Slashdot Mirror
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."
Once, when I was little, I saw a stereoscopic spy photograph at the Smithsonian. They had a viewing port through which two images would be superimposed on each other giving the resulting image a 3 dimensional quality.
I don't know how well they can bring that sort of 3 dimensionality to a film without requiring strange and uncomfortable glasses (remember Jaws 3D?). The closest I've seen is in plays where the actors and props are all in three dimensions (naturally).
But the improvement in 3 dimensional rendering in digital filmmaking has been absolutely outstanding in recent years. Just compare old movies like Tron and Dungeons and Dragons with their blocky and obviously computer-rendered scenes to today's Toy Story 2, Incredibles, even Star Wars. The difference is night and day.
I hope that digital film making becomes more than just special effects, though. The medium allows for such a broad range of uses that it is virtually limitless. Take the anime film Grave of the Fireflies as an example of pushing a medium to its limits. Who could have thought a cartoon could have such an emotional impact? Now figure that whatever was done there is only scratching the surface in what can be done with digital films and a whole universe of possibilities opens up.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
But somewhere along the line a stigma was attached to it which keeps anything other then sci-fi/horror filmmakers away from the format.
Hitchcock saw 3D as an exciting new direction to take the art of films, and originally shot and released one of his pictures in 3D format. Aparently, this wasn't enough to get it to catch on in serious film making circles.
Ultimatly the push towards 3D may simply be found in the new technology. Directors who never considered 3D--because of the 'out of sight, out of mind' nature of the "novelty" of 3D--might see the new and exciting equipment and processes for 3D production and give it a shot.
3D stands as one of the last methods in film making which has yet to be explored artistically (Alfred Hitchcock's single effort aside). I for one would be delighted if serious film makers picked up the process and did something more then "we can use this to make the audience feel like a shark is floating right in front of them, read to attack" or "watch as the blood splatter appears to fly out into the audience". In other words, I'd like to see a director try to do more with 3D then just gee-wiz novelty special effects and try to make a serious, artistic film which uses 3D to compliment the overall value of the work.
The Internet is generally stupid
IMHO They should focus a little more on story and meaningful content. What's next? 6 new star wars remakes? --yawn
Ahh 3D entertainment.
In the '50s they tried it with red/green glasses, and it was no more than a novelty.
In the '70s they tried it with polarized glasses, and it was no more than a novelty but in full colour.
In the '90s they tried it both with VR helmets and shutter glasses and it was a passing fad with a migraine.
(Are you starting to notice a pattern?)
Now someone wants to try it again. Good luck to them, but don't hold your breath.
The core challenge for 3-D is creating a system that works when a person tilts their head. Current 3-D filming and multi-person viewing systems assume that the viewers left eye is a fixed horizontal distance to the left of the right eye with no vertical displacement between the eyes' pupils. This assumption is only true when everyone is sitting upright in their chairs. If the viewer tilts their head, then the parallax of the scene appears unnaturally displaced and gives the viewer eyestrain, headache, or a sensation of double-images. With 3-D, you can't rest your head on your partner's shoulder, tilt your head to see around the person in front of your, or lie on the couch and watch it without some visual discomfort. I'd imagine that most people won't consciously notice the problem but might subconsciously become aware that they get eyestrain, neck-pains, headaches, or a vaguely nauseous disoriented feeling when they see a 3D movie -- not a recipe for repeat business.
One nearterm solution to the problem is constructing tilt-dependent parallax for each viewer. The person with their head tilted to the right needs to see a different pair of images than the person who is sitting up straight or who has tilted their head to the left. This pushes 3D into the realm of more awkward and more expensive personal viewing headsets and the need for tracking head tilt and recomputing/rerendering the scene parallax in realtime.
The longterm solution is holographic or volumetric systems that create/reconstruct an optical 3-D field. This solves the head tilt problem, although adds the minor cinematic problem that the people on the left side of the theatre may have an obstructed view (relative to the people in the center or right-side) if, for example, the main character's hand covers some important object from some angles.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Ok, so they have some new "tech" available, will we see some impressive movies yet? I hope so. The movies coming out these days, are just rediculous. Dont get me wrong, there are some decent movies out there now, but none of them strike me like a movie did 5, 10, 15 years ago.
