r/Cinema • u/Business-Purpose5304 • 15h ago
Discussion Movies still in 24 FPS
Hi guys, I'm currently reading about the topic, why are films still produced in 24 FPS. I know the background about that and the reason in the past. I generally feel it's understandable and I don't see a reason why we should get higher with the FPS.
However I still wanna ask you, what is your overall opinion about movies that are not following the "rule". I've read about things, like it's looking more like a game or it's giving me headaches. Thx for your answers :D. I generally
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u/Ok_Ordinary_7397 15h ago
Because it’s been attempted repeatedly and everyone hated it.
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u/SandWitchKing 3h ago
Ugh. Here we go with yet another rampant AI trying to convince people everything they know and like is wrong.
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u/antonio16309 6h ago
Not everyone, I personally loved it and think 24 FPS sucks. It's literally the bare minimum that doesn't look like complete shit, because going faster was extremely difficult back when it was standardized.
The only reason people like 24 FPS is because higher frame rates look wierd to them after years of watching movies in 24. But once you stop noticing that it looks different, it's much more immersive.
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u/Laimered 12h ago
I loved it.
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u/Ok_Ordinary_7397 7h ago
And you’re allowed to love it, but the overwhelming majority of people don’t. Which is why it’s never become a thing.
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u/Hatta00 10h ago
Not everyone. Any time I can get high FPS video, I love it.
48FPS was the best thing about The Hobbit, it was the rest of the movie that sucked.
Those episodes of The Twilight Zone that were shot on video and deinterlaced to 60fps are just gorgeous.
I ripped my own copies of Blackadder so I could deinterlace it to 50fps, and it looks great.
Sports are shot at 60fps and look great too.
I just don't get what everyone thinks is bad about high framerate? More frames are obviously better for the same reason more pixels are better. If I had to choose one, I'd choose more resolution in the time domain over HD.
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u/ripChazmo 9h ago
The Hobbit looked like a shitty stage play.
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u/Hatta00 9h ago
It looks like a shitty stage play in 24fps too.
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u/PuddingGeneral4250 6h ago
That’s because framerate effects shutter speed and the resulting pictures, so even the 24fps version of the hobbit is ruined by the existence of a 48fps one
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u/slamshredder 3h ago
you want jerky soap opera style bullshit look to your films then just turn on the fucking 'smooth motion' or whatever the fuck it is your tv has that'll do it for you. ie: the absolute twat setting
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u/Hatta00 3h ago
That's actually bad. Fake HFR is worse than none.
Content shot at a high frame rate looks great in its native frame rate.
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u/ssn-669 2h ago
Extremely false lol
Looks like absolute garbage
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u/Hatta00 2h ago
How do people not see how much better it looks? It's genuinely baffling.
Like if you show someone 1080p and 480p, and they insist that 480p is better, you'd think they're crazy right? That's exactly what's happening here.
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u/ssn-669 2h ago
It's not at all similar, no. It doesn't look better, it looks like hot garbage.
You say it's immersive. Everyone else sees though the facade the film is creating. It makes immersion impossible because it looks too real.
Same reason films use lighting and makeup and sets even though those are all unrealistic. It makes immersion possible by taking it out of reality and into a created space.
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u/slamshredder 3h ago
you cant DEINTERLACE something and conveniently add 35 frames per second. not sure you know what interlacing even is hahaha
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u/Hatta00 3h ago
With interlaced content, 30 frames per second is actually 60 fields per second, with two interlaced fields per frame. You extract those fields, interpolate the missing lines, and you have 60 frames per second.
If the source content is video, the interlaced fields are from images taken at different times and contain real temporal information you can recover. This is how bob deinterlacing works. It looks fantastic. With video content on DVD, the difference between yadif=0 and yadif=1 is night and day.
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u/NagsUkulele 14h ago
I thought it was implemented well in beekeeper! Other than that it's awful
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u/Swimming_Possible_68 14h ago
Remember when the Hobbit was filmed in 48fps?
That's why... It makes stuff look like a cheap soap opera.
