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The Movie Studios' Big 3D Scam
An anonymous reader writes "There's a lot of things wrong with 3D movies. Avatar's 3D was well executed, but Alice's 3D was really bad, like all 2D-to-3D conversions. And yet, studios are reconverting 2D movies—including classics—into 3D to milk this fad. On top of that, the theaters are not prepared for 3D, with bad eyeglass optics and dark projections. In this article, a top CG supervisor in a prominent visual effects studio in Los Angeles calls it as it is: it's all a big scam by the movie studios."
Imagine how I feel about all that hype with only one eye...
3D does not make a bad script/actor/director/... better.
Frankly, 3D has nothing to do with story telling.
Surprise!
Plus, even if it does take off, there are too many standards (or lack thereof) right now to allow for 3D to work for the home consumer.
They get to charge more per ticket for delivering the exact same product. What's not to love? (if you're a studio.)
I'd pay for 3D for a movie that's supposed to be all amazing all the time like Avatar. But even for an enjoyable movie like Dark Knight, which scenes really require 3D? It's better in 2D on a digital screen.
And let's not even get started on the whole liemax thing where we're told it's an imax theater but it's really just a barely adapted standard theater charging imax prices.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Say it can't be true! Converting 2D movies doesn't really render them in true 3D! Omg!
On a serious note, aren't most major (American) sports going to this as well? Which is where I really care about picture/3D aspect & quality.. I hope that it applies better there.
~Mekkah
I don't know about anyone else but I've seen a lot of 3d movies before, but Avatar gave me a splitting headache at the end of it. I don't know quite what it is about it, but watching it was painful (not being sarcastic BTW.).
And they want to do this to our TV's as well!
Blade Runner U.S. theatrical version
Blade Runner Criterion Edition
Blade Runner U.S. broadcast version
Blade Runner Director's Cut
Blade Runner 25th Anniversary Edition
Blade Runner Ultimate Collector's Edition
Blade Runner 3D
Blade Runner 3D BluRay
Blade Runner 3D Enhanced Sensory Edition
Blade Runner 3D Olifactory Special Release
Blade Runner Ridley Scott Memorial Edition
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
My wife and friends got terrible headaches/motion sickness in Avatar. If this is supposed to make marginal movies more watchable, count many people out.
mu
Hollywood pursing a fad for money?!?!?
But seriously, Avatar is the only movie I've seen in modern 3D. It added slightly to the movie. A few scenes stood out for some pretty cool 3D effects, but most of the time I was thinking "This just looks like flat 2D layers set slightly above one another." But I don't see it as anything more than a novelty. Hollywood is jumping on it because it's a way to get away with charging $15 for a ticket instead of the usual $9. But it won't make a bad script better. It won't make a bad actor deliver a better performance. It won't make Michael Bay any less an annoying hack. And it won't get me into the theater to see a movie that I normally wouldn't have wanted to see in regular 2D.
Cool shades, though.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I go to the cinema a lot. I watch pretty much all the new releases. I always have. I don't agree that all 2D-to-3D releases are bad. I've rather enjoyed them. Ok, Avatar's 3D effect was better than Alice's. Nevermind, I paid my money and I walked away at the end of it feeling I'd had a good time nonetheless.
I certainly wasn't under the impression anyone had scammed me. I've read the article. I'm still not. I got what I paid for.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
I have yet to go to a 3D movie where I didn't leave with a headache from the glasses themselves. I wear prescription eyeglasses, and without fail before the movie is over I am sore from the poor fit of the 3D glasses. Some of them fit so poorly that they end up putting all their weight on the end of my nose to make life even more interesting.
I think next time I'll save the $3 and see the movies in 2D instead. The theaters should be able to provide us with more comfortable glasses by now...
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Nothing wrong with 2D. Our brain fills in the depth. Been doing it for eons with other types of pictures.
There is an entire art of photographic/cinematographic composition that relates to how lines, shapes and form relate to the frame. What does that mean where the 'frame' is all fucked up on the edges from the lameass "3D" effect? Better just put everything in the middle. OOh, that shark looked like he was coming right at me!!!1111
What people really want is honest-to-god VR. The full immersion kind with goggles with eye-tracking and head tracking, soundstage-shifting binaural sound. Come up with something like that and I'll take interest, but the 3D fad is just stupid, stop it please.
