In
the mid-1970s, pioneering visual effects master Douglas Trumbull began
experimenting with a revolutionary film process that would theoretically
immerse filmgoers deeper into the world of the movies called Showscan. Contrary to the industry standard of 35mm or 65mm
film projected at twenty-four frames per second, Showscan aimed to combine 65mm film with an exceptionally higher
frame rate of sixty frames per second.
The resulting image, when photographed and projected as shot, would
appear more lifelike with increased clarity and far smoother movement in
motion.
The
process was on the cusp of being utilized in Trumbull’s second feature film Brainstorm until the studio balked at
the costliness of outfitting movie theaters with equipment capable of playing
it. Ultimately the process was scrapped
in favor of a more affordable 35mm/70mm film mixture projected in standard
twenty-four frames per second. Years
later Showscan did become essential
to theme park rides such as the Trumbull directed Back to the Future: The Ride and he continued to develop newer processes
such as MAGI which would photograph
and project at one-hundred-and-twenty frames per second, blurring the lines
between cinema and reality just a little bit more than before.
Yet
for all the advanced technical breakthroughs of film photography and
exhibition, their collective uses remained outside of mainstream motion
pictures. Briefly that changed with
Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit film
series in 2012 which was photographed and released theatrically at a high frame
rate of forty-eight frames per second.
Contrary to the industry standard this approach shot on the Red Epic camera
provided smoother motion and solved a variety of 3D synchronization problems. Despite being among the only high frame rate
films to go wide, the process also engendered complaints either due to outdated
machinery or ill equipped projectionists unfamiliar with the necessary adjustments
to make.
As
a high frame rate motion picture, the process still didn’t match anything near
the level of what Trumbull had proposed with Showscan or his recently proposed MAGI process and three decades went by with no new developments on
the high-frame-rate process until Ang Lee’s 2016 Iraq war drama Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. Based on the 2012 novel of the same name by
Ben Fountain, the Life of Pi director
envisioned his talky, cerebral postwar satire as a cinematic game changer by
photographing entirely in one-hundred-and-twenty frames per second! While Lee consulted Trumbull for camera
tests, the director ultimately went off in his own direction regarding the
process.
Budgeted
at $40 million as a joint co-production between the United States, Great Britain
and China, the film was shot on the Sony CineAlta F65 in HFR (highest frame
rate) and was poised to be the film that would boldly challenge the
conventional approach to film exhibition.
Unfortunately for all of Ang Lee’s ambitious, technically proficient
envelope-pushing filmmaking, Billy Lynn’s
Long Halftime Walk fell hard on deaf ears.
Only two movie theaters in the United States were equipped to play the
film in the intended frame rate and after being expanded to a wider release to
measly numbers was dubbed the twenty-fifth worst ever debut for a major
film.
Lee
received some of the harshest reviews of career and unlike the director’s
previous technological demonstration film Life
of Pi it never found an audience. In
the three years since its release it remains an almost entirely overlooked
curiosity. What went wrong? How did the film directors like Douglas
Trumbull have been pushing for after three decades come and go completely
unnoticed by the general movie going public?
Furthermore, given the film’s commercial and critical failure, will we
ever see a film quite like it happen ever again?
Having
finally viewed Ang Lee’s troubled (misbegotten?) technological breakthrough on
4K UHD disc which contains the film at a still startling sixty frames per second
as opposed to the native one-hundred-and-twenty frames per second presentation,
I’m frankly amazed of all movies that THIS was the one chosen to debut the HFR
approach to filmmaking. While escapist
entertainments loaded with spectacle such as James Cameron’s Avatar and Ang Lee’s own Life of Pi seem tailor made for HFR, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is a
cynical, downbeat dialogue-driven Iraq war drama told largely in medium
close-ups of the actors faces designed to anger and enrage the viewer rather
than entertain.
That
much of it takes place within a football stadium only serves to exacerbate the
intended format’s unintentional kinship with broadcast television. When viewed at sixty frames per second, it
tends to look like live network TV instead of cinema, creating difficulties in
remaining invested in the idea of it as a feature film. It’s worth noting despite being available on
4K UHD in a frame rate closer to what was intended, neither the UHD nor the 3D
BD included can quite handle the film as shot.
The
conundrum of spending a majority of the film’s budget on a high frame rate
cinematographic process which required additional lighting and transparent
makeup on the actors’ faces only to have all of that innovation and money
wasted on a theatrical release incapable of displaying it properly invariably
boxed Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk into
a corner. How did Lee’s film get to the
stage of being the most state-of-the-art technological film yet made to that of
a film fiasco nobody saw? One wonders
whether or not the picture would have been more critically and commercially
successful had the HFR process been avoided entirely.
After being attached to the project, Lee presented his proposition of shooting the film at one-hundred-and-twenty frames per second to the then-CEO of Sony Pictures Tom Rothman who suggested mixing up the frame rates as he was unsure of the glistening patina of the full high frame rate. Lee, who felt the technique would immerse viewers deeper into combat sequences than ever before, proceeded with his vision unfazed by Rothman’s complaints. After turning over a final cut Rothman decided not to invest in outfitting theaters with the necessary equipment for a wide rollout of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. The move spoke volumes to the gulf between filmmaker ambition and studio financial flexibility, with what seemed like a corporate giant condemning its most prized possession to a quiet death.
