"In the realm of art, the details are God." —Michelangelo
Stills of Boy Pi's fantasy drifting
No matter how long time passes, we may even forget the story and plot of the movie, but those wonderful details will always be remembered. Like the spinning gyroscope in Inception; the mysterious plant that grows gracefully on the planet Pandora in Avatar; the close-up slow motion of the metal parts modified when the Autobots transform in Transformers; and the lifelike Richard Parker in "Pi" and the vast expanse of starry skies and the sea.
We enter into a story that doesn't belong to us through the rich details shown in the film's footage, and we feel empathy. So how many details a movie can pass on to us determines how much it will take us into a strange story.
The impact of frame count on the viewing experience
In the traditional 3D film, the lens of 24 frames per second often brings us blur, shake, pause and flicker these so-called "cinematic sense", even if it is not a 3D movie, but catching up with the big production + there are fast moving objects in the picture or the picture changes too fast will cause a serious sense of drag. That's why some people get dizzy watching a 3D movie or even watching Private Ryan for the first time. The same reason can also explain the current momentum of VR viewing, because the picture coherence is poor, the number of frames is too small, resulting in the blurring of the picture and the discomfort of watching the movie.
The slow motion of the City Lightning in Zootopia
In traditional shooting, if you don't change the 24-frame recording shot, you can only solve this problem by moving "slower", like the slowed down anamorphic shot in Transformers. For example, Bruce Lee was often asked by photographers to "slow down" during the shooting, because Bruce Lee's too fast movements, the camera shooting rate could not keep up, a single frame of the picture appeared on the virtual image, the projection is also a blurry image. Therefore, the Bruce Lee film works that can be seen today are actually the result of his deliberate slowing down movements, and how fast he can be, we can only plant the seeds of imagination in our hearts now, and we have no chance to deeply and truly experience the feelings.
Stills from Billy Lynn's Halftime Battle
So, then again, after the audience has adapted for more than 100 years, why choose to set off technological innovation in the film industry, lead the audience to a revolutionary change in viewing habits, and make a 120-frame, 4K, 3D (120 frames per second, 4K resolution, 3D stereoscopic effect) movie "Billy Lynn's Halftime Battle"?
Famous director Ang Lee
First of all, the advancement of filming technology has greatly reduced the cost of artistic creation. From the original film film to the current digital film, and then to the rapid development of digital film production technology, the form of film expression is getting better and better, but the production cost has been reduced. The movie "Billy Lynn's Halftime War" uses the most cutting-edge technology in the film industry today, but its production budget is only $48 million. For comparison, the budget for "Young Pi," which was released four years ago, was $120 million. Low-cost but good works must be the common choice of producers and directors. Now even shooting VR movies is not difficult to achieve, and there are already VR theaters in the world, and advances in technology have made it easier and easier for us to enjoy immersive movie viewing experiences.
Secondly, as an honorary Director of the Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, Venice Film Festival Golden Lion Award and other honors, Ang Lee has a stubborn pursuit of immersion in the film. Ang Lee said that the idea of shooting a higher frame-rate movie has been brewing since the filming of "The Fantasy Drift of The Young Pi", and he believes that digital movies should be 3D, which is very compatible with the way the human eye processes information, and 3D is the future of film. And only the high frame rate of cooperation, for example, 120 frames can make the picture without jitter, 4K makes the picture clearer, when the future VR viewing is more popular, the audience will only be closer to the role in the movie, can no longer stay out of the matter, we will really walk into the story and with the protagonist, this is the future of the movie should be like, we are no longer only as the audience to watch off-screen, but can go deep into it. Technology makes film more vivid, there is a paranoid pursuit of art, and the directors who strive for excellence will lead the audience to a revolutionary change in the viewing experience.
Third, there are important reasons for choosing Billy Lynn's Halftime War as a testing ground for new technologies. In the same timeline, the film's story tells three parts, with Billy Lynn on the halftime show, interspersed with his family life, and his battlefield career, which can be a movie textbook about how to use flashbacks and cross-editing to tell stories. Coupled with a large number of night scenes and the actors' performance of emotional details, these have a strict challenge to the details of the film picture and the brightness of the film production and projection. The final choice of 120 frames, 4K, 3D exerts great energy in the performance of war scenes and midfield dark nights, and its breadth, depth, and shocking realism are unattainable in all previous films. Clear, realistic, and terrifying, the so-called "immersive" and "sense of presence" have been best interpreted. In the future, the film will only pay more and more attention to the performance of details in the picture, bringing people into the depths of the story.
Fourth, driven by the development of such film technology, the design of props and the performance of actors are more refined. Joe Alvin, the protagonist of Billy Lynn's Halftime Battle, has a very charming micro-expression, and when performing, his facial expression has a very real and rare emotional transition. In the movie, his face that will instantly flush because of shyness, sometimes innocent and sometimes complicated eyes, deep smile lines on his cheeks when smiling, tears slowly overflowing from the corners of his eyes when moved, under the forced vision of 120 frames, it is clear to the soul. Imagine if the film were replaced by an actor who was pompous and not an actor who could contribute to his true feelings, then the high frame rate would surely bring a disaster - the empty performance would never be hidden. The technological innovation that forces the actors to improve their acting skills in this way also makes the interpretation of the roles of the actors in future movies very interesting.
The impact of image quality on the player
Of course, the most important thing is that people's movie-watching habits have quietly undergone qualitative changes. Nowadays, with the rapid development of the Internet, the doubling of network speed, and the rapid growth of mobile network speed, display products have developed by leaps and bounds in imaging technology. Let's choose a more advanced work to appreciate when conditions permit, because we have tried the best experience, then everything else is ready, and we are increasingly unable to adapt to this situation. However, most of the current consumer electronic devices on the market are not yet able to let us appreciate content like "Billy Lynn's Halftime War", but with the rapid development of the computing industry, it is bound to accelerate the average user's appreciation of such works of art through terminal electronic devices.
Take a look at your computer and see the 120-frame Billy Lynn Halftime Battle
In addition, according to people familiar with the matter, the disk capacity of this movie reached an unprecedented 19T, and it must rely on high-end servers to decode data. For consumer-oriented products, if you want to experience more realistic picture quality at home, greatly improving the home movie viewing experience, only the 7th generation Intel ® Core ™ processor currently supports 4K video smooth playback, and its well-designed media and graphics platform can perfectly support 4K UHD HDR content, high-fidelity audio, and enable faster 4K UHD editing, as well as smooth gaming experience. Immersive Internet, 4K video, 360-degree video, VR/MR, esports and more are all-round performance upgrades to create the ultimate PC experience that is constantly evolving. In the future, as the demand for home entertainment increases, the latest generation of computers can be chosen to meet the ever-increasing demand for experiences.