variety has posted an article on the pros and cons of shooting a mainstream movie like The Hobbit at 48 fps (frames per second) rather than the standard 24 fps:

Peter Jackson’s plans to shoot “The Hobbit” at 48 frames per second — twice the current rate — marks the beginning of a technical shift in moviemaking that’s as significant as 3D, color, or even sound.

But the world’s first 48p feature also presents a serious hurdle for New Line, as retrofitting the quickened print to play in analog projectors, which still operate at the majority of screens, is not so simple.

As of now there are about 16,000 digital screens in the US, of which about half have 3D capacity. Those digital projectors could be switched to project 48 fps with no difficulty. There are over 23,000 theaters, however, that still show film-on-film, 35mm prints, and they can’t suddenly switch to 48 fps. In his Facebook post, Peter said that by the time The Hobbit is released in December, 2012, there might be nearly 10,000 screens worldwide capable of showing it in 3D at 48 fps. That’s not really a lot compared to the number of theaters that would need 35mm prints. According to Variety:

Making “The Hobbit” compatible for those screens isn’t as easy as taking out every other frame, which would create a jerky image. Instead, it’s necessary to combine pairs of consecutive frames to a single image in post-production.

Warner and New Line have not addressed their plans for film prints for “The Hobbit,” and did not respond to requests for comment. Exhibitors were also not available for comment.

Obviously the studios can’t just abandon the larger market where 35mm prints are required, so I presume it will be show in 2D as well–at 48 fps in digital houses, at 24 fps in theaters not yet converted to digital. (A recent estimate suggested that 35mm prints will continue to be used in theatrical distribution until at least the end of 2013, just when The Hobbit’s second part is due out.)

On his Facebook page, Peter has posted an excellent little essay about shooting digital 3D images for The Hobbit. For the first time in a mainstream commercial film released into theaters, the filming rate will be 48 fps (frames per second) rather than the standard 24 fps that has been used since the late 1920s.

There has been some confusion about what 48 fps means. Is it that the two lenses filming the 3D image will each take half the images? No. The answer is quite simple and depends on the images being projected at 48 fps in the theater. It’s necessary to understand that no matter how many frames you shoot per second, the speed of the image will be identical to the speed of the real-life action if the speed of projection is the same number of frames per second. In the 1910s, a filming rate of 16 or 18 fps was common, but projectors ran at the same speed. If you ever see early silent films that look fast and jerky, that’s not because the camera operators of those days were ignorant or the cameras primitive. It’s just because you’re seeing the images projected too fast, most likely at 24 fps, or “sound speed.”

As Peter explains very clearly in his essay, showing more frames per image gives a steadier image with less strobing and blur. The reason is because your eye is given twice as much visual image at 48 fps than at 24.

In Chapter 9 of The Frodo Franchise, I talked about the enormous influence LOTR had on film technology, primarily in the areas of digital intermediates and color grading, of techniques for creating realistic human skin and eyes (used, of course, for Gollum), and the Massive program for multiplying people and animals through the use of simple artificial intelligence. It looks like Peter’s team will be equally cutting-edge with The Hobbit!

Peter promises a video to come soon, so perhaps we can expect a production diary from him and his crew, something similar to what he did for King Kong.

An article posted today on If.co.au offers new information on the RED EPIC 3D cameras to be used for The Hobbit. The film is:

• being shot on 30 RED EPIC cameras;
• using Zeiss Ultra Primes, Master Primes and Optimo zoom lenses;
• shooting at 47.96 frames per second;
• using 3ality Digital rigs

The EPICS can shoot at 5K resolution, which is a big step up in definition of the image than anything released to regular theaters to date. Shooting at 47.96 is essentially twice the standard sound-film shooting speed, 24 frames per second. That in itself doubles the amount of visual information passing before your eyes and makes for a richer, denser image. All that extra visual material should make New Zealand … er … Middle-earth look great on the big screen.

[Thanks to Stew Fyfe for the link!]

Stuff.co.nz offers a short article on the latest annual screen industry survey from Statistics New Zealand:

Wellington’s film industry is increasingly reliant on big-budget productions such as Avatar and The Hobbit as the New Zealand industry becomes more dependent on post-production work.

Basically although filming in New Zealand fluctuates over time, the special effects and other post-production services are growing. The article doesn’t name names, but surely Weta Digital and Park Road Post are leading the expansion. The trend will no doubt continue, especially if James Cameron decides definitely to make his two Avatar sequels in Wellington, as he is inclining to do. Those plus The Hobbit and the Tintin series should keep the facilities humming with business.

The article, originally from the Dominion Post (Wellington’s daily paper) concludes:

The industry recorded revenue of $2.8 billion last year, up 2 per cent from 2009.

New Zealand had established itself as a post-production hub. Big projects would always affect the figures, but it was pleasing to see the bottom line holding strong.

The website for the Red Digital Cinema firm today posted this press release:

For more on the Epic camera, see here. The Epic is the successor to the Red camera, which was used on District 9 and The Lovely Bones.