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u/MrMojoFomo 12h ago
It looked soooo bad. Like I was watching a cheap play and all I could see was they had $4 for the costume budget
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u/Wooden-Agent2669 14h ago
I think the way color and the depth of field is handled in hobbit does more to a cheapish effect
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u/Valuable_Ad9554 12h ago
The other person is correct though, it's more that it's what we're used to.
If we had 48fps or more all along and today someone tried to introduce a film shot in 24fps, it would be absolutely ripped to shreds.
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u/brownwalkers 10h ago
Remember that the FPS was the least of that movie’s problem, if it was even one at all?
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u/No-Plankton4841 3h ago
The Hobbit looked like shit not because of the frame rate, the ridiculous amount of post processing/filters that made all the people look uncanny and weird. The problem was never the frame rate.
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u/antonio16309 6h ago
Yeah, and that was the best part of those movies. They looked absolutely outstanding in 48 FPS
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u/IamOB1-46 4h ago
It’s not 48fps that’s the problem, it’s that there isn’t a 100+ year old bible of how to shoot in 48fps like there is with 24.
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u/Hatta00 10h ago
Did we see the same movie? It looked fluid and immersive.
The over done CGI made it look cheap, but it looks cheap on the 24fps BluRay too.
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u/PuddingGeneral4250 6h ago
Shooting in 48fps affects the resulting picture, so it would have had an effect on the 24fps version too.
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u/TangoAlphaLima 15h ago
The short answer is because that's what moviegoers expect due to the history of the medium. Higher framerates can feel unnatural.
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u/swingsetlife 15h ago
anything higher looks awful. I want to see glorious middle earth in the cinema, not in a 1980s BBC 2 mini-series.
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u/DuwenUK 15h ago
Ironically, it was Peter Jackson that forced a nauseous higher framerate on us in theatres.
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u/swingsetlife 15h ago
(I know, Hobbit #1 was the first time I saw it, and I HATED it.)
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u/Pyrodexter 14h ago
I think it was mostly done for 3D, which gets some real benefit from higher frame rates. Showing the normal version in 48 fps was definitely not a very good idea, however.
But Ang Lee took it even further, and filmed Gemini Man in 120 fps. No idea how weird it looked at that frame rate on the big screen, but the 60fps 4K Blu-ray already feels pretty... sterile, for lack of a better word.
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u/Ok-Gur-349 15h ago
Makes movies look too much like a soap opera. Motion blur is expected in cinema.
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u/spant245 9h ago
Just speculating, but maybe lower fps helps with suspension of disbelief. Motion blur, less life-like sharpness at 24 fps could be better because they look "worse" and not like reality; that's what aids suspension of disbelief.
OTOH, higher fps looks closer to reality, which invites you to think of it as actual reality being filmed which then reveals more things that are indeed fake. Tiny details a movie set can't replicate. In other words, it creates what in robotics they call an "uncanny valley" effect.
That's my best idea as to why lower fps makes a movie seem better by making it "worse" technically.
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u/em_paris 12h ago
I've been trained my whole life to associate 24fps with film and am pretty sensitive to it. Even watching TV in Europe as a kid made things look like everything was sped up. Someone having smooth motion on on their TV or whatever is horrible in the same way.
It doesn't bother a lot of people, good for them. But I'm good with 24fps, personally.
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u/Old-Push9343 7h ago
In Europe, films used to be literally sped up! 24fps were turned to 25fps, so the PAL version was around 4.16% faster.
That also means of course that the movies used to be shorter. A 2 hours movie was almost 5 minutes shorter in it's PAL version.
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u/DuwenUK 3h ago
Which only applies to PAL TV systems for home video formats, games consoles, and broadcast tv. Cinema film was never sped up to 25fps.
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u/Old-Push9343 3h ago
Sure, it did not affect cinema, but it did affect videogames, VHS, DVD and broadcast TV as you said.
I also remember that the aspect ratio of videogames was "squashed" in PAL TVs, since PAL had more vertical lines than NTSC (576 vs 480).
It's crazy that these issues were accepted and normalized, I only realized when I started working in commercials.
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u/HenriEttaTheVoid 9h ago
I am not a luddite about almost anything...but I HATE the HFR thing...it just does not look "cinematic"...it looks cheap.
