The advertisement and film industry work together since the beginning. First of all because all the commercial advertisement for TV are made in film and with the same technique as movies does. But now on day advertisement and the film industries are working more close to each other than any time before; Why? The answer to that is easy. When you go to the movies and watch a new Hollywood feature film, Do you pay attention to every detail in the movie? or just analyze the acting and photography?

Well if you start paying attention to other smaller details, you will find that branding and product placement is everywhere in the movies, from someone drinking a Coca-Cola. Someone using a Mac computer or an iPad. All this make a VERY important role in the financing of a new feature film; it doesn’t matter if it’s independent film or Hollywood big budget film. Both type of production uses a lot of branding and product placement as advertisement. They use this technique very organic, is not that you are going to see the big product shot as you see in commercial spots. But you will see it organic and natural as if you are in a restaurant eating and the person next to you is drinking that same Coca-Cola.

With the new documentary directed by Morgan Spurlock, Super Size Me, spends this recent movie focusing on exactly HOW important product placement is to movies today. From food to electronics to vehicles to accessories…product placement is everywhere in films of today.  Spurlock does a great job here of walking the audience through the process of getting products into movies.  Actually, he uses his own movie as an example…which is the reason for the creative title of his film.

It’s fascinating…it brings Hollywood to life as a living, breathing BUSINESS.  Now, if you want to get your movie made, your main character has to use a Mac and drive a Chevy.

Does this mean the days where creativity and artistic integrity reigned supreme are gone?  Would Hitchcock have gone for this?  Would Wilder or Preminger or Capra or Ford or any number of film directors that made movies with heart and soul and not products?  Well, Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood and Woody Allen are all still making films and somehow in the age of product placement, their artistic integrity still survives.  It can be done…it’s just that creativity is now sponsored by JetBlue or one other brand you want in your film.

Time for an update. Actually, we've been intending to kick off with a video, which is almost done, so look out for that in the next day or two. In the meantime, I thought I'd address the news that has been reported about us shooting THE HOBBIT at 48 frames per second, and explain to you what my thoughts are about this.

We are indeed shooting at the higher frame rate. The key thing to understand is that this process requires both shooting and projecting at 48 fps, rather than the usual 24 fps (films have been shot at 24 frames per second since the late 1920's). So the result looks like normal speed, but the image has hugely enhanced clarity and smoothness. Looking at 24 frames every second may seem ok--and we've all seen thousands of films like this over the last 90 years--but there is often quite a lot of blur in each frame, during fast movements, and if the camera is moving around quickly, the image can judder or "strobe." 

Shooting and projecting at 48 fps does a lot to get rid of these issues.  It looks much more lifelike, and it is much easier to watch, especially in 3-D. We've been watching HOBBIT tests and dailies at 48 fps now for several months, and we often sit through two hours worth of footage without getting any eye strain from the 3-D.  It looks great, and we've actually become used to it now, to the point that other film experiences look a little primitive. I saw a new movie in the cinema on Sunday and I kept getting distracted by the juddery panning and blurring. We're getting spoilt!

Originally, 24 fps was chosen based on the technical requirements of the early sound era. I suspect it was the minimum speed required to get some audio fidelity out of the first optical sound tracks. They would have settled on the minimum speed because of the cost of the film stock. 35mm film is expensive, and the cost per foot (to buy the negative stock, develop it and print it), has been a fairly significant part of any film budget.

So we have lived with 24 fps for 9 decades--not because it's the best film speed (it's not by any stretch), but because it was the cheapest speed to achieve basic acceptable results back in 1927 or whenever it was adopted. 

None of this thinking is new.  Doug Trumbull developed and promoted a 60 frames per second process called ShowScan about 30 years ago and that looked great. Unfortunately it was never adopted past theme park use. I imagine the sheer expense of burning through expensive film stock at the higher speed (you are charged per foot of film, which is about 18 frames), and the projection difficulties in cinemas, made it tough to use for "normal" films, despite looking amazing.  Actually, if anybody has been on the Star Tours ride at Disneyland, you've experienced the life like quality of 60 frames per second.  Our new King Kong attraction at Universal Studios also uses 60 fps.

