The eagerly awaited Hobbit preview was shown at CinemaCon this week to a less then impressed audience. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Peter Jackson's prequel to The Lord of the Rings trilogy, was filmed in New Zealand with 48 frames per second double the usual Hollywood standard of 24 frames.
Jackson while introducing the preview said how the 48 frames per second produced a much smoother image. It means the human eye sees a steady stream of images instead of individual pictures making "the movement feel more real" and "gentle on the eye."
However Slashfilm's Peter Sciretta disagreed saying "The movement of the actors looked... strange, almost as if the performances had been partly sped up but the dialogue matched the movement of the lips, so it wasn't an effect of speed-ramping... It didn't look cinematic."
Many critics and film bloggers were let down by the preview saying it looked "cheap" and "non cinematic" and one film projector told Variety "It reminds me of when I first saw Blu-Ray, in that it takes away that warm feeling of film."
It was hoped the prequel would mark a turning point in film making and film houses would embrace digital technology but with the underwhelming response from viewers this might not be the case.
Jackson is still working on editing the film and the shared footage so it still remains to be seen what the end product will look like until December when the film is released.
Claire Duffy
