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High Frame Rate is just one of many technological innovations the medium of cinema has explored thus far in its lifetime. Color and sound revolutionized the making of movies in the 1920s and 1930s, while advancements in digital technology in the 1990s ensured that the wildest bursts of imagination from the world’s most beloved filmmakers could finally be realized. But not every technological leap forward for movies has a positive impact on the medium. Sometimes, this artform has to try new things to make people and artists alike appreciate the previous status quo, just like how George Strait channeling the sound of modern “hick-hop” would immediately make you cling tightly to the joys of “Amarillo by Morning.”

So it is with High Frame Rate, which has been advocated heavily by some of the most prolific filmmakers alive. James Cameron has been such a big proponent of the format that he not only partially filmed Avatar: The Way of Water in this medium, but he’s also converted older directorial efforts like Titanic into the world of 48 frames per second. However, the general public, very understandably, may not even know the first thing about this technology and how it’s adversely impacting movies. Put simply, what is 48 frames per second and why can it look so bizarre?

What Is High Frame Rate?

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Starting in the late 1920s, the default norm for all movies was that they be projected and filmed at 24 frames per second. That term “frames per second,” refers to how many images flicker across the eye when a movie is playing. In traditional projecting (with 35mm film and other similar formats), the process of 24 frames per second strikes a great balance. There are enough images here within just a second to make sure the footage looks like footage and not just a series of still images. However, they also haven’t crammed in too many shots in a single second so that the movements of the characters in the frame look weird or jarring. Though larger economic factors helped inform why 24 frames per second became the industry norm, it turned out to be a perfect method of making unreal movie images seem real.

This style of shooting has become so normalized that it’s spread to other mediums of storytelling, including television. However, as technology has progressed, new forms of frame rate were made possible for films and other avenues of storytelling. In video games, especially, storytelling involving 60 frames per second is now the norm while many arcade games ran at the same frame rate. While the ubiquity of this technology in modern video games has proven divisive for many, its presence in this medium is a lot more understandable. High Frame Rate can help reduce lag or strobing for gamers, thus ensuring that the response time on movies or actions they want to make are done in a timely fashion.

For films, there’s been way less urgency to alter the frame rate things are filmed and projected in. That’s not to say, though, that 24 frames per second has been the default norm for every single movie made since 1927-ish. Certain documentaries (like Hoop Dreams) were captured at higher frame rates because they were filmed on the earliest digital cameras. Meanwhile, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse featured moments and characters realized through 12 frames per second, as a way of harkening back to the glories of vintage hand-drawn animation. Spider-Verse’s enormous influence on the American animation scene has meant that subsequent big-screen features like Puss in Boots: The Last Wish have also tweaked with frame rate norms for specific beats or visuals.

However, a handful of modern-day motion pictures from iconic directors have begun being shot and projected entirely in High Frame Rate. This isn’t being done because of the restrictions of available cameras nor in small doses to accentuate important images. Instead, the likes of James Cameron, Peter Jackson, and Ang Lee have filmed Avatar: The Way of Water, the Hobbit trilogy, and Gemini Man, respectively, in 48 frames per second (though The Way of Water was still partially shot with the traditional 24 frames per second approach). In theory, High Frame Rate is supposed to make images look sharper and especially improve digital 3D experiences. In execution, though, it leaves much to be desired.

Why Does High Frame Rate Look Weird in Movies?

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Because we’re so used to seeing movies in the standard 24-frames-per-second format, the shift to 48 frames per second is often quite discernible to the eye. Not only that but what changes do appear don’t tend to offer a vast improvement on prior cinematic norms. Movement that’s intended to look “smother” tends to just look hurried while attempts to make images seem “more realistic” just enhance the artificiality of what’s on-screen. Worst of all, it becomes difficult to emotionally invest in what’s happening on-screen when everything looks so removed from any form of reality. The technology keeps reminding viewers it exists rather than serving the narrative at hand.

Worst of all, there isn’t much distinct purpose behind shooting these movies in unique frame rates nor making sure the visuals of these titles are well-suited for unique frame rates. Into the Spider-Verse explored lower frame rates to realize very idiosyncratic visual schemes and characters, but that hasn’t been true for many of the films shot at 48 frames per second. This issue could lie in how the majority of these titles have been sequels to not just pre-existing but beloved classics. The Hobbit films and Avatar: The Way of Water had to maintain some consistency with the visual scheme of earlier features, even when they were traveling to new environments.

Keeping these worlds immersed in the costume and set norms for earlier installments captured in 24 frames per second just exacerbated the problems ingrained into capturing entire or large sums of movies at 48 frames per second. The features are torn too much between opposing visual sensibilities, which hurts the stories of the films themselves in the process. Plus, The Way of Water had the unique problem of alternating between two radically different frame rates, often within the same scene. One moment characters would be captured at 24 frames per second, while another moment would see them being projected at 48 frames per second. Alternating sometimes as quickly as between shots made for a disorienting experience on this James Cameron directorial effort.

But The Way of Water at least fared better than the last two directorial efforts from Ang Lee (Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk and Gemini Man), which were both shot with way more bright lighting than usual to accommodate Lee’s preferred mode of shooting: 120 frames per second (most digital 3D screenings of these films were done at 60 frames per second since many projectors aren’t capable of showing movies at 120 fps). With this maneuver, Walk and Man often looked laughably artificial, even if you were watching them in 2D at 24 frames per second. The distracting lighting choices that made every environment seem so phony permeated every version of these features. In trying to make the set look perfect for 120 frames per second filming, Lee capsized the visual aesthetic of some of his most recent directorial efforts.

High Frame Rate Doesn't Belong in Narrative Movies

In a strange coincidence, I ended up watching Hoop Dreams for the first time the same week I’m writing this piece. Unsurprisingly, this motion picture is every bit as great as its reputation suggests, it’s handily one of the all-time great documentaries. It’s also a feature film captured at 60 frames per second, a method of filming that actually doesn’t look bad on Hoop Dreams. This production would look totally fine filmed and projected at 24 frames per second, but being a documentary, Hoop Dreams doesn’t have to worry about problems narrative films grapple with when being seen through High Frame Rate.

Props and sets looking more artificial aren’t a concern here. You don’t have to worry about matte paintings being too discernible when you’re filming in the actual bedrooms of teenagers. Meanwhile, the seemingly sped-up movements of on-screen figures engaging in fast actions often feel appropriate considering we’re often watching chaotic unscripted basketball games. This quality can detract from Na’vi riding their Banshees across the Pandora sky, but it accentuates the fast-moving very real world the main figures of Hoop Dreams are navigating. Though a facet of the project executed more as a byproduct out of camerawork resources available to the crew than anything else, Hoop Dreams does show that feature-length narratives can thrive when told with High Frame Rate technology.

Unfortunately, it appears that this technology, for now at least, is better suited to documentaries. The qualities of High Frame Rate that can be a benefit to documentaries are, unfortunately, a hindrance to narrative movies, even with the support and craftsmanship of filmmakers like Ang Lee and James Cameron. In its current form, High Frame Rate just makes movies look choppy and distractingly artificial and that’s just for titles shown at 48 frames per second. The two most recent works of Ang Lee show that going into the world of 60 frames per second and beyond requires narrative films that look just terrible in terms of lighting. The prospect of “making 3D look better” and other conceptual benefits of the technology don’t matter when movies like Gemini Man look terrible just to accommodate High Frame Rate technology.

There are all kinds of finer complexities to the technology of High Frame Rate, but the most important quality for the general public to understand is that it’s an anchor weighing down movies like Avatar: The Way of Water rather than a liberating breakthrough tool for narrative features.