48fps is Charlie Chaplin's Fault (Sort Of)

 

Is it me, or do we forget innumerable progressive achievements throughout the history of cinema?

This is especially the case with the discussion of High Frame Rate photography and exhibition. Most of the chatter has centered around the pending release of The Hobbit at 48 frames per second, a rate that doubles the standard accepted for over 75 years. Some would say this is a cheap gimmick, or even a nefarious plot of some sort by the studios and billionaire directors and the Illuminati and Xenu and Stalin.

Let's back up and take a cleaner, less sensational look at things, Spider-friends.

What we consider to be "cinema" runs at 24 still image frames per second in front of our eyes. In the days of silent films, they ran at 16-18 frames per second. The difference in the number of frames is what makes our association with what "old" movies look like at a glance. The jumpy, jerky look of silents is unmistakeable. To some, it causes instant revulsion, as it connotes something that they refuse to watch, whether for dissimilarity to what they're accustomed or out of perceived inferiority. If only those many knew what they were missing out on, but that's another column for another day.

The more frames, the smoother the image, and the more pleasing to the eye. The mandatory move to 24 frames was due to the soundtrack for sound films needing those additional frames to properly sync. Instead of 60 feet of film going through the projector per second, 90 feet hurtled through, assaulting early 20th century eyes with a more fluid, luxurious picture than they thought possible. They probably would have done more frames per second, but they ran the risk of the projectors shredding the film. The use of 30 frames per second was right at the bleeding edge in the early days, but it would only come into mainstream use later, predominantly in videotape-based photography (think of BBC teledramas like I, Claudius, or modern Asian soap operas).

The 24 fps flicker effect is what we came to associate with the cinematic aesthetic. It was a warm balance between the real world and the still life of individual frames, but not too far in either direction.

The problem of celluloid tearing itself apart in the projector assembly is no longer a problem in the digital age, where most film exhibition is (lamentably) done off of hard drives. The elimination of this limitation led tech nerd, pro-3D directors like James Cameron, Peter Jackson, and various others to decree a push toward 48, 60, and even 120 frames per second cinema.

Even before these directors and digital, brilliant minds like Roger Ebert and Douglas Trumbull advocated exhibition processes like Maxivision 48 (Ebert) and ShowScan (Trumbull). Processes like these required loads of equipment upgrades in principal photography and in the exhibition world, and from what I've read, it would appear that the death of their widespread adoption was that neither end of the business wanted to move first and risk that the other end wouldn't come through. Both processes benefitted from radically improved clarity and as a result, focal depth. Your eyes had less work to do when they were supplied with all of that additional visual stimuli, and the work of a master cinematographer could simply wash over you.

Fast forwarding back to the recent past, the CinemaCon announcements from Cameron, Jackson, and company a couple of years ago riled many cinema fans who speculated that they were somehow shoving something down our throats. What could be characterized as innovative, pioneering filmmakers touting bold new experiments was instead met with suspicion and the sharpening of pitchforks.

Many lashed out at the "profiteering millionaires" in controlled bursts when feature articles or interviews mentioning the topic would pop up. The simmering rolled to a full boil following the screening of 48fps footage from The Hobbit at CinemaCon three months ago.

I was part of the flood of those reactions, and at the time, I had mixed feelings about the whole thing. I remain leaning toward the hopeful side, even with the announcement that tomorrow's Hobbit presentation will only feature footage in 24fps.

I'm not bothered at all by that decision. My educated guess is that they don't want to make the mistake once again of showing the unfinished, unrepresentative version of a very different cinematic aesthetic to a room full of people predisposed toward hypercriticism. I think that is very wise. The biggest issues I had with the CinemaCon demo was that the virtually finished (color corrected, filtered, etc), fuller sequences that played like scenes actually worked great for me. The bits that played like traditional sizzle reel stuff played against the benefits of the tech they were showing off. It's crazy not to show off a new technological product in the properly curated, finished-quality form for which it is designed. This is the same as composing a movie for 3D if it is to be released in 3D, from boarding to shooting and editing. This is why movies like Hugo and Prometheus look so outstanding in 3D: the right work was done, soup to nuts.

