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Hollywood Going Digital and 3D
teutonic_leech writes "Last weekend the Directors Guild of America hosted its annual Digital Day event, which gives filmmakers a look at revolutionary new movie-making gear. Judging from a Wired article reporting on the gathering, Hollywood's future not only seems to be digital - there are also indications that stereoscopic 3D has caught the attention of filmmakers in and outside tinseltown. One Indie filmmaker even went so far as to build his own homebrew stereolens attachment enabling him to film in 3D."
Sorry - it's been done. Emmanuelle 4 in 3D showed at my local fleapit in around '84/5. It was... strange.
When are they going to learn? People think the quality is fine (could be better though) but it's all the stupid storylines that's the problem.
In regards to the artistic problems you mentioned: yes, a good deal of traditional methods of film making will have to be reevaluated in order to accomidate the different format. But that's kind of the point; filming in 3d can let the director try new techniques to bring out the qualities of 3D.
The Hitchcock movie I was thinking of is "Dial M For Murder". From the IMDB: Filmed in 3D, which explains the prevalence of low-angle shots with lamps and other objects between us and the cast members. There was only a brief original release in 3D, followed by a conventional, "flat" release; the 3D version was reissued in 1980.
While I've only seen the 'flat' version (as most people have), what this suggests is that Hitchcock understood, at least on some level, the various limitations traditional methods of film making pose when presenting a work in 3D. That doesn't mean one can't make an artistic work in the 3D format, it simply means that the film maker has to change the way he or she does things, throw out a lot of the traditional "rules" and techniques.
While certian lens effects now would have to be avoided, I could easily see new and different effects--which would never work in a 2D film--tried and developed.
To put it in a nutshell, I don't think going to 3D would neccescarlly be harder, it simply would be a dramatically different process, one that hasn't had the last 70 years or so to be perfected in as traditional 2D film makig has had. In time, as directors understand the different nuances of filming in 3D and develop new techniques for it, I'm positive that 3D will become a viable alternitive to what we've got now.
As for the suboptimable viewing angles, I have to wonder how that would be experienced in "stadium seating" configuration most new movie theatres are using. I would think, based on the IMAX films presented in 3D and amusement park 3D attractions which provide seating arrangements that are much closer to the new stadium seating regular theatres then the traditonal seating configuration theatres have had for decades.
The last time I saw a 3D presentation was the SpongeBob Squarepants attraction at Great America in San Jose, which not only was very entertaining, but was a signifigantly better 3D experience then my memories of watching Jaws "3D" a little over 20 years ago in a traditional theatre setting (that it was kind of crummy movie didn't help either).
Granted, SpongeBob had the seats all placed on actuators which shook you around during the movie and of course it's a cartoon, so it's hard to say if that had something to do with it in directing the viewers focus so well, but overall I thought the effort was one of the most well done productions I've seen in 3D.
The Internet is generally stupid
I've seen 3D IMAX films three times so far, and the glasses are, indeed, large. Which is good, because it meant they fitted over my glasses. But they aren't heavy, or unwieldy.
Modern 3D uses polarised light, with the left eye filtering out horizontalally polarised light, and the right eye filtering out the vertical. This means that a very light pair of plastic glasses can allow for proper 3D without changing the colours at all.
It looks _fantastic_.
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The big problem with traditional stereoscopic 3D isn't the need for glasses. It's problems with geometrical distortion. Sitting in a theatre, everyone sees slightly different images with their left and right eyes. But a person sitting front left sees a VERY different PAIR of images than a person sitting in the back right.
With the traditional two-image processes--versions of Wheatstone's nineteenth century stereoscope--everyone in the house sees the SAME thing through their left eye and the SAME thing through their right eye.
This has serious intrinsic limitations.
The audience view appears geometrically distorted, except for a few lucky members sitting in a fairly small central "sweet spot."
3D tends to make every movie look like "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari."
Suppose Ann Miller is twenty feet from the camera, and she chucks a handkerchief at the camera, and it lands ten feet away. In the theatre, EVERYONE sees the handkerchief chucked straight at them, and landing halfway between them and the screen. People near the front see a flattened version of the original space. People near the back get exaggerated depth. People at the sides see rectangular geometry as rhomboidal.
Even in the sweet spot, there is only one camera focal length that reproduces depth accurately. If the cinematographer chooses to use a long lens for a closeup, rather than physically moving the camera closer, the picture will look wrong.
These geometrical distortions actually apply to ordinary 2D films as well, but you do not notice them because the image is already so spatially distorted by being flat that you are not processing it as an accurate representation of reality.
(Warning: ageist/sexist alert): Another issue is that 3D is unflattering to actresses, as it reveals the true spatial contour of their faces regardless of makeup. A forty-year-old actress can be made up to look twenty-five in regular films, but not in 3D.
They struggled with all these things in the 1950s, both with stereoscopic 3D and with the ultra-wide-angle processes like Cinerama.
All of these problems suggest to me that 3D will be fine for fantasy, science-fiction, and generally surrealistic subject matter, but I don't see how it can ever be used for traditional mainstream cinematic drama.
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No more. The latest 3-D volumetric displays overcome this issue. These devices gives a visual clues to your brain to recontruct the 3-D image. Couple of months back there was feature story in IEEE spectrum on the recent 3-D technology advances. Here is the link
e /apr05/04053d.html
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/publicfeatur