While
the end result is indeed visually stunning thanks to two-time Academy Award
winning cinematographer John Toll and the frame rate does present a cinematic
experience never seen before or since, Billy
Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk was simply the wrong movie to demonstrate the
technology with. Feeling more like a
soap opera than cinema or live theater projected in cinemas via Fathom Events,
the film while beautifully shot rarely offers much in the way of big screen
spectacle. With exception to scenic
vistas like Vin Diesel and Joe Alwyn conversing beneath a tree in Iraq, this a
mostly a modestly sized talker that happened to pump up the budget due to the
high frame rate.
With
most of it taking place inside an arena millions of people watch on network
television all the time, viewers weren’t so keen on paying to see something
widely available for free. The cost alone
of a ticket to see it in the intended form ran $20 or more depending on the
venue with frankly little to justify the price tag. The Iraq combat sequences are indeed exciting
but they’re few and far between, taking a back seat to heated conversations
within the walls and mundanity of the football stadium. Perhaps Lee’s intention was to force viewers
to rethink the visual extravaganza and goals of a halftime show, but for many
the cinematographic effect proved to either unwatchable or even Dadaist.
At
times the frame rate invariably made some of the limitations of the computer
generated imagery stand out that much more.
Take for instance a combat sequence being shared online to demonstrate
how the technology works. While every
bullet flying out of the chamber is visible as opposed to a blur when viewed at
the standard frame rate, effects like the smoke left from a rocket launcher or
a terrorist evaporating in a mess of digital blood stick out like a sore thumb
in the full frame rate. Lee has always
been one of the true technical craftsmen of the movie business and is always
finding new ways to plunge into uncharted visual effects territory, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and
recently Life of Pi being no
exception. Here, however, the extreme
high frame rate and elevated sharpness only highlight the loose ends of his
technique.
Much
of it is driven by dialogue and one wonders what the goal of photographing
dinner table conversation or pillow talk at one-hundred-and-twenty frames per
second is. While not unwatchable, the
very technological breakthrough meant to immerse me deeper into the film kept
yanking me out of it. In a way despite
the decreased resolution, viewing the film at the reduced frame rate on the
standard blu-ray included actually proved to be easier on the eyes and less
distracting.
Then
there are those especially peculiar moments where we’re drifting in and out of
Billy Lynn’s head and to reflect his interior monologue the surrounding
characters and backgrounds tint to black and white and revert to twenty-four
frames per second while a halo around Billy keeps him in color at sixty frames
per second! It’s a bizarre effect that
absolutely depends on the availability of the high frame rate in order to work
on some level. In the reduced frame rate
the differences in the contrasting speeds becomes invisible, ruining the
effect. One also can’t help but imagine
how a stack of footballs flying at the camera or a circumference of Billy Lynn
during the halftime show would have looked with the full frame rate and 3D
rendering in place instead of only getting one or the other on home video.
After
bombing hard and taking an even more brutal critical takedown, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk quickly
completely disappeared from pop cultural consciousness and the film was largely
dismissed as inessential. A shame but
not entirely unsurprising as the goals far exceeded the director’s grasp with a
troubled rollout and a downbeat, meandering postwar satire not many viewers
wanted to sit through. Looking back it
is kind of a miracle something like it exists, utilizing all the untried
state-of-the-art tools for escapist entertainment on a hard hitting drama
designed to make viewers feel really bad.
Is
it any wonder why something like Lee’s fascinating misfire was doomed from the
moment the idea of pairing this material up with this revolutionary film format
came about? The film may have worked far
better and attained a greater following had it simply been made like any other
motion picture. By trying to push the
envelope as hard as they did, the experimental techniques may well have inadvertently
pushed moviegoers away from seeing it. Some
may rightfully argue in introducing the high frame rate process into the
preproduction stages, the filmmakers may have lost sight of what they were
really trying to make with too much emphasis placed on the technology rather
than the story.
Also
worth mentioning are MAGI founder
Douglas Trumbull’s own reactions to the film, who notably disliked the finished
product. Trumbull, who is still working
steadfast on his high-frame-rate film process, pointed to Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk as an example of how not to do a
high-frame-rate movie. As with pretty
much everyone else who saw it, Trumbull remarked the film looked very like
network television. Furthermore he believes
that with his still gestating MAGI process
he will unveil a one-hundred-and-twenty frames per second cinematographic
technique that will present increased clarity but will still look like
conventional cinema instead of television.
As
the film business and its most brilliant innovators continue to come up with
new ways to enhance or otherwise offer a different kind of moviegoing experience,
one hopes that Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime
Walk served as a valuable lesson to industry insiders and filmgoers
alike. While the resulting drama was
well made and acted with some surprising turns by veteran actors like Steve
Martin and Chris Tucker, overall the experience was weird. You’re never really sure how to accept the
film which uses all the tools of escapist entertainment to deliver a wry,
unhappy experience that isn’t all that exciting to look at or contemplate.
Compounded
with a variety of technical factors working against the narrative largely
related to the anomalies created by the high frame rate process, for all the
painstaking struggles undertaken the end result is kind of disengaging and cold. Whereas I was fully invested in many of the
director’s prior works, Billy Lynn’s Long
Halftime Walk mostly proceeded without me and what was intended to come off
as a real emotional crusher just kind of ended on a whimper. At the end of the day, the film was in deep
trouble the moment it was decided the high frame rate process would be such a
centralized aspect of it. I’m glad Mr.
Lee tried it out and still am hopeful for the format’s future, but let’s not do
that again anytime soon.
Score:
- Andrew Kotwicki