Someone in the industry told me it felt like they were watching actors in a stage show, and not in a good way. All sense of immersion and suspension of belief was eroded away into watching people in costumes fight on fake sets against CG monsters. He said with such a high frame rate it's almost like live footage has reached the uncanny-valley. It seems quite on par with the statement from Entertainment Weekly.
Is this uncanny valley 1) a fundamental nature of the higher frame rates, 2) a temporary phenomenon of 24fps-acclimatized eyes viewing 48fps, or 3) a temporary phenomenon of fps technology getting ahead of costume/CG/etc technology that looks real at those rates yet? Or (I'm guessing) do we not really know yet?
This is exactly right. I don't understand why some people are jumping up and down as though this is some massive technological and artistic advance. TV has been able to do 60fps for decades (and HD, digital 60fps for at least one decade) and yet no television dramas (and even most comedies) are filmed/broadcasted at that rate. Why? Exactly the reasons you describe.
High framerates are great for live events and reality-based programming. 24-30fps is suited to taking the viewer "out of reality" into an artistically constructed world. This is not going to change because some movie theaters get 48fps projectors.
Indeed, Douglas Trumbull invented Showscan in the early 80's. It was a high FPS 65mm film process, and it resulted in a overly "real" subjective effect very much this article is complaining about. Showscan was demoed at some conferences and some critics (Ebert?) were big fans but it was never used for a feature film (although he tried to get the studio to use for his film Brainstorm). It was positioned against IMAX and lost (although to my eye, IMAX suffers greatly from strobing and could use a frame rate boost).
But there's something else going on with the Hobbit. I watched the trailer, which is definitely not 48 fps, and more than once I got the feeling of watching an actor-on-a-stage-on-video. This might be more related to the use of RED cameras than the framerate.
Using my film degree about once a year here on HN!
