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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.
For Homebrew blockbuster 3D Videos.
This could bring a whole new meaning to the porn industry.
Thankfully, things have changed in the last 20 years and in even five years time such devices may be practical.
TOO LATE!
Video Games have gone digital and 3D like 15 years ago.
Movie and TV are doomed to death!
End of story... Nothing to see.. Move along...
... 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.
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.
this 3d thing could bring a whole new look to the matrix. oh joy
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
That is a valid point if you go to movies and assume that people are more interested in your face than the film.
Antti S. Brax - Old school - http://www.iki.fi/asb/
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.
IMHO They should focus a little more on story and meaningful content. What's next? 6 new star wars remakes? --yawn
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
...because the 2D editions aren't as he imagined them, not to do with making more money or anything. It's like a generation of Sci-Fi fans cried out "Nooooooooooo!" and were silenced.
Greebo is rumoured to be 3D'ed first. Before Han...
(some of the above may not be true)
Can someone explain to me how investing in and maintaining hundreds of active LCD shutter specs is better than using two projectors with polarizing filters and super-cheap passive polarized glasses? Heck, Disney World had that Michael Jackson movie that used this approach 15 years ago. Maybe everyone is just so busy with the "high-tech" feel of the LCD shutter specs that they've take leave of their senses.
This seems like a no-brainer, especially with the gradual move to digital projection. Building a projector that composites the left and right eyes images is not that complicated and should be only incrementally more expensive as they would share much of the same optic path. The 3D form of the compressed movie shouldn't be that much bigger either as the same interframe compression algorithms can be use on the left/right eye frames and avoid the need to store two full copies.
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.
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.
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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We'll have some actors that aren't shallow :)
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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
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.
I have noticed this over the last few dies, its like most of the mods suddenly got killed, or the govenment captured them...
Im scared!!
I always didn't really get the whole 3D or the effect got mostly lost on me with the silly glasses as I lack depth perception.
I just don't like the sound of "stereoscopic" in my case. I hope they can also be viewed comfortably in mono if this gets a new cinegraphic standard.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
If you have all of the original material, models, images and so forth, you can recreate scenes of the movie with different text showing, with mouth motions different, relevant to a dfifferent language, and even with different cloths or cloth patterns on the characters. You control the emersion of the characters completely, so take advantage of it.
Make the film in one language. But when the time comes, change those elements that are relevant to another language and remake it in that language completely.
These days, all you get is the spoken language dubbed in, and that usually does not match the mouths of the characters speaking it. Text is untouched. That is a relic of live action movies. It doesn't have to be in digital also.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
... was done by drawing hand-painted cels on a grid. Really. The computery-looking stuff was done by human animators, which made the rendered stuff look even more amazing.
WTF? You are only going to see one pill in Morpheus' hand, and it is going to be 3 inches in front of your face. What does he mean 'choose'?
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
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!
Some claim 3D so marvelous, incredible, great. No, it isn't. It's improvement, true, but not all that big. I'd say stereo sound vs mono is better.
In theater (real, with actors playing on the scene) you get full 3D, 100% realistic experience, real multi-sourced sound, you can smell gunpowder from a gunfire. The camera position changes once in 20-40 minutes maybe, and the special effects are somewhat limited and sometimes cheesy, but you can't deny the realism of the scene. But somehow the live theatre seems to be slowly dying, being an "elite" thing...
I've been to a 3D cinema, watching with polaroid glasses. The glasses were light, didn't disturb really, watching experience was generally good. But the movie was rather boring. True, there was that third dimension added. It looked better that way. A corridor really looked like a real room behind the screen. The dinosaur really looked like reaching into the audience. So what? Just one extra sensory experience added. Not really important one.
But movies are a kind of storytelling. Like a book, or a still picture. It doesn't have to look realistic to be enjoyable. Special effects? Sometimes - But there's one thing that really "do it": immersion. You just must feel "in it". Involved emotionally. Binding your feelings with the action. Feeling for the characters. There's no single thing that could help it. Good play/storytelling, good plot, no interruptions/distractions - that works. Extra visuals may impress but won't bind you (watch a horror movie, starting 15 minutes from the end and see how scared you are...). I think the old, almost forgotten, entertainment park "180 degrees cinema" (the screen is half of the surface of the dome above the audience, the image covers your whole field of view) would do it better than 3D.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
How about new technology that can be used to write better scripts?