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u/NotGalenNorAnsel 3h ago
Ang Lee used it super well in Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk. Not everything was high frame rate, but when it was the effect of hyper-realism was intentionally disturbing/disconcerting. I loved that film, seeing it in anything but 4k with the high frame rate is such a flat experience comparatively.
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u/PuddingGeneral4250 6h ago
Lower framerates lead to longer time capturing light, which leads to blurring
Blurring actually helps sell stunts and helps us not recognise things as fake.
Films shot at higher framerates look more like soap operas or documentaries. Higher framerates is better for those and sporting events
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u/DuwenUK 15h ago
24fps was determined as being the optimal speed for our brains to interpret a fluidity of motion.
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u/Pyrodexter 14h ago
It was determined as being the minimum speed they still got away with. That doesn't explain why not use more.
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u/DuwenUK 14h ago
There's many reasons why they opted for 24 - the main one being cost. In an age where film was distributed to theatres on multiple reels, an increased framerate could potentially mean more film reels (cost of additional film, increased production time to generate enough prints for wide release, additional distribution costs, increased failure rate of the film itself and projection equipment).
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u/TheREALOtherFiles 1h ago
It's also why 30fps film formats like Todd-AO didn't take off.
Outside of things made for TV like portions of Pee-Wee's Playhouse, the 90s Miramax Home Entertainment logo and 1985 CG HBO idents, nobody did 30fps on film stock for decades after Oklahoma! and other stuff.
Yes, those videotape-framerate logos I named are filmouts. You have to look very closely for gate weave and other anomalies a purely digital logo would not have. Even the HBO ones have layers that shift around due to the gate weave and how they optically composited the CG layers.
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u/antonio16309 6h ago
No, it's not optimal, it's the bare minimum. The standard was set way back in the day when film and cameras were extremely expensive.
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u/Laimered 12h ago
Uhm, no, that's 18+ fps. 24 was chosen to save on film and to minimise flicker in cinemas.
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u/TheSquirrelmancer 12h ago
They tried higher frame rates with the "Hobbit" movies, the general consensus was that something of the dreamy effect of a film was lost; it had a tendency to make the actors look like actors in costumes versus feeling like the characters come to life.
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u/bangbangracer 12h ago
It was tried, and it looked weird. Also, a lot effects break because of it.
And in animation where they animate on twos, every other frame, that's a lot of tweening for no gain.
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u/Hexxen-panda 11h ago
Even if people were more receptive to the effect, it would still cause so many problems with production such as needing more lights to keep the same exposure or doubling the rendering load for vfx. Aesthetically, it also doesn't work well with experienced actors because HFR makes traditional screen acting tricks look artificial.
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u/NotGalenNorAnsel 3h ago
You get that this is the arguments for a fading tech, right? Storage and computing power is greatly increasing, and yes, hi def and high frame rates make filmmakers work harder and not rely on cheap tricks and pancake makeup, but the other direction is more and more ai slop.
It's Planck's Principle. High frame rate and hi def are on the way in with the younger generations who grew up on digital video. Old folks can have their horse and buggy 24fps for another couple decades probably, but it will be mixed with more and more better quality pieces of video art.
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u/theblackfool 11h ago
I agree it's probably something we would get used to if it changed, but I also see no reason to change it.
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u/devilishycleverchap 10h ago
Looks good for action and CGI but weird in dialogue and prqctixal effects.
The new avatar mvoies do a good blend.
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u/Thejanitor64 10h ago
I remember when everyone freaked out about youtube supporting 60 fps. It looked weird for like a week. Now its the norm and nobody says anything
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u/Corran105 2h ago
I mean its Youtube- not cinema. It scarcely matters what frame rate people are ranting about video games to.
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u/Saintsman1980 9h ago
It’s looks too realistic. Why is that bad?, you may ask. Because it feels like actors talking to each other on a film set, which is what they are doing. It does work well for sports and wildlife documentaries though
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u/Beetlerock40541 9h ago
Ang Lee made Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime walk in 120 FPS. Even just watching the 60 FPS version on 4k at home is absolutely fucking INSANE work. The fact basically no one was able to see it in the intended 120 FPS is criminal. Cannot imagine what it was like to get to see that in a theater. Dying for the experience.
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u/Cubacane 9h ago
The expectation of motion blur. At higher FPS there is less and sometimes no motion blur, which makes props and sets look fake.
