10 Changes That Would Have Saved The Hobbit

Ever wondered why The Hobbit looks so fake, and The Lord of the Rings looks so real?

Peter Jackson shot the original trilogy on 35mm, which helped impart a sense of realism to the movies. The images were clear but not refined to the point of looking overly sharp. By the time the decision was made to make The Hobbit, almost a decade had passed since the first Lord of the Rings first hit our screens. Special effects, camera equipment and shooting techniques had development massively during this time.

When it came to The Hobbit, 3D was all the rage, and what with the release of the Red Epic camera, images had never been sharper. You could now shoot movies at 48fps in a 5k resolution. You'd think this would only add to the immersive experience of the new trilogy, but it had the opposite result.

Now, we're going to get a little technical for this one, so bare with us. Typically movies are captured at rate of 24 frames per second. This is true of film and digital filmmaking. But Jackson decided to push the Red Camera to its limits. It had the ability to shoot at double the frame rate, and at a higher resolution, ultimately meaning that the picture was incredibly detailed.

Given that the majority of the dwarves were in heavy prosthetics this had the effect of making everything look fake. The Lord of the Rings avoided this issue for the sheer fact the cameras were not capturing things as sharply.