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.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
From a post a while back on slashdot http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/ 17/1331207&tid=196
If LCD manufacures continue with this kind of technology we may not need the bulky glasses or other 'personal accessories' to be able to see in 3D. The images coming from the 3D cameras will just be encoded on multiple layers and each screen will project its own layer giving a 3D effect. This will also allow for viewing of the 'old' 2D movies and programming.
your "recomputing/rerendering the scene parallax in realtime" betrays your having forgotten that we're talking about film here...
Film records a fixed perspective but human heads and eyes are not fixed. And that's the problem with film for use in 3D. FIlm is not an appropriate medium for visually comfortable 3-D because it forces the viewer to hold their head in the same fixed orientation used by the cameras.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
1950s: TV threat -> Cinerama and Cinemascope and 3D.
2000s: HDTV threat -> revival of widescreen and 3D processes.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Khaaaaaaaaaaaan!
My thesis was that there is a long history of 3D photography and cinema, with the level of interest bouncing up and down on about a 20 year cycle - about the expiry time of a patent. The 3D views had a short-term novelty value, but they always lost out in the long run to conventional photographs with sightly better resolution.
Wheatstone produced the first hand-drawn stereographs in about 1834.When his friend, Fox Talbot introduced the Daguerrotype process to the UK in 1835, they got together and made some stereo photographs, which were exhibited the same year.
Stereographs were mass-produced from about 1845 onwards (Queen Victoria got given one, then everyone had to try it). In Europe, people often used transmission stereographs, while in the US, the Homes stereograph used reflection prints. Some of Brady's Civil war photographs were stereo pairs. No special camera was necessary: when emulsion speeds allowed hand-held cameras, you had two plates, and you took one with your weight on the right foot, and the second with your weight on the left foot. This moved the camera by something like the intra-ocular distance. This meant that anyone who could take a conventional photograph could take a stereograph, and some people amassed huge private stereo collections (over 100,000 pairs).
The heyday of stereo photography was bought to an end by advances in lens design. The old 'bullseye' lens gave a very limited field of view. The Right Rectilinear lens gave less abberation at the edges, so you could take wider views. Panoramic cameras extended this by moving the emulsion as the photo was taken. You could have 3D panoramas if you made a special spectrograph, but if the parallax offset went through a minimum in the centre of view, then you ended up squinting at the edges.
Two-colour printing for book plates in the late 1800's allowed the red-blue anaglyph stereo images. You could get a wide field of view without special optics because the two images appeared on the same sheeet of paper. Magenta and cyan glasses, and a full-colour print with a common, defocussed, yellow image culd give the appearance of full colour.
Conventional stereographs were combined with flicker-book animation in 3-D 'What the Butler Saw' machines in the late 1800 - early 1900s. Later innovations included anaglyph 3D films and colour still image viewers (View-Master) within a year or so of the first colour films in the 1930s. There were polarized 3D films in the 1950's, a year or so after Polaroid became available in reasonable amounts. Experimental 3D TV was also tried in the 1950's. There were adapters for 35mm cameras and slider projectors in the 1970's, and printable polarized images (the Xograph). There were also lenticular sheet images, the Nimslo camera, and so on. In the 1990 there were liquid-crystal shuttered glasses 3D on colour TVs using the Pulfrich effect (the BBC's Doctor Who in Eastenders episode). It goes on, and on - I am sure there are others that I have forgotten in my original collection. However, they tended to peak on odd-numbered decades. Perhaps the most recent is the IMAX 3D films - the International Space Station (keep your head really level or you see the other images), and New York in 3D (keep your head over the bucket, so you don't miss it when the motion sickness kicks in).
I reckon we are now on a low: there will be a flurry of 3D work in about 2010, peaking at about 2015 at exhibitions, and then disappearing for good a few years later. It's sort-of fun at the time, but it never seems to last.