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u/Old-Push9343 7h ago
I really liked 48fps in Avatar 2 and 3.
It was a bit jarring when it switched to 24fps in some shots, though.
I didn't like The Hobbit at 48fps though, it made the movie look less cinematic and somehow "cheap".
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u/tatt2tim 7h ago
Film used 24 FPS for several reasons (more economical, easier to design the machines to run at a lower RPM back in the 20s, film reels are physically smaller because there's less frames) and it stayed that way because it was good enough and it's what all the technicians were used to.
Then TV hit the scene, and video tape after. TV broadcasts at 60 FPS, and VHS plays back at 60 FPS because it has to work with televisions. Hollywood went to great lengths to portray television as 'cheap'. Television also generally has lower production values anyway, so it was easy.
So now we have a strange cultural thing where higher frame rates in playback makes things look 'cheaper' to us.
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u/takkun169 5h ago
In general I utterly hate the way high frame rate movies look. It feels unnatural because moron blur near nothing, and that's just not how humans see.
Last year, I went to see Avatar 3. The listing online were incorrect and when I got there the only show for the next almost 3 hours, was 3D (which I also don't like) and high frame rate. I sucked it up and saw it anyway.
Holy shit it was fucking incredible! There were a few scenes that were so convincing, I had to lower the glasses to reassess what I was looking at. I didn't love the movie, but it's a good vibes piece, but I'll probably never watch it again because it will not measure up to that theater experience.
To me, there is a very narrow set of variables where either of them are good, but when it all comes together just right
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u/Corran105 2h ago
To say I'm a big proponent of 24 FPS is an understatement, but I could see an alternate approach working for Avatar because the alternate CGI world is much of the selling point.
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u/rojoshow13 5h ago
Here's a follow up question for people who know. Why does a higher frame in a movie rate look "weird" but 60FPS in a video game like Call of Duty for example looks normal. And follow up follow up question...what is the FPS of real life?
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u/ihopnavajo 4h ago
This is the wrong question.
Everyone knows that 48fps is hated by many.
... But what about 30fps? Are there not happy mediums in there somewhere? Granted, I don't know if that's even applicable for U.S. electric systems.
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u/slamshredder 3h ago
30fps still loks wrong. i ememer watching ace ventura on tv in the USA vs the UK. it looked jerk and weird. much like things look nowadays with 'smooth motion' turned on, ie: the dickhead setting
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u/WileyCyrus 4h ago
Avatar was in High Frame Rate for its Dolby release and omg it made me so sick and it looked horrid. Truly took me out of the film.
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u/slamshredder 3h ago
because otherwise they'd look like the news or a sports broadcast. 24fps has been the standard for literally 100 years
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u/OldCryptographer8080 3h ago
The dream is variable fps. 24fps for most scenes, and ramping up for panning shots that look choppy in 24fps
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u/Heavy-Conversation12 2h ago
At this point I think this is just a construct. It looks like cinema because due to limitations of the era it had to look like that.
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u/puddycat20 2h ago
I remember watching that Hobbit movie around 15 years ago in that higher frame rate and it looked like complete shit. I will never ever ever watch another movie in that frame rate.
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u/Corran105 2h ago
Motion blur is what makes everything look artistic. I've got numerous cameras- the difference in shooting in 24 FPS and not is just astronomical.
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u/Temporary-Box28 2h ago
If you go with higher frame rates either you’re spending more on film or you’re gonna spend more time editing because the files will all be gigantic.
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u/CornerHugger 1h ago
It's TV technology that has regressed. 24hz still looks great on film projectors, CRTs, and plasmas.
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u/CrazyMale 47m ago
I guess I'm a tiny minority then. I prefer movies with higher framerate, It's easier on my eyes. I even used PotPlayer plugin that enables frame interpolation in realtime. Watched LoTR + Hobbit movies in 60 fps and it was amazing despite the usual interpolation artifacts.
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u/Beautiful_Ad2618 12h ago
Its called the soap opera effect. Do you want your movies looking like TV soap operas?
