Mon Jun 24, 2019 3:55 pm
Okay, I'll weigh in a bit more here without going into any of the specifics about Gemini Man that would cause me to break my NDA. There are a few things that I've seen argued that I need to address.
1) Artistic Advantages: I pointed out above the creative choice with Video Game High School using variable frame rates. There are artistic and creative advantages to using HFR or VFR. This is subjective however, and thus arguing against it is always going to come down to preconceived notions that are not fact based. It's what feels right to the individual. But that can be said about any creative format. Stereo 3D can be very useful as an artistic format to enhance a story. There have been many great examples in the last decade since Avatar where 3D was used very well. Most people only know of The Hobbit for HFR.
2) Some technical: 48 FPS is what The Hobbit was shot at, which is double the normal 24 FPS base that has been used in cinema for a long time. This essentially cut in half the motion blur when shooting at 180° Shutter Angle. Cutting down motion blur can be very beneficial to Stereo 3D and 60 FPS cuts motion blur down by a bit more, which is very helpful. When The Hobbit used 48 FPS it wasn't quite enough to cut down all the motion blur, but they chose it as an easy compromise due to the amount of CGI Visual Effects that had to be rendered at that higher frame rate. The fact is that it was a budgetary choice that made them choose 48 FPS.
Now, I will talk briefly about Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk and Gemini Man a bit here to cover 120 FPS. It's the same 3D team serving Ang Lee in both of these movies, and the same team that has helped drive the HFR workflow. Billy Lynn was shot at 120 FPS because it was easily divisible to get 24 FPS. 60 FPS isn't as easily divisible. Billy Lynn was on a lower budget than The Hobbit, and didn't have as much VFX as The Hobbit, so they could push the frame rates. They shot on the Sony CineAlta F65 in 4K for Billy Lynn. Gemini Man however they shot ARRI Alexa Mini at 3.2K, and I think I can safely say this because it is on the IMDb. More details will be shared at a later date when my NDA doesn't prevent me from talking about what I learned about their camera system. Either way, I can tell you that they did adequately provide the right budget to handle the workflow for on set dailies on Gemini Man with a massive server room connected to the projection room via GigaBit Ethernet. I don't think that bit of info breaks my NDA. They had Petabytes of storage going as well. Again, I doubt that breaks NDA because most of this can be easily guessed. More details will be revealed later.
Now, with Gemini Man I learned that they were shooting at a 360° Shutter Angle on my set visit. The 120 FPS at 360° Shutter Angle made the footage have the same motion blur as shooting 60 FPS at 180° Shutter, but because they were shooting 120 FPS which caused less light to hit the sensor they needed the extra help from Shutter Angle. This is where it has been publicly said that 60 FPS is the most you really need to do for HFR since beyond it is almost indistinguishable to the human eye. But, because they need to deliver a 24 FPS version as well they need something that 24 FPS is easily divisible from and thus, that's why 120 FPS was settled upon. I will being publishing more on all these techs later when the movie is closer to release. It will be on MarketSaw.com a 3D Blog I've been a Collaborative Writer for several years.
So, I hope that helps get some understanding on some of the technical aspects of shooting 120 FPS. The main benefit for 3D is the motion blur being cut down. This is important with 3D because of some of the artifacts that are present in motion blur with 3D. It overall enhances the 3D image.
One additional technical note that is worth bringing up about HFR: it cuts down perceived noise. What?! Yes, if you shoot 1600 ISO and pause a single frame you'll see the noise. The noise is in the image, it may not be bad noise, but it's there. Yet, once you start playing the footage at 120 FPS you'll instantly notice you can't perceive the noise. It's there in the individual frames, but because of how fast the images are moving in front of your eyes the noise can't be seen as it blends into the image. This was demoed to me and I was very impressed. I would say try it out, but DaVinci Resolve doesn't allow 120 FPS Timelines at this time still. 60 FPS is the most you can have as a timeline I believe. Either way, it was a really cool example of how motion images trick our eyes and brains.
3) Stereoscopic 3D: I understand many people like to point out that 3D is falling again. There are a lot of political reasons inside Hollywood why 3D was bungled over the last decade. It comes to the Native VS Conversion argument. However, the Studio Executives wanted to spend less money and charge premium ticket prices... and thus chose Conversion often. Now, there's another side to this. The Conversion Companies also bid on the Studio Jobs with "Packages" that undercut what the Native Companies could offer. The Conversion Companies would let a Studio pay for a 5-Picture Deal. Native Companies required flexible budgets to work with what the production entailed, but since Conversion was all done in post then it was pretty much just a VFX bid. We all know how VFX companies are underbidding each other to get gigs and it's hurting the industry.
So with 3D the same underbidding hurt it. At the same time the 3D Conversion hurt the distribution because it came down to Real 3D versus Fake 3D for audiences. When they couldn't figure out why the 3D was worth it due to the movie being shot in 2D and then getting converted with nothing really being added except the surcharge at the box office it caused audiences to gravitate to 2D. Native movies did their best, and often audiences responded better to the native productions. However, there were frequently less native productions due to bidding war that I stated above.
Now on an artistic level I will say that I'm a big fan of well done Native 3D movies. I still want to make many of my movie ideas in Native 3D because I have specific creative choices for how to utilize Stereoscopic Images. It deserves to be seen as another tool in the filmmaker's toolbox. Not a gimmick, but a tool. Not something to tack on premium charges at the box office, but another way to enhance the audience's experience.
FINAL THOUGHTS
This has been a long post. I'm sorry for that. And, I wish I could go into more details with my knowledge about Gemini Man, but as I've stated I am under NDA. I hope I didn't break any of it here. But then again I only talked technical aspects and didn't go into very specific things that could get me in trouble. I think you will all be impressed when the movie comes out. As long as it gets a wide enough 3D HFR HDR release.
"I'm well trained in the art of turning **** to gold." - Tim Buttner (timbutt2)
Cameras: URSA Mini Pro G2 & Pocket 6K Pro
Past: UM4.6K, P6K, BMCC 2.5K
Computers: iMac 5K (Mid 2020) & MacBook Pro Retina 15.4in (Mid 2018)