Now that the world's cinemas are moving towards digital projection, and many films are being shot with digital cameras, increasing the frame rate becomes much easier.  Most of the new digital projectors are capable of projecting at 48 fps, with only the digital servers needing some firmware upgrades.  We tested both 48 fps and 60 fps.  The difference between those speeds is almost impossible to detect, but the increase in quality over 24 fps is significant. 

Film purists will criticize the lack of blur and strobing artifacts, but all of our crew--many of whom are film purists--are now converts.  You get used to this new look very quickly and it becomes a much more lifelike and comfortable viewing experience.  It's similar to the moment when vinyl records were supplanted by digital CDs.  There's no doubt in my mind that we're heading towards movies being shot and projected at higher frame rates.

Warner Bros. have been very supportive, and allowed us to start shooting THE HOBBIT at 48 fps, despite there never having been a wide release feature film filmed at this higher frame rate.  We are hopeful that there will be enough theaters capable of projecting 48 fps by the time The Hobbit comes out where we can seriously explore that possibility with Warner Bros.  However, while it's predicted that there may be over 10,000 screens capable of projecting THE HOBBIT at 48 fps by our release date in Dec, 2012, we don’t yet know what the reality will be.  It is a situation we will all be monitoring carefully.  I see it as a way of future-proofing THE HOBBIT.  Take it from me--if we do release in 48 fps, those are the cinemas you should watch the movie in. It will look terrific!

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This summer, Hollywood’s blockbusters are engaging in a high-stakes format war between digital technology and old-fashioned film. Movies that have been shot digitally, like The Avengers, Prometheus and The Amazing Spiderman will be battling out with equally epic movies shot on film as The Dark Knight Rises, Men in Black 3 and Battleship. Indeed, no summer memory boasts so much variety in terms of how films are shot and exhibited.

The studios are looking to trim costs on increasingly expensive movies, traditional celluloid film -easily the more expensive of the two formats- maybe on its way out as the cinema’s medium of choice. Still, old fashioned film defenders continue to make compelling arguments about why theirs is the most enduring medium, even as both sides pull their biggest guns this summer in an effort to prove definitively the commercial value of their respective formats.

For this summer, film has the numbers on their side major blockbusters; more were shot on film than digitally. Aside from The Dark Knight Rises, Men in Black 3 and Battleship, other summer tentpole movies filmed non digitally include Snow White and the Huntsman, G.I. Joe: Retaliation and The Bourne Legacy. But digital technology has the momentum and the prestigious advocates who will likely help it out eventually.

The biggest weapon in digital’s commercial arsenal is clearly 3D. Although movies shot both digitally and on film continue to be converted to 3D, the only native way to shot a movie in 3D is digitally. This summer, two major blockbuster’s were shot in native 3D, The Amazing Spiderman and Ridley’s Scott Prometheus, guaranteeing a higher level of realism and clarity than most film-to-3D conversions.

Veteran directors like Ridley Scott increasingly view such native 3D cinematography as representating a major advance in cinematic realism. “We see in 3D anyway, but your brain has cut that gift down so you don’t really think about it - you think you’re seeing in 2D, but you’re not,” Scott said recently at a Paris press screening for Prometheus. “When you put on those [3D] glasses, it reminds your brain how you really see”.

Not to be outdone, the old fashioned film defenders have their own popular, high-res format: IMAX. Although movies shot both digitally and on film can be converted to IMAX, the bes way to exploid the format is to shoot in natively with IMAX cameras, through which 65mm film is bed horizontally to achive images of breathtaking size and resolution. Director Brad Bird included 30 minutes of IMAX footage, in his recent movie Mission Impossible: Ghost Protoccol. For this summer’s The Dark Knight Rises director Christopher Nolan will be featuring more than 60 minutes worth of IMAX film footage, first for a major studio release.

Old fashioned film defenders continue to lose vital ground. For example, most of the world’s camera companies have already stopped production on celluloid-based motion picture cameras altogether. What’s more, Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit, is poised to abandon not only film, but traditional film rate of 24 frames per second (FPS). The Hobbit is currently being shot at 48 fps, for Jackson’s stated purpose of removing the cinema’s traditional strobscopic “flicker” effect and also to easy eye strain sometimes caused by 3D. Jackson’s decision has already provoked much controversy.

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