For all the bold choices surrounding December’s release of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (see: its soul-crushing run time, the decision to make it into the first of a trilogy), none was more innovative or daring than the decision to give audiences migraines. That was the end result, anyway, of shooting the film at 48 frames per second—a revolutionary technique that gives the film a visual crispness but also reportedly causes spells of dizziness, nausea and migraines in viewers.
Whether or not other filmmakers will chance these unexpected side effects in order to herald the high frame rate as the new standard in filmmaking remains to be seen.
