I’m all set to attend a demonstration next Thursday of Douglas Trumbull‘s MAGI process, which aims to be the most dazzling and fluid high-frame-rate process yet at 120 frames per second. On top of it being a 3D process projected at 4K. The mid-day demo will happen in Toronto, and has been relatively difficult to get into. My interest was sparked by Scott Feinberg‘s 9.2 piece about MAGI in The Hollywood Reporter. I know, I know…the rejection of high-frame-rate photography in Peter Jackson‘s The Hobbit (which used a 48 frame process) means nobody wants to go there again…right? Trumbull claims otherwise in his conversation with Feinberg. I’ve been told since the early days of the 60 f.p.s. Showscan process, which was first unveiled in the early to mid ’80s, that the human eye can’t differentiate between 60 f.p.s. and 120 f.p.s. I saw a demo of differing high-frame-rate test reels at a Los Angeles SIGGRAPH conference in 2012, and I couldn’t really tell. There’s an easy-to-spot difference betwewen 24 f.p.s. and 48 f.p.s., but not so much between 48 and 60 or 120.