This manuscript was written very late, because it is not easy to write, for two reasons. First of all, without reading more books on the philosophy of science and technology, the understanding of science and technology is very pale. In addition, in the face of Ang Lee, who I have a good impression of, my position is also swaying. But in the end, it was written as a cliché, and I didn't know what I wrote, just for discussion.
1.
In Amsterdam in September 2016, when I was sitting in front of one of the most advanced screens in the world, watching the clip of "Billy Lynn's Halftime Battle" for the first time, I described it to my colleagues, "Even the capillaries have clearly." At that time, I didn't realize that this was a one-sided description, and the "clearness" that 120 frames gave me was just a direct impression.
The most appropriate expression should be, "On the screen where the pores can be clearly displayed, when the male protagonist is strangled, 120 frames let us notice the reaction of the character's skin color, and I even witnessed the capillary caused by hypoxia and suffocation. The process of bulging and disappearing blood vessels."
That is to say, the change that 120 frames brings to the film is manifested in the movement of things presented by the lens.
24 bars is not an iron rule. In the process of exploration, filmmakers found that in order to ensure the minimum standard of smooth picture, the sound and picture are properly synchronized, and at the same time, it is also the most cost-effective for film, and 24 frames is the best choice for sound movies, and it is also the lowest choice.
Entering the era of digital and commercial blockbusters, big scenes have become a key demand, the action is more detailed, and the frame rate cannot keep up.
Compared with ordinary 4K, IMAX movies and "Gemini Man", the latter's shots of car chases and moving objects, such as bullet trajectories and object fragments flying, have smoother motion (sound and picture), and the audience is more immersive, as if a bullet pierced through it. Sawdust clearly flew to our eyes.
The higher the frame rate, the better it is for the lens to follow the lines of sight and movements of the characters. For example, the male protagonist uses his line of sight to scout the surrounding environment, and the lens can quickly follow the focus and keep it clear and non-sticky.
In order to present 120 frames, all the actions of the characters in "Gemini Man" are within the reach of human ability. The bumps and difficult actions when chasing a car are all done by humans. It creates another layer of reality, allowing traditional stand-ins, stunts or Flaws and flaws become invisible.
Note Will Smith's performance, his movements and expressions are especially steady, and when the camera can clearly show his breathing, he even has to adjust the rhythm of his nose. However, the expression changes of the characters in "Gemini Killer" are not rich (too serious), as if subtraction has been done for the sake of technology, reducing the level.
Also, to accentuate the authenticity of the characters, lighting became important for it and Billy Lynn, as transparent as a game.
At present, some directors and blockbusters choose 48 frames and 60 frames, which is enough to meet the needs. Therefore, it is difficult to say how much the audience can appreciate the more detailed changes brought about by 120 frames. After the release of "Gemini Man", domestic audiences have various questions, and the topics are not on point.
The dilemma of Ang Lee is that he is extremely advanced, and the world still does not have the tools and conditions to generally display 120 frames and the correct understanding of 120 frames.
In the face of the box office failure of "Gemini Man", many media chose to excuse Ang Lee. Some media cite the resistance of Hollywood film critics when color films appeared, as if to prove that when a new technology just came out, people's attitude towards it must be negative.
However, the difficulty of technological upgrading does not mean that human beings are "lazy". In the last century, sound films and color films were popularized within a few years. From "Billy Lynn" to now, the exploration of 120 frames has been more than three years, and only Ang Lee is still leading.
Sound and color are a process from scratch, but 120 frames brings the difference between "real" and "more real", and people's need for "more real" is far less urgent.
Human beings tend to be nostalgic. When digital replaced film, many people began to miss the graininess of film; when color films became clearer, more exquisite black and white works came out; Cameron's 3D was so shocking back then, it was regarded as a An innovative technology that is now one of many formats.
When the screen becomes more and more real, and the fictional space is getting closer to reality, this reality will interfere with the audience's immersion. Therefore, compared to the fresh stimulation of sound, color and 3D, the real difficulty that Ang Lee faces is not people's laziness that they are unwilling to upgrade technology, but that the world has not yet reached a "more real" stage.
2.
The difficulty of upgrading technology in reality will not be the biggest difficulty facing Ang Lee. Ang Lee's motives for insisting on technology are dubious.
In an interview with Taiwanese media, Ang Lee described his insistence on 120 frames, "I think we can experience the movie slowly, of course, it's not that you shake your seat, or put a smell or a fountain, it's not that kind of experience. . But after we absorb the information and sort it out in our brains, how do we have a chemical reaction in the body? I think there are some instinctual differences. So I don’t have a better adjective in terms of experience.”
This sentence highlights the uncertainty of Ang Lee's understanding of 120 frames, and his understanding of science remains in specious. As a forerunner, he did not provide a more convincing and mature philosophical and theoretical explanation for the technology.