I look forward to Warner Bros hopefully doing something like those Avatar Days that Fox did, where people could get their eyes wet with Avatar's overwhelming (in the good way) 3D. The portions of that Hobbit reel that worked really left the room speechless. I can only imagine what the right 20 minutes would do to the skeptical, including an undetermined quantity of holdout theatre owners.

Since that morning in April, I haven't had the opportunity to watch any more HFR content, but I have thought a great deal about it.

Any time I've watched a movie or TV show, I notice motion blur and strobing more actively than I did previously. The effect of eye strain when watching both 2D and 3D content has become infinitely more pronounced. In recent interviews I've conducted, I've made a point to ask visual artists their thoughts about HFR. I find that most of their opinions are optimistic and curious. Pietro Scalia (editor on both Prometheus and The Amazing Spider-Man) sounded very eager to play with it when we spoke in Aruba a couple of weeks ago. He saw it as a new set of tools to play with, not a mandate.

The audience, it would appear, is much more anxious and unsettled by the idea of change than the people whose livelihoods it immediately affects. I may be overreaching there, but from the limited sampling I've done, the artists want to jump in that sandbox.

There's something to be said for trying new things in the cinema. In the past, doing so has brought us sound and color, along with countless other advances in the photographic process. We've gotten marvelous things like deep focus, large-format exposure (70mm, 4K), and visual effects.

Those special effects have gone from miniatures and matte paintings to in-camera optical tricks to computer-generated composite wizardry, and all sorts of things in-between, including stereographic 3D. It is not universally a good thing, but like all visual effects, it's all in the application.

It took me until last week to realize that the sorts of things we find ourselves thinking are brand-new bastardizations or perversions of the art have been around for decades.

While combing through Criterion's recent Blu-ray release of Chaplin's The Gold Rush, I realized that, in a way, the push toward HFR and upconverting to the higher standard started 70 years ago. Believe it or not, Chaplin made a decision tantamount to George Lucas' discarding of the original theatrical editions of the original Star Wars trilogy.

The Gold Rush was first released in 1925. It was an enormous hit, and made tons of money. By the time he released The Great Dictator in 1940, even Chaplin, the holdout, had embraced the onset of talkies. The notion of repertory screenings of movies after their original run was a new idea gaining traction, but in 1940, no one would dare release a silent film. Chaplin therefore recut Gold Rush, removing all of the title cards and adding narration and dialogue that were performed as if he were telling the story and there just happened to be images to go along with it. It's the style that the Fractured Fairy Tales cartoons ripped off wholesale (and quite successfully).

The addition of sound required the film to be sped up to 90 feet or 24 frames per second. When all was said and done, the movie was 16 minutes longer, featured various alternate takes or reshoots entirely, post-converted to 24fps, and added a completely different mood to the picture as part of the added soundtrack. From that point, and for the rest of his life, Chaplin would consider the 1942 version his definitive cut.

So naturally, he destroyed every copy of the 1925 version that he had or could find. He "pulled a George Lucas" before there was a George Lucas to accuse of that.

The story of how the 1925 version was miraculously salvaged and restored is told in featurettes on the Blu-ray, but suffice to say that from 1942 until 1993, no one could have seen the original classic film. When the restoration was completed in 1993, Chaplin's children made it clear that they only allowed the reconstructed version to be completed as a curiosity for the sake of historical record.

I know I'm not alone when I say that I'm very, very glad that they did the right thing. I prefer the 1942 version, and it's the one that I rewatch most often, but I don't know if that's because I objectively prefer it...or because it's the one that I always knew until the 2003 DVD allowed me to see both versions. For new viewers, I would unquestionably urge them to see the '25 and then the '42.

When I contemplated '25 vs. '42 the other day, I think I would have still preferred the one that could justifiably be called a post-converted, re-imagined bastardization.

I wonder how the final products of refined HFR cinema will fare with the audience, both the natively-shot and possible "up-conversions". I wonder if we'll see the same effect that happened with Gold Rush. I wonder if filmmakers will adopt a mixed approach, using an adapted "Variable Frame Rate" methodology (ok, Tony Scott has been doing that for years).

I'm just glad that we're still trying new things, and that more amazing advances could still be on the horizon.