Most movies use a 180-degree shutter angle, which means the shutter is open half the time. http://www.red.com/learn/red-101/shutter-angle-tutorial So you get motion blur for half the frame time, and no light on the film for the other half of the time. The Hobbit movies (at least the first one) used a 270-degree shutter angle, so even at half the frame time, they got 3/4 as much motion blur in each frame as a normal movie. That might contribute to the odd feeling viewers had. http://www.fxguide.com/featured/the-hobbit-weta/
I believe this was done by PJ for a couple of reasons. 1) Practical, increasing the shutter speed means either increasing the amount of light for scenes, using faster film stock ( or higher ISO on your RED camera ) or some combination of both. 2) This shutter speed was a compromise between the exposure time 180-degree shutter shooting at 24 -vs- 48 fps, and would still retain some of the blur so that 24fps screenings would appear relatively 'normal'
Indeed. I had to laugh though, because first I read it as a sound person would and wondered why you had made that comment here. The camera uses internal fans to cool down the sensor between takes and it is really loud, like a hair dryer. So when you start shooting that often means stopping because of some sound which wasn't obvious over the background noise of the camera cooling itself down. Not cool.
The article wanders on and on, but is simply grasping at the much more learned aesthetic repulsion of motion blur.
24 and 25 fps (aka 1/48th and 1/50th) motion blur have defined the cinematic world for over a century.
Video? 1/60th. Why the aesthetic revulsion? While I am certain this is a complex sociological construct, there certainly is an overlap with lower budget video soap operas of the early 80's. Much like oak veneer, the aesthetic becomes imbued with greater meaning.
The Hobbit made a bit of a curious choice for their 1/48th presentation in choosing a 270° shutter. An electronic shutter can operate at 360°, which would have delivered the historical 1/48th shutter motion blur.
Instead, the shutter ended up being 1/64th, triggering those all-too-unfortunate cultural aesthetic associations with the dreaded world of low-budget video.
It should be noted that there are some significant minds that believe in HFR motion pictures, such as Pixar's Rick Sayre. However, a disproportionate number of DPs have been against it, almost exclusively due to the motion blur aesthetic it brings, and the technical challenges of delivering to the established aesthetic within the constraints of HFR shooting.