Over the last few years, have we been so overstimulated that nothing impresses us? Possibly, but I dont think so. Lets get some unique things out there! Hollywood always bitches and moans about low box office earnings, well come out with something new!! Kind of interesting, an article at a gaming site I am an editor for wrote an article about this a few days ago, hollywood needs to friggin show some unique ideas, new tech alone wont do it, it will help, but we need some new ideas and some innovation.
The simple crossfade, for example. In 2D, everything is in the same plane of focus; your eyes don't have to adjust during the transition. However, 3D crossfades broke my brain. As one scene faded out and another in, I couldn't figure out what to focus on, and until the transition finished I just saw a confusing blur.
Maybe that's just me, and kids raised on 3D will be able to sort it out. But I rather think that entirely new visual metaphors will be developed as 3D becomes mainstream.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Actually no.
I have seen porn filmed before, it's where I bought my high end video camera used, I had to go into the studio with the owner to retireve the camera. They switched from regular DEF to HD and were selling off their XL-1s's you do NOT want to see porn in high def or 3d. Those "actors" you really do not want to see that clearly.
BTW, it is amazing how lively the porn filming industry is in Chicago. They had 4 studios in that building on the south side. 2 were filming, 1 was setting up, and the last was what looked like a pay for dirty webcam with 5-6 matresses set up with PC's in front of them. The guy I bought the camera from said his os one of 5 studios he knows of in Chicagoland.
HD or 3d porn... oh god no... leave it fuzzy so we can think they look better than they really do.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
There are 2 mainstream methods to get perceived 3D movies: Stereoscopic and anaglyphic.
Anaglyphic is where you seperate color channels (red and blue typically) and then filter those for the right and left eye.
With stereoscopic, 2 different perspective streams are interleaved into your video. Now this is where it really gets interesting as to how to view that.
The first method (the method IMAX uses..and what I actually use in my own home) is to use stereoscopic shutter lenses. You are correct that you have to have vision in both eyes. For those with vision in both eyes, blink your left eye and then your right eye. That slight shift of all objects in vision is your perspective. That is the VERY same thing that is accomplished with the 3D glasses (and specially formatted movie). The movie is streamed in alternativing frames. So you have to find a way for the left eye to see frame 1 and right eye to see frame 2.
Alternating views is usually accomplished with stereoscopic shutter lenses. What this does is to blank the left eye and then the right for you (usually by having LCD screens that simply go dark or transparent--really not that magical at all).
The glasses are kept in sync with the video by a sender unit (mine is infrared wireless, but you can have RF or wired connections as well). The bottom line is that it works and beats the snot out of Red/Blue 3D views (anaglyph is by far inferior).
Now, some think that the glasses are pretty cumbersome or dorky. That really isn't a problem, as you can purchase monitors for your home that require NO GLASSES. Not only that, but you can purchase notebooks that already have those LCDs in place.
The screens require you to be at a pretty specific depth from the screen for it to work, but it works very well. What it does is to have a lenticular approach to views. You know those toy pictures (and now framed photos do it too) that you tilt from right to left and the picture appears to move? The surface feels funny with deep grooves as well. That same approach is used in these monitors to shoot 2 different images from right to left eye.
Sharp has pioneered the manufacturing of these laptops and LCD panels. Amazing things in that they are just one of the proof-of-concepts that you do NOT need holograms or glasses to get 3D views for motion or static pictures.
as every-other-frame.
Along with dubbing in language, fancy 3D images and the like, what happened to captioning?
Geez, being Deaf means I experience movies in a very different manner. Either I must:
Wait for them to come out on DVD
or
Wait and view them on a cable station
or
Pay full evening price on the rare occasion a captioned film is shown in my city.
Now even when the captioned film makes it to my city, it's way behind the opening date, admission is abysmal because of the showtimes which are only on Tuesday and Wednesdays (again, in my area) either during the day when I'm working or only late at night.
Even worse, the theatre is in an unfriendly part of town so being alone and Deaf in the dark parking lot spooks me.
So with all the hoopla about 3D don't expect me to support it until I can enjoy a so-called regular movie with everyone else.
We're always told that captioning is expensive and distracting to hearing people but that isn't necessarily the case.
Hence, I don't purchase DVDs unless they are second-hand, don't go to the theatres because they can't cater to my needs, and I'll NEVER support some new whizbang tecnhnology for movies until something as simple as captioning is instituted first.