Hobbit director Peter Jackson defends high frame rate filming technique after critical bashing

The new HFR (high frame ratio) tech that Jackson has opted to shoot his new Hobbit trilogy with shuns the previous 24 frames per second approach, which had been used since 1927 for a newer, more detailed 48 frames per second presentation.

“It’s not critics who are going to decide it this [48 frames per second] is going to be adopted or not, it’s the audience,” Jackson said to the BBC of several critics' less than positive assessment of the new approach.

“24 frames is jarring to me now,” he added.

While the filmmaker is enamoured with his new approach, the critics who have seen the film so far have not been as unanimous about its appeal.

The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw said “it looks uncomfortably like telly”, and The Telegraph said it gave the film a “sickly sheen of fakeness”.

You can find out for yourself what you think when the film hits cinemas here this Thursday, December 13.

Photo: Getty.