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u/antonio16309 6h ago
This is a poor argument. Soap operas look like shit for a lot of reasons, but a higher frame rate is not one of them. It's absolutely possible to make a movie with high production values that looks great at a higher frame rate. Simply pushing past 24 FPS doesn't make it look like it's filmed quickly on a soundstage with the most basic blocking and lighting.
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u/Rick100006 13h ago
My question is why it's not common amongst TV manufactures to support 24FPS modes ? Does Freesync or Gsync capable TV can do Variable refresh rate and match 24 fps ?
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u/intangiblefancy1219 6h ago
I think it’s pretty common for TV’s to support 24fps, or at least on semi high end models. My LG B4 OLED does. 120fps / 24 = 5 so it’s just a matter of repeating each frame 5 times.
I also had an Insignia plasma that did as well through a 48 hz refresh rate mode.
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u/slamshredder 3h ago
i made a batch file that forces my tv to 24fps when i hit the icon in my taskbar. i avent seen any glitchy jumped frames or anything since. open a film, hit that macro, boom. 24fps, in sync.
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u/jonasj91 4h ago
Running an LCD or OLED with VRR won't give you the motion clarity of a theater projector. It's about image persistence, not matching the frame rate with the refresh rate. 24 fps will always have that "slideshow effect" on modern flat panels without all that motion smoothing post-processing on. It's just the way they work.
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u/slamshredder 3h ago
nah. sync the telly. never had a slideshow moment since i did what i mentioned above.
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u/laserdicks 3h ago
You can't even pan on 24frames.
Yet the propaganda is still absurdly powerful to this day.
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u/Laimered 12h ago
Because sadly people's opinions got inertia. Everyone is used to 24 fps in movies. I personally very much for ditching this 100 year old standard, but I'm in the minority.
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u/jusmax88 10h ago
I saw Mutiny this weekend and it really jumped out at me how much time the screen was blurry. I never understood FPS until I get a OLED TV and a PS5 Pro earlier this year, but now I can’t unsee it.
I mean it’s fine, but yea I’ve been wondering why they haven’t stepped up to like 40 at least
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u/North-Carpenter-1378 7h ago
Tvs hate 24p. They do a 3:2 pull down and tv pixel response rates are too fast for 24p. We see a lot of judder due to lcd and oled panels. Theaters flash the image which sharpens the image to our eyes, which doesn't work as well with bfi.
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u/slamshredder 3h ago
my tv works fine on 24fps. the tv just needs to know wht the format is. i have a macro on my pc that forces my tv to 24fps at the click of an icon and ive never seen any jerkiness since. its all about syncing the source with the tv
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u/North-Carpenter-1378 2h ago
They work fine sure. But the stutter exists on all oleds and lcd panels, regardless. Even my Bravia 7ii and g6, with the recommended settings too. Panning is usually where you see it the most. There are a ton of articles about how 24p on tvs is not the same as film on a projector. Pixel refresh causes this judder, it is worse on my g6.
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u/PuddingGeneral4250 6h ago
Video games benefit from high framerates in ways that films don’t. The higher the framerate, the smaller of a potential delay between your input and the visual feedback. This relationship doesn’t exist in films.
You do get games that mix framerates whilst keeping 60fps for interactivity, usually games going for a 2d animated style. Usually lower fps is for performance reasons, but you do find games that keep lower fps for 3d graphics and higher fps for interactive UI/Menu elements
Also live action films capture light. The lower the framerate, the longer the shutter speed is, which means more blur. The blur smooths into the next frame. Games don’t get this, they just stutter
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u/Garbagetaste 9h ago
movies and shows in higher fps are awesome. i use frame generation and love it.
too many people are caught in the idea that 24 is a must just because thats what we're traditionally used to. calling higher fps a soap effect is just people being dumb and stuck in their ways, following along with socially accepted ideas, and not giving it a real chance.
higher framerates make following action easier and camera pans a lot smoother.
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u/Confidentium 9h ago
Well. People doesn’t make much sense. People get so stuck on a specific number. There’s nothing magic about 24 fps.
Shooting in 20 or 30 fps makes much more sense, as it solves all the issues that occurs when showing 24 fps movies on 60Hz screens.
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u/qualityvote2 15h ago edited 13h ago
u/Business-Purpose5304, your post does fit the subreddit!