With the recent screening, there were mixed reviews saying that the quality of the shots made the overall experience somewhat odd. Some said it was like a play on a stage. I can related to that statement very well. When I walk into a Sony store and they have their super hi-res HDTVs streaming Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, the movie actually looks very strange. The edges are too crisp, and you can tell the difference between the actors and the CG background. You can detect too much detail in the sets. Sets are sets for a reason. They are much cleaner, crisper, and less messy than things in real life, but because of that they appear odd when there is too much detail. When you watch a movie it feels very different than when you visit the set at Universal. Being actually on the set feels fake while the purpose of movies is to make things seem real. Confused yet?
The point of a movie is to detach people from real life. Nothing in your actual life actually feels like a movie, and no matter how realistic the acting or storyline of a movie is it still doesn't feel real because things are framed for you in a deliberate way. Movies try to create a different world and immerse you inside, so that you are drawn away from reality for a little bit. To do that the look and feel of the film actually has to be somewhat unreal. Using too sharp a camera and too high a frame rate makes the film world seem like the real one. That's not what the audience is expecting when they enter a theatre.
But for the gamers out there they aim for 30, or even 60 fps, to keep themselves satisfied. How does that work? Well, games are very different. They aren't shot. The sets and characters are automatically unreal regardless of the frame rate. Even the most advanced graphics engines still look fake. The physics and textures are, in my opinion, too perfect to be real. The environments and character models look exactly like that, models. They feel more like a constructed world, where things never breakdown, rather than a real one, where there are constant imperfections.
Regardless of whether we are talking about games or movies or anything else, like books or photos or paintings, there is at some point where the greater resolution or depth or frame rate doesn't add to the experience any further. It might actually detract from it. Better quality sound or picture is only useful if there is a use for it. Online video is the best example of that. Things like Youtube focus mainly on the content. The quality can range from old webcams, to shaky phone cameras, to professionally produced videos, but what really matters is what are you watching. An awesome cat video is still awesome even if it's a little pixelated, as long as you can tell what's going on. More pixels don't really make it that much better. Same goes for music. MP3s are low quality, yet they are small in size and convenient to carry. Better than a high quality file that takes forever to transfer and requires expensive equipment to really appreciate.
The bottom line is that the content is what matters most. The convenience of it probably comes at a close second. Technical detailing varies in importance depending on how much it enhances the content itself. I think people will generally move towards the same consensus. Less focus on tech, more on content.