Yeah, without decent screenplays everything on your list turns to crap. I mean,
3D stereoscopic
It's SCTV 3-D theater: Eugene Levy and John Candy lunge toward you, Eugene Levy and John Candy move away.
dolby Digital 14.2
The next cinematic release of Battlestar Galactica sure will have clear rumbling sounds when the battlestar goes past. Hoo boy. Just like "sensaround" sound for the first cinematic release of Battlestar Galactica...
environmental simulation, smell replicators
Speaking of sensaround -- it's smellaround, back from the dead! Take out your scratch-n-sniff cards, people.
The signs are not all bad. Amazingly, Charlie Kaufman has become a sort of golden boy in today's Hollywood by cranking out pretty good, pretty accessible, interesting little stories: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation, Being John Malkovich. A screenwriter is one of the industry's biggest stars! Christopher Nolan made his director's rep with Memento, and he's done two pop movies since without completely losing any sense of a decent story. The studios actually seem to "get" using the indie movie world as a way to identify talent. It's like a Miracle on Sunset Boulevard. Where's Santa?
(Somehow though, we still have the specter of "the Bruckheimer production of Pride and Prejudice, starring Keira Knightly" -- OH. MY. GAWD. HOW. HIDEOUSLY BAD. DOES. THAT. SOUND?? I can't wait to see the Matrix-style revolving cameras turning around the big dance at Mr. Bingley's...)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
According to this valuable web resource, 6-8 percent of people lack stereoscopic vision, and that includes me. It's not a lot of fun sitting in a theatre looking at other people grabbings stuff in front of them that doesn't exist.
When the policeman of the tie, rule you violate, hello punishment of the kitty?
The technology is not the issue. Poor story-telling is. In fact increasingly cheaper technology is allowing more mediocre movie makers put more crap out there. I am very bored with movies about conflicted superheroes chasing bad guys. The computer is a tool, not an end.
50 years ago!!! Like wow, 3d, you mean I get to wear these glasses that give me a headache after an hour? SIGN ME UP!!! SARCASM LEVEL 7 CAPTAIN!! THATS ALL I CAN GIVE YA!!!
Maybe the DGA shouldn't kick out cutting-edge digital film makers like Rodriguez for silly reasons... That would be a good first step in their journey towards these modern formats and techniques.
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.
I'm sure, somewhere, somebody in Hollywood was simply thinking of a way to make it so people could not pirate movies. Voila! Encode the movies to the human eye, make it so you need a special De-coder to view them! No more piracy. Okay, its a stretch, but we'll no longer be able to 'observe' bootlegged copies of professional films.
Sigs are for Terrorists.
I think that's one thing you could watch without getting a headache.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Well, kind of - there's a picture of a guy in a red shirt from a company called Neovision Labs. He's holding up some contraption and the caption says that he build this thing himself DIY style (a geek in the making? ;-)
I'm not suprised you missed it though... sorry I should have pointed to that when I posted the article.
Teutonic Leech
The cost of converting a film to 3-D varies, but the conversion price tag for a possible stereoscopic re-release of Randal Kleiser's '70s blockbuster Grease was estimated at around $8 million.
"Grease"? Nifty new 3D technology, and we're going to get "Grease" in visual stereo? WTF?
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Posted on Tuesday was a perfect compliment to this story Stereoscopic Viewing. In THAT article it talked aboout independent stereoscopic viewing without the use of glasses. Further if you read the article and then view the albeit large, but nice, 40mb clip from it, you would see that at one point they are projecting an image onto a wall (or any surface would work I would imagine) and the image was completely 3D and adjusted to the viewing angle of the person watching. Now, I couldn't explain exactly how they are doing this, but the demo shows a couple of people who look like they are in a basement using what look like standard lcd projectors (I could be wrong). Bottom line, all the gripes about 3D everyone is talking about are being addressed, and not only being addressed, but with some progress coupled with it. Take into account the previous article, and the industry's new attitude towards 3D, we might actually have something here!
Having had that experience burned into my memory, I can tell you honestly that unless somebody comes up with a way to make 3D films which don't involve glasses or lousy scripts, I will never go to another such production again.
Unless, that is, a girlfriend or child wants me to take them because they've never seen one before and are really excited about going. --If that's the case, then I'll happily pay for all the admission fees and probably even enjoy the head-ache afterwards.
Life is funny, ain't it?
