HOME CINEMA CHOICE SEPTEMBER 2019
RECENTLY I SPENT some time with director Jon
Favreau, talking about the live-action version of
Disney’s The Lion King (pictured) that's been roaring
through the nation's multiplexes. Obviously, calling
it 'live-action' is an oxymoron. 'Nothing is real in this
movie,' said Favreau. 'It’s all fake. Everything is
created in the computer, from each single blade
of grass to the fur on Simba to the clouds in the sky.
It’s all an illusion.' He then dropped a hint that one
shot in the fi lm is actually a real photographed
image, and that he did it to see if anyone noticed.
This caused a fl ashback to a chance encounter
with a blindfolded Rubik's Cube master, James
McCambridge, and a research paper by Radboud
University in The Netherlands that he introduced me
to, which extols a revolutionary theory that actually
almost nothing we see is real. Which then leads
to the thought that 8K, 16K, 32K and onwards is,
to some extent, unnecessary.
The research was titled Brain Fills Gaps to
Produce a Likely Picture, with a conclusion that only
6 per cent of what we see is real. The brain fi lls in the
gaps and synthesises reality to fool us into believing
what we're seeing is actually happening.
We know the brain does this for sound, which
is how MP3 works; it relies on the listener's grey
matter to make sense of the audio, turning it back
into something we think sounds like what it's
supposed to be. This takes up more of your brain
power, so maybe if you have had a hard day, trying
to relax by listening to compressed streamed music
is not a good idea.
Seeing is believing
Back to what and how the eye sees. Eyes are slit
scanners rather than just cameras, building up a
picture of the world around us. The brain interpolates
the incoming data to create the world we believe
we are seeing. (It takes to around the age of 12 for us
to learn how to 'see'. Even though science can now
restore sight, in some cases it has proved pointless
doing this in people who lost it at an early age). What
I didn't realise was actually how little was real input
vs synthesised. This can explain the eff ects drugs
and other stimulus have on what we think is real.
I recently had some tests on my own vision at
Moorfi elds Eye Hospital in London. The boffi ns
found my centre vision was far more sensitive than
the average person, which probably explains why
I am so picky about image quality. I must have
superior processing to be able to do this! No.
Research seems to suggest you can train yourself,
so I'm not as unique as I thought. As an example,
hardcore gamers seem to aff ect their peripheral
vision to the point some have lost it as they are only
using their centre gaze. The by-product of this is that
they become far more sensitive to frame rates.
Still, when others can't see the problems with
a Blu-ray image, I can accuse them of being lazy.
So, if we are basically imagining the world around
us, what is the point of 8K or higher? Not much,
it seems, as we are more sensitive to pixel depth,
and highlight and shadow detail. Rather than more
pixels, we need higher quality pixels, brightness
and contrast.
So, remember when you watch Disney’s The
Lion King that you are seeing only 6 per cent of
something that's unreal in the fi rst place (although
the talking lions are probably a major clue), and
your brain is interpreting it to give you the illusion
you are witnessing something that exists. And then
maybe go for a lie down QIf you've ever said 'I can't believe my eyes!' then you've made the right call. Jon Thompson
discovers our visual system is always fi lling in the blanks, and wonders what that means for 8K
Do you think 8K is a format too far?
Let us know: email [email protected]When he's not in
his screening room,
Jon Thompson
tweets about
Hollywood gossip,
movie-making and
digital mastering at
@johnnyfocal70 OPINION