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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."
I hope so too. I hope so too.
... 3D stereoscopic, dolby Digital 14.2, environmental simulation, smell replicators, ... ... only one thing missing: good movies ...
But isn't equipment needed to view these 3D images? People aren't going to be using them much if they need to wear special glasses to see the movies.
Crap with depth.
I found 1d radio broadcasts like Alan Shepard in the 60s more interesting than most of the ooze oozing out of my TV set today.
Just came back from the Futuroscope in France where they have plenty of this 3D shit. Some is with LCD glasses (heavy and annoying), but some also with simple polaroid filter glasses. This is great for 10 minutes demo movies, but I think that after 1 hour, a lot of people will leave the theatre with a serious headache. Not only are the polaroid glasses not perfect, but you are still tricking the eye: the eye is focussing on a fixed distance (screen), but seeing objects all over the depth field. This could be good for some wild action movies, but don't hold your breath for mainstream 3D movies.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
I can't help to think that 3D hasn't taken off yet because, to date, there hasn't been a really good movie to take advantage of the process, which could explain that while 3D has existed in various forms for the last 60 years, it's rare to see a wide released feature film.
I can remember, as an example, computer animation. When it first hit the scene, it was more of a novelty, and I can remember thinking to myself "computer animation will never be successful, it's doomed to stay a novelty for all time, even if it does get better".
Then Toy Story came out, and my opinion instantly changed. It wasn't because I thought the graphics were especially good, it was because as a whole I really, really enjoyed the movie. They did some things in it that you couldn't do in convential ink and pen animation, and ommitted several traditional animation techniques commonly found in previous hand drawn films.
When I first saw Toy Story, it was on video shown at the free 'mini' theatre on my college campus. I avoided it at the box office because I thought "why spend money on something that's going to be a fad?", and only went to the free showing because going to the free movies was a great way to kill time while procrastinating on that paper you're supposed to be writing.
I really was taken aback. "This is a pretty good movie" I thought, and realized I was compleatly wrong about computer animation. Since the release of Toy Story, computer animation has become the rule instead of the exception, with (it seems to be, at least) more computer animation movies being released now then the tridtional hand drawn animated features.
If 3D could score a toy story, it could really take off. But since the bulk of all 3D movies are usually really bad, and nobody has yet to release a "masterpeice" in the format, I think most people's impressions of 3D are akin to my initial take on computer animation; that is, it's kind of neat, but not something I'd go out of my way for.
The Internet is generally stupid