When the camera captures the reality in higher definition and projects it to the screen, the screen displays the higher-definition image, and then enters the human eye to bring the perception. What does this reality mean to people? How do people philosophically explain the relationship between "120 frames of reality" and "reality"?
What's more, Ang Lee's constant emphasis on technology in reality has become a "technology control", which contradicts his position on technology in the film.
Past sci-fi films tended to provide audiences with a spectacle of future images, such as "Arrival", which assumed political expression and alluded to the current human situation. Therefore, they generally had an attitude of attaching importance to the construction of scientific philosophy, criticism and reflection, and always concealed them. Contains human fear of black technology.
The protagonist of "Ex Machina" said, "One day in the future, artificial intelligence will look back on us, just like we look back at the fossils of the African plains, a Homo erectus, living in dust, using rough language and tools, and finally all extinct." The villain of 2001: A Space Odyssey is a robot.
In order to maintain his authorship, Ang Lee, who is full of humanistic stance, did not forget to add his own thinking, father-son relationship, human predicament and the so-called Oedipus complex in Gemini Man, to explore the ethical dilemma brought by technology:
About aging and self; about identity, when your clone stands in front of you, is he your child or your brother; about the original sin of human beings, whether clone fighters count as innocent lives. "You have humanity, and you're not a perfect warrior."
In the film, Ang Lee took over the mantle of previous sci-fi movies, and his reflection on cloning became a cliché of "Blade Runner" decades ago. And the picture quality is poor.
"Gemini Man"'s idealized presentation of cloning, including its origins and transitions in the story, cannot rule out that the script creators are suspected of "genetic determinism" and hide a cruel social Darwinism tendency.
If this clone replicates your genes, it will inherit everything from you, combat power, brains, and even allergies, hobbies such as chess. If your human weakness comes from not having a good father to accompany you in childhood, then give the clone a fatherly love to make up for it, and his body and mind may be stronger than you.
The scientific view of the script and Ang Lee, who is constantly introducing new technologies to the world in reality, form a contrast and a pair of contradictions. People will ask, how can the 120 frames he insists on, not the clone he opposes in the film, kill the film, and even show that the game as a new art form is better at immersion than the film?
So, will 120 frames still be an advancement that technology brings to film (the form of film in past experience)?
3.
According to the Whig view of history, society is bound to develop. Technocrats insist that science and technology will inevitably bring progress to society. At this time, Ang Lee was like a technocrat. But is 120 frames necessarily the direction of film progress?
You know, science is the main method by which modern humans perceive the world. But scientific inferences are not always certain.
For hundreds of days, the farmer brought food to the chickens every morning, so the chickens concluded and deduced that the farmer's "visits" every morning brought food. Until one day, the chicken was looking forward to the food happily, but this time the farmer's house suddenly had a guest and killed the chicken. Science is an induction based on repeated experiments. Who is more trustworthy, scientific inference or chicken inference?
Technology has brought innovation to the film in the past, and will it be in the future?
Nietzsche questioned the ability of science to claim that it can explain the world. For example, science can know that the combustion of fire is an exothermic reaction between combustibles and oxygen, but it does not know why the two react, and it cannot explain why fire exists in this form.
Science attempts to describe the process of fire, and art is precisely to describe the "form of fire" that science cannot describe.
People tend to think of movies as the art category most closely related to technology, and great movies glue together the "enemies" of art and science. In fact, science provides tools for any art category. The brush of painting is a scientific invention, the marble material of sculpture is related to science, literature flourishes with printing, architecture is a manifestation of mechanics, and multimedia is very helpful to modern drama. deep. No branch of art can be separated from science.
MC Escher even incorporated mathematics and geometry into his prints, describing his work: "I consider my work the most beautiful and also the ugliest."
Artifacts in the museum show that humans 2,000 years ago were no different intellectually from those of today, and people then complained about how boring life was and how much they lost themselves. People often say that the technological revolution, the technology itself brings more innovation and reform, and the real revolution is still marked by the subversion of ideas.
For film, the invention of montage should be higher than the significance of sound and color technology to film. Italian neo-realism and the fresh artistic ideas brought by the new waves of various countries can ensure the longevity of the film more than technological innovation.
"Gemini Man" and "Billy Lynn's Halftime Battle" are both suitable scripts for 120fps. If you pay attention to my description in Chapter 1, you will notice that Ang Lee is still shooting according to the traditional creative concept. , and show the existing suitable skills again at a high frame rate.
If in the future, Ang Lee and his latecomers can build new theories and artistic techniques for high frame rates, or try to shoot the fast-moving human stories in the future technology era, 120 frames may not become as cinematic as 24 frames. Standards and the "bottom line". But for now, we're still not sure.
At the end of the movie, the old Will Smith kept telling some life experiences, while the young Will Smith joked that he wanted to experience some detours himself. I think for Ang Lee, who has accumulated a lot of experience, but still explores new things like a child, both of them have his shadow, and also express his inner sway.
Not only does he have to convince the world, but he also has to convince his own heart. FIN
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