Hobbit Trailer (and some hilarity)...

[Anderson's Shame]

Well I think it looks great and they've got themselves my bum on a seat - the big pisser being that they are releasing the thing in two instalments a year apart!! Try explaining that to the kids.

It should be a Summer and Wnter release within the same year. The Hobbit is too slight a story to be split across a whole year.

From what I've heard about it they're going to give it the Lord of the Rings feel by beefing up the side stories that appeared in the book. But splitting it into two films does feel like a cash grab.

[radiator]

Is there any word yet on the likelihood of  'Extended' DVD editions, a la LotR?

Possibly not necessary this time round, what with it being split over two films and all.

[JOE SOAP]

Is there any word yet on the likelihood of  'Extended' DVD editions, a la LotR?

Is snow white?

[Steve Green]

To be fair to them they were fairly upfront about doing that on LOTR.

[radiator]

Peter Jackson's 10-minute preview of The Hobbit has met with a mixed response at CinemaCon.

The Lord of the Rings filmmaker is shooting his latest JRR Tolkien adaptation at a rate of 48 frames per second, double that of the industry standard 24fps.

SlashFilm's Peter Sciretta complained that the film looked like a "made for television BBC movie" and so "uncompromisingly real" that it seemed artificial.

"More noticeable in the footage was the make-up, the sets, the costumes," he said. "Hobbiton and Middle Earth didn't feel like a different universe, it felt like a special effect, a film set with actors in costumes. It looked like behind the scenes footage."

Sciretta concluded: "It didn't look cinematic. Not at all, even with a top filmmaker like Peter Jackson at the helm."

Hmmm. I'm curious to see the footage for myself. I really, really hate that Motion Interpolation technology some TVs utilise - I think it makes everything look eerily smooth (like the footage has been sped up x2) and makes big budget movies look as if they were filmed on a low quality camcorder - and all special effects resemble unconvincing matte paintings or rear-projections. Wonder if this will have a similar quality?

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/movies/news/a378386/the-hobbit-48fps-footage-sparks-mixed-response-at-cinemacon.html

[JOE SOAP]

It'd be interesting to do some contrasting tests to see what the footage looks like at both 24fps and 48 fps which is what Jackson & co. should've done. I'd also like to see what 48fps looks like on 35mm film as well as digital. I used to shoot 50fps super 8 film instead of 25 fps. It looked great on pans and fast motion but never videoish, but that is a smaller format.


A flat looking video image will never sell as cinema no matter how 'real' it looks.