-FL
Lucas and Cameron (ILM) have already previewed some of it at ShoWest several months ago (several minutes of the original Star Wars...they also showed several minutes of Top Gun). The 3D was displayed on a Christie 3 chip DLP cinema projector with dual processing using a single lens. I also heard the the new 3D glasses look more like a nice pair of sunglasses.
...you've been warned.
Oh...and by the way...get ready for what is being billed as the largest ever ad promotion of a movie...Disney's Chicken Little 3D.
This post points out a problem which is covered in other posts, but perhaps in the best way.
I haven't seen any Slashdot coverage of the digital cinema spec, the loss of celluloid will change the movie industry I think. If anyone is interested in the full tech spec you can see it here.
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
I've been wondering: at what point will film studios pay real-life actors for the digital representation of their likeness.
Seriously. They're getting close with digital effects to accurately render humans - they do it all the time for background actors, but the main actors (Final Fantasy) still look wooden and emotionless despite a still shot of them looking amazing.
At some point, I would think, George Lucas (or the then-overseers of his franchise) would hand Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher (or their respective estates) a whack of cash for their likenesses. Then, their digital monkeys would scan every scene in the three Star Wars films, every angle, every facial expression and body shot to create fully 3-D versions of the characters. With all the samples of their voices in so many movies, it would be easy to have a perfect sample of their voice to form any words, most intonations and possibly even force them into foreign accents.
Then, it is completely possible to make Episodes 7-? using the actors as they would have looked and sounded in 1985 rather than 2015.
I use Lucas as an example because it'll either be him or Spielberg (or both at the pace they're taking to make Indianda Jones 4) to do something like this.
By spending $100 million on technology and special effects and only $50,000 on an actual script, they have ensured that you'll close your eyes and go to sleep or walk out of the theater long before eye-strain becomes a problem.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Your are so spoilt, young people! Back in the day we had 0D movies, and enjoyed them!
Actually, although film features 24 frames per second, the shutter opens/closes 48 times per second - otherwise film would be very flickery ;-)
So, the quoted 96 frames are indeed correct - 48 times the right eye and 48 times the left.
Passive polarized glasses may seem simpler and cheaper, but that's only if you look at the viewing side of the equation and not the projection requirements. For cross polarization, you have to project two images simultaneously. That can be done with two perfectly synchronized projectors. Although expensive, this is often the choice for dedicated 3D theatres. Or you can try to squeeze both images into a single frame and use a special optics to split the beams, polarize them, and rejoin them. This means you get half the resolution at best, and you've cut the light to each eye at least in half. In practice, you need a *really* powerful projector, since there are also losses for the additional optics. For polarized light to remain polarized when reflected off the screen, you need a silvered screen. These aren't much more expensive than a conventional modern screen, but it is one more thing to consider. The result is dimmer, lower resolution 3D. You may be able to compensate for the dimming by installing more powerful projectors, but then you also need more cooling power in the booth. (Those extra optics absorb lots of heat!)
Using LCD shutter glasses and multiplexing in time eliminates the loss of spatial resolution and dramatically mitigates the loss of brightness. If your projector is capable of a 2x frame rate, you can comletely eliminate the loss of brightness. If your theatre is already digital, then buying the glasses and installing an IR or RF synchronization signal broadcaster is quite possibly less expensive. And you can immediately switch back and forth between 3D and conventional movies.
Depends on your age - my 6-year old absolutely LOVED Shark Boy & Lava Girl in 3d. Thankfully, his mom took him so I didn't have to sit through it, just endure repeated askings to see it again. Can we see it now? Can we see it now? Can we see it now? ...
http://photobombers.com/ Funny pix
I hope a talented South Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Tai, ecetera) director and production crew to use this technology have a full blown stereoscopic 3d epic consists of troops, sword fighting, spears, and even elephants.
I would gladly part lots of money (moreso than any Star Wars film combined) to see a film adaptation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Tales of the Genji, adaptations of Chinese or Japanese novels, recreations of historic military battles, or even a mad crazy samurai flick. I just hope the director and script would be a high enough calibre to have a in depth story with Eastern psychology and thinking.
Giving the technology to Asian filmakers would the killer app for the tech. Shame the VCD version wouldn't be able to transfer the effects.
