Screen Daily May p63
Ang Lee's latest picture, shot with extreme frame rates, is challenging Hollywood to revise decades old production and distribution models.
The first studio feature to be produced in a groundbreaking combination of 3D, 4K resolution and projected at 120 frames per second (fps) is testing the limits technology but could shift the dial from production to distribution.
So innovative is the format which director Ang Lee and Sony's Tri-Star Pictures have chosen to make Billy Lynn's Long Walk Home, it cannot be played back in any conventional cinema. Even toget the movie made, a whole pipeline for post-production and mastering had to be developed and built specifically for the project which has a modest $50m budget.
“The industry has been brainwashed into how to make movies,” said Lee, presenting an 11-minute preview at the SMPTE Future of Cinema Conference in Las Vegas. “Nothing has changed for such a long time. We are all dying for change so that we can go back to being a kid in the cinema again looking forward to something exciting.”
TriStar partnered with Film4 and Jeff Robinov's Studio 8 on the story, which centres on 19-year-old private Billy Lynn and his company, who survive a harrowing battle in Iraq and return to the US on a promotional tour the centrepiece of which is an American football game.
“It was a perfect chance to test new media,” said Lee. “It’s all about experiencing what [war] veterans feel and people don’t understand. I thought if I can bring that sensation to the Dallas halftime show, that will be incredible and freak people out.”
“It's rare that a filmmaker will come to us with a technical challenge that will change a lot of different parts of the industry at once,” added Scott Barbour, vp, production technology, Sony [speaking at SMPTE with Lee and the film's key creatives]. “Usually a film might push one aspect, like vfx, but this pushes boundaries lens to lens.”
Instead of shooting at 24fps the production has ramped the speed up five times. Not only does this eliminate the strobing and motion blur which blights 3D presentations, but delivers a hyper-realistic look which, for Lee, bonds the audience closer to the story.
“The motivation for using high frame rate (HFR) emerged when filming Life of Pi,” explained Lee, Oscar winning director of the 2012 film. “In scenes where the raft is bouncing around on the water you couldn't see the actor's performance because there's too much motion blur on his face. At 60fps, and more so with 120fps, the viewer has a more natural, spiritual connection to the story.”
While Lee stresses the need to bend technology to his vision in adapting Ben Fountain's novel, the use of HFR and 4K plays into a wider movement to entice audiences with premium cinema experiences. This includes introducing wider colour and contrast ranges (high dynamic range/HDR) and laser projection which ups screen brightness to further enhance visual clarity.
“We are at the beginning of finding out what digital cinema means,” said Lee. “It means more realism, greater detail, higher resolution and proper brightness. This is not yet a commercial application but 120fps is quite revolutionary from what we are all used to seeing.”
Richard Welsh, CEO, Sundog Toolkit, whose software systems were used to manage the project's data, suggests that audiences will find such extreme frame rates a big change in their cinema experience. “From the exhibitor side it needs to be part of a whole package of image enhancements including resolution, HDR and HFR to really give the audience something they will notice and come back for.”
However, the film's native specification will likely have very limited availability on release in November since the format exceeds the capacity of existing DCI-compliant projection equipment.
The experimental system used to preview clips at SMPTE is designed for theme parks. It paired two Christie Mirage 4K projectors together with servers from 7th Sense.
The installed base of Series 2 digital projectors capable of showing any form of HFR content is also hard to quantify, according to analysts IHS. Estimates range from as low as 3000 screens which upgraded to show The Hobbit in 2012 to as many as 60,000 screens, or 40% of all DCI-compliant screens, which have upgraded since.
Systems from vendors NEC, Christie, Barco and Sony will be able to playback either 120fps in 2D 2K or 60fps 3D 2K, according to Ben Gervais, the film's production systems supervisor. If two projectors are used then 120fps 3D 2K is also possible, he said. Even at 60 frames it would be the highest frame rate ever seen in a major release.
