http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/james-cameron-fully-intends-make-172916
So does this mean that render times are essentially QUADRUPLED for the same thing?
Will current houses have to either increase their render capacity, or decrease their shots if this catches on?
One thing is for sure…cooling fan manufacturers just got happy.
Increasing the frame-rate doesn’t necessarily equate to a directly proportional increase in rendering times or costs. Same as rendering two eyes usually averages out to 10 to 20% more computational work and not double.
In first place a denser temporal sampling means you can reduce other things, and get better interpolation from some data. You reduce moblur etc. Especially if you’re heavy on raytracing, fast shots you’re already paying for in rendering several times over the single temporal sample of a non mo-blurred shot.
Secondly, a lot of rendering power already goes into partials, you often render on 8s and 4s before you try to render the whole sequence, many, many times over (not to mention the absurd amount of stills and wedges).
Unless you’re working on something where motion and moblur has great impact, you can work at 12 fps in lighting for a relatively long time throughout the process.
All in all the deressed and not-full-on renderings during production outweight the iterations of the final-like settings several times over.
You’re probably looking at 30-40% more rendering across the span of a production to go from 24 to 60.
Nobody’s done anything quite like it yet, but in plenty productions you might have to do a few sequences here and there at higher speed, especially if they want to play with ramping between the first iteration and the final baked in ramp delivery.
When so much goes in tests and tweaks, the farm impact for doing an entire sequence at 96, I think, ends up around time and half what it would have been if the sequence had been 24 throughout.
Excellent reply! Thanks for painting a much rosier picture than I had originally thought. 
Any ideas on how this will effect editing?
3D version will probably be better and more realistic, but I think a 60fps 2D version might be quite strange looking due to the lack of motion blur that we’ve come to expect from cinema.
This will be cool. 
It’s just the next step. Looks like within 10 years we will say goodbye to motion blur.
I was under the impression that the only people who really cared were hardcore movie nuts…
And if this means production houses need to expand their render farms and involve additional effort for compositing and roto, it should probably be factored in to the cost just like stereo would be.
Yeah they will need to upgrade. The lower framerate on fast action in theaters is the one thing that snaps me out of the 3d experience.
Isnt this like showscan?
I remember watching a film in that format-I cant say it looked less film like…ok i cant remember it very well… maybe the wide shots seemed more smooth.
It was a long time ago.
Will the script be in a higher frame rate-that’s perhaps a more important question.
Most won’t need too, depends on how quickly they moved over to a digital projector. Most of the 4K sony’s SRXT support 48 and 60 fps for example
I don’t think so - even Cameron himself has criticized current 3D formats because of the low frame rate and the resulting strobe effect. He’s also been talking about 48-60fps for Avatar 2 before, so it’s unlikely to be a simple joke.
Avatar 2 might be late to the party, though. There were quite a few converted 3D movies that looked terrible and the audience is growing weary of the feature. Also, 3D TVs aren’t selling as well as expected, although I don’t know if there’s been any release of Avatar in 3D yet.
Then again, most manufacturers are just trying to rip off their customers and their TVs are pretty damn expensive if you consider that they’re simply the same system with a higher refresh rate and some simple LCD glasses that were included with graphics cards for no extra cost back in 2000-2001, so it’s no wonder that they’re not seeing significant interest…
if it looks anything like the ‘enhanced motion’ features of 120+ hz televisions then ill pass. I need my film to look like film, not an 80’s soap opera shot on a video camera. Store down the road was touting some 600 hz set showing POTC and it looked like the most artificial thing ive ever seen. granted the set is interpolating but still. worst implementation of technology Ive ever seen (but documentaries like planet earth look great)
Actual HD 60 FPS footage looks nothing like TV motion interpolation or interlaced soap operas.
Think about how great near-photoreal 3D videogames look at 60 FPS compared to 30. Now imagine that with 2-4k of real image resolution per eye.
It’s definitely going to look “weird” at first, because outside of Showscan ride films and videogames, audiences aren’t accustomed to seeing anything beyond 30 fps, but I think it’s going to be a good weird.
I’ve said it before, but given a choice between the two, I’d choose a higher frame rate over stereoscopy any day of the week.
Sadly, Douglas Trumbull never got to properly project his Showscan movie (“Brainstorm”) to the public. I saw the “approximated” version in Imax where they switched between 35mm and 70mm anamorphic prints, but the frame rate was the same old 24fps, afaik. The original plan was to switch to the 70mm 60fps version when they were showing his brainstorm sequences, then back to 35mm afterwards.
Personally, I’m about 100x more excited about this than I ever was about 3D.
Yeah, just take any HD console and look at Call of Duty Modern Warfare - those are 60fps games and very, very smooth. No lame interpolated frames like the cheap electronics in modern HDTVs produce - but no “cinematic” look either, the stuff we’re used to from growing up on 24fps movies. It’s going to be interesting but I think it’ll benefit 3D movies.
What they’re going to do with the 2D version is a good question though. 60fps? Converting down to 24fps and trying to create some kind of motion blur? Or no non-digital version at all?
I dunno… there’s something about the blur and look of 24fps film that’s quite unique and will be lost with 60fps digital stuff. Can’t tell yet it it’s going to be worse or better, but it’ll definitely change things. It’s almost like building a camera that has no depth of field.
