THE HOBBIT Shooting At 48 Frames Per Second!

James Cameron recently talked about how the future of filmmaking will be shooting films at a higher frame rate, which will up the visual presentation of the film. This is something he plans on doing with Avatar 2 and 3. He talked about how Peter Jackson was thinking of doing it for The Hobbit and now it looks like he’s actually going to move forward with it. It was recently discovered that the director is currently shooting The Hobbit at a higher frame rate of 48 frames per second. The industry standard has always been 24 frames per second, but it looks like that is all going to change.

All of this come from The Hobbit‘s cinematographer Andrew Lesnie:

– Being shot on 30 RED EPIC cameras
– Using Zeiss Ultra Primes, Master Primes and Optimo zoom lenses (would expect no less)
– Shooting at 47.96 frames per second
– Using 3ality Digital rigs.

So why 48 fps and not 60? Cameron had said that one of the reasons why Jackson didn’t choose the higher frame rate was because he didn’t want to select the wrong frame rate if the industry went to the alternative. So it looks like the industry is going to move forward with 48 fps, which mean Cameron will most likely be shooting Avatar 2 and 3 in 48 fps as well. The fact of the matter is “60 fps would be significantly more expensive to implement for the modest visual gains.”