Despite being Japan’s biggest-grossing movie of all time, Avatar: The Last Airbender failed to take the top spot last weekend, with a basketball anime called The First Slam Dunk topping the national rankings. In addition, several cinemas in the country reported technical problems, and one was forced to reduce the film’s frame rate from 48 frames per second to the traditional 24 frames.
At the same time, many viewers were refused participation in other screenings, and their money was returned. A number of movie theater chains that fans say are in trouble, including United Cinemas Co., Toho Col and Tokyu Corp., declined to comment on the issue.
Few theaters support 48fps High Frame Rate (HFR) playback, as this requires new projectors or upgrades to existing ones. Cinemas usually know what formats they can play and take this into account when planning the rental. But HFR was used so little in movies that it wasn’t clear where the problems might arise.
Avatar: The Last Airbender is available in multiple formats, including 2D 48fps, 3D 48fps and regular 24fps. If you see the 48fps version, it only uses HFR for action scenes, while dialogue and slower scenes drop down to 24fps (by duplicating frames).
Tame Power BI and predict the future of your company.
REGISTER!
Another famous film using HFR was Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit. Many viewers did not appreciate the effect – the high-frequency film created the impression of a TV production. Opinions on this matter were strongly divided in 2012 and later. A similar effect can be caused by technologies for smoothing scenes with movement in some TVs. As you can see, many cinemas, even in the most technically developed countries, were not ready for such a technological innovation.
Review of the movie “Avatar: The Way of Water” / Avatar: The Way of Water
Source: Engadget