Dolby Vision projection systems, which deploys dual Christie 4K laser projectors and Dolby's proprietary HDR technology, is also capable of playing back 120fps 3D 2K. There are 22 Dolby Vision projectors installed worldwide (18 of which are in the US) with Chinese cinema company Wanda on track to build 100 sites in China by 2020.
Texas Instruments is reportedly developing technology to upgrade projectors to play the format and there is work being done on more efficient compression algorithms to improve the efficiency of systems without damaging the overall image quality.
“The bottom line is that we will need adoption of these better encoders and upgrades to the projection systems to get to the point where 120fps 3D 4K can be distributed as a playable DCP,” says Welsh.
Hindering Billy Lynn's commercial prospects further is the negative perception that many cinema-goers and exhibitors have had with HFR. This stems from the mixed critical reception to Peter Jackson's use of 48fps for The Hobbit.
“The Hobbit has damaged the HFR brand,” says David Hancock, director, head of film and cinema, IHS Technology. “Exhibitors were disappointed that there was not a continuation in the availability of HFR releases. Many will be hesitant about the Ang Lee film, questioning whether this will be a one-off or whether there will be more HFR movies in the pipe to justify investment.”
“The industry failed to join forces to communicate HFR as a positive new way of presenting movies,” agrees Sony's sales director digital cinema Europe, Oliver Pasch. “Ang Lee is trying to show what is possible and is helping put HFR back on the agenda. Technically, any combination of technology including 120fps in 4K can be built into a projector. The question is whether audiences want it and who will pay for it.”
“Conversations with exhibitors about HFR are starting up again,” reports Tom Bert, Barco's senior product manager, digital cinema. “We need to rethink how to get HFR into the market because it has been overtaken by other attributes like HDR, laser and 4D cinema.”
Those closer to Billy Lynn's production are promoting the format's potential to give more control to both filmmakers and distributors by extracting multiple versions for all platforms from cinema to iPhones.
“When you shoot in this manner it allows you a lot of different options for exhibition which could change the entire industry,” claims Barbour. “We could deliver in 24, 30, 48, 60 or 120fps in a variety of resolutions.”
The sheer amount of data recorded on-set, ten times more than a conventional 4K film, gives the production greater latitude to tinker with the image in post.
“Instead of throwing away information from 120fps to get to 24fps we are frame blending to give us a crisper image than if we had originally shot at 24fps,” says Gervais. “We have the ability to change shutter angle in post so we can add motion blur to just one part of the frame or just one character and leave the rest of it sharp. This doesn't involve the use of expensive visual effects. It means we can iterate new creative choices very quickly.”
The same technique will allow Lee to select frame-rates for different scenes within the finished film using the same raw material.
“It's a science project,” admitted editor Tim Squyres. He cut the picture in 3D, at 60fps using beta software from Avid, projected onto a 12-foot screen to reproduce the theatrical experience as closely as possible. “We can make some scenes look more normal – like they were shot at 24fps in the context of a film where other scenes are at 120fps. It allows us to create many different delivery formats so Sony doesn't have to decide yet how to deliver it.”
Lee says he is anxious about the audience's reaction to Billy Lynn. “It was a long difficult uphill road. Focus pulling, lighting, performance, make-up are different. It’s very complicated, terrifying and exciting at the same time.”
Given his award-winning pedigree the film is a likely Oscar candidate. Its success would give Lee the confidence to return to the Muhammad Ali boxing project he abandoned for Billy Lynn. He felt the proposed 24fps 3D production wasn't of sufficient clarity to reveal the micro-expression of an actor's performance during fast action.
High frame rates are not confined to cinema. Computer games are produced over 100fps and virtual reality experiences will also benefit from the continuous movement. Broadcasters plan to produce content with frame-rates at 60 and higher on 4K TV sets.
While a wartime drama may be too niche to lift HFR out of the shadows, director James Cameron is on track to deliver the first of four Avatar sequels in higher frame-rates from 2017. It could be the franchise that proponents of the technology will look to to reignite mainstream exhibition.
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