I agree that the article doesn't properly state it but please understand that it was written by a non-techie. I do however appreciate your interest and attention to the details - and being a little bit pedantic just shows that you've actually given this some thought. Finally, I hope that you'll actually go and see some of those 3D movies in the works right now. I agree with one of the above posters - 3D movies should be like color movies - not made for the 3D effect - they should be easily enjoyable and not made to simply leverage the stereoscopic experience.
Sorry, but no matter how clear, bright, and judder-free a digital projection is, the resolution still isn't there. I go to movies to inundate my senses with sound and light, to immerse me into a work of fiction. When you can clearly see video scanlines (ala Star Wars Episode II), the illusion is ruined.
Cineon resolution for 2.21:1 film prints is 4096x1888. Wake me up when digital projection can equal that.
The problem with filming these movies is that only the objects the camera(s) focus on are in focus to the viewer. Hence if the camera is focused on the main actor, and you look at the supporting character, he will be out of focus even though you are looking directly at him! Thats my problem with this technology
Man is the lowest-cost, 150-pound, nonlinear, all-purpose computer system which can be mass-produced by unskilled labor.
I saw Episode III first on film. Half way through a fire alarm went off and everybody in all the theaters had to leave for about 20 minutes. When we were allowed back inside I took a seat in the digital projection theater of Ep. 3 and watched it there. I found the level of detail a little bit higher than film. However I could see the pixels which I didn't like. The film copy had the more pleasing blur to it, but that blur, the judder, shook too much detail away.
I'm sure the film print did have more resolution than digital, but it was shaking so much I couldn't see it. So the digital projection had more useful resolution.
I think you are overplaying the cost of the projector. It's really pretty simple technology.
The polarization model loses half the light at the projector. The LCD shutter glasses loses half the light at the LCD shutter, so there is not difference in brightness.
The polarization timing problem requires much less precision than the LCD shutter timing.
You can have polarising glasses which work regardless of their orientation. Most polarisers used are linearly polarising. But you can add a quarter-wave retarder to make them circularly polarising. It can be arranged such that one eye sees clockwise and the other sees counter/anti-clockwise polarisations. Ditto for the projectors. However, this increases the cost and reduces the brightness. For more info, see http://www.faqts.com/knowledge_base/view.phtml/aid /11916/fid/801 and
http://www.instrumentplastics.co.uk/products_cpf.p hp
Now you can simply not look at the object, but in several circumstances, the being out of focus is intentionally used.
I really hope they take this to heart, because despite what they might think is cheaper, the movie will end up more realistic if they simply use two cameras.
-AT
Working in a DevOps shop is like playing in a band made up entirely of keytarists.
A 35-mm projector installation for a single screen in a multiplex can easily cost more than $10,000. I consider that non-trivial. If you're an exhibitor thinking of upgrading to 3D, an add-on system can be more attractive than one that requires you to replace and expensive asset.
Getting enough light onto the screen is always a challenge. With standard film projection, the screen is dark more than half of the time, since the shutter is completely closed while the film advances to the next frame. Typical cinema lamps run 4500 to 7000 watts.
A two-projector system for 3D can cost more than two projectors, because you need a way to precisely synchronize them.
Assuming a single projector, for 3D you need to project two images for each frame. If you multiplex in space by putting both images side-by-side or over-and-under in the same frame, you've already cut the light seen by either eye by (approximately) half. Then you have the polarizer loss, and there are additional losses with the beam-splitter optics. Silver screens may also be less efficient reflectors than modern white screens.
If, however, you multiplex in time, you avoid the extra optics. If you can run the projector at double speed, eliminating much of the shutter-closed time, (as IMAX does for 3D), then you can reclaim the brightness lossed to alternatation.
By the way, it's true that an ideal polarizer loses half the light, but real-life filters cut even more than that. If you've played with a manual camera and a polarizer, you've probably noticed that a polarizer can cut the light as much as two full stops (a 75% reduction) rather than the theoretical one stop.
True, but that's a solved problem. The IMAX headsets work well at a very high frame rate.
Sorry, but if you could see pixels, then the resolution was LOWER than that of film.
If I want to see pixels when I watch a movie, I'll download a crappy divx rip. When I pay $8 to see a movie, I want a decent experience for my $8, and seeing pixels doesn't cut it.