In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Peter Jackson has responded to the numerous criticisms bloggers waged against a CinemaCon preview of the 48-frames-per-second shooting style on The Hobbit. This new technology, which uses double the traditional amount of frames to eliminate judder and blur, vastly improving the clarity of action in 3-D presentations, has been relentlessly promoted by Jackson and Avatar‘s James Cameron as the future of cinema. But most who saw the preview said, ironically, that it was completely un-cinematic and looked a lot like video. Here are the highlights of what Jackson told THR, firing back…

[The amount of criticism] wasn’t particularly surprising because [48FPS] is something new.

A lot of the critical response I was reading was people saying it’s different. Well, yes, it certainly is. But I think, ultimately, it is different in a positive way, especially for 3D, especially for epic films and films that are trying to immerse the viewer in the experience of a story.

[48FPS] does take you a while to get used to. Ten minutes is sort of marginal, it probably needed a little bit more. Another thing that I think is a factor is it’s different to look at a bunch of clips and some were fast-cutting, montage-style clips. This is different experience than watching a character and story unfold.

I personally wouldn’t advocate a 48-frame trailer because the 48 frames is something you should experience with the entire film. A 2 1/2 minute trailer isn’t enough time to adjust to the immersive quality.You get used to it reasonably quickly.

We have obviously seen cuts of our movie at 48 and in a relatively short amount of time you have forgotten (the frame rate change). It is a more immersive and in 3D a gentler way to see the film.

We are certainly going to experiment with different finishing techniques to give the 48 frames a look that is more organic. But that work isn’t due to start until we wrap photography in July (both Hobbit films are being shot simultaneously).

Source: THR