3D be damned. I have amblyopia. All 3D movies give me a headache. Me and 3 million other people in the US.
From TFA in a nutshell: studios *could* do it well, like Avatar, which costs really big bucks and is time consuming, but they're more likely to do it on the cheap just to get a few more bucks out of the consumer.
I suppose its' a scam only if they do it on the cheap. The headline's a bit more sensationalist than the article, which is more measured in its position.
Yeah, Avatar was made made in 3D and it shows, it was very watchable even with the glasses (dunno what the article's author Alexander Murphy was going on about, his eyesight must be ruined already). Didn't notice any problems but it didn't redefine my life.
Converting 2D films into 3D is just not going to be the same. Even if you can extract objects from scenes into an accurate 3D space, you're going to have to generate content that is obscured in the 2D original, and this is surely going to be noticeable?! The article suggests it would look layered, like an old 80s arcade game with parallax scrolling.
Maybe 3D scenes could be re-rendered, an option for Titanic 3D surely, but you're not going to get any better 3D depth when Kate Winslet is posing for the painting, only the CG parts (and reworking them is probably a good idea anyway).
At least the 3D sports broadcasts are being done with proper 3D cameras.
I first watched Avatar on a theatre equipped with XpanD 3D. I don't know if it was the projector, the glasses, or a combination, but the colors with the glasses on looked like those produced by a really bad LCD monitor, only less bright. Everything was greenish, blacks were badly crushed, and the heavy shutter glasses really hurt the immersion. I kept taking them off in some scenes in order to be able to see darker areas!
I rewatched it on a theatre that used RealD 3D, and the experience was much better. It wasn't perfect (some judder), but at least it wasn't worse than consumer gear. If there's one thing I expect when going to the cinema it's at least reasonable display standards and calibration - otherwise I'd much rather just torrent it and watch it in the comfort of my house.
3 > 2 so 3D must be better than 2D. Personally, I waiting until they 'turn it up' to 11D.
People might think 3D sucks or isn't ready, but if anything gets movies to be shot with two cameras then I hugely support it. While I agree that today, right now, we lack the technology to display 3D well, we might have that technology soon and if we haven't shot our stuff correctly we won't be able to enjoy it that way.
Plus we might get digital media that allows us to "look around" during a live movie. Can you imagine watching Lord of The Rings about being able to turn your head to get an entirely new perspective of what is going on? Plus the cameras can be stitched together to get EVEN HIGHER resolution than HD.
Whenever I see ads for 3D films (especially re-releases of 2d films), I do shake my head a little, but I also like the fact that the industry are finding some way to provide something that can't be found at home. And also I noticed a recent film ad (Nanny McPhee, I think) mentioned that the film will be launched in 15 countries simultaneously, which is one of the reasons people prefer to just pirate. Problem is, however, we will all have our own stereoscopic television sets soon enough..
Why does my post history abruptly stop? I want to laugh at the stupid things I posted as a kid.
just a ploy to get you to buy the same movie one more time.
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The summary overlooks some important points in the article, thereby giving a completely different take-home message. For example: "The good Avatar 3D experience happened because James Cameron is a technically savvy director, and thus the 3D aspect of Avatar was technically well executed. When done right it allows the viewer to more seamlessly enjoy a 3D film."
The author is not arguing that 3D is a scam. The author is arguing that people are jumping on the 3D bandwagon because they smell money while not always delivering a good product. Specifically:
* Retrofitting 2D movies for 3D does not work. You can fake it, but the result is crappy if you didn't actually shoot it for 3D.
* There's no point to using 3D if you're not going to use it creatively. The result will be worse than if you just kept your mediocre movie in 2D.
* The quality of the result is strongly affected by the quality of the 3D implementation.
And that's all, folks. It's a good article to read if you're not familiar with the issues.
I didn't think the 3D version of Alice was bad...in fact, I saw the 3D version by myself while my fiancee was gone, and then saw it in 2D when she was back in town. I definitely enjoyed the 3D version a lot more...the added depth it gave to everything really made the world pop off the screen more (literally and figuratively), and I found myself drawn into it a lot more.
Plus, let's not forget that a 3D movie is a movie that is shown digitally. It could just be me adjusting to more digital content, but film seems to be looking worse and worse nowadays in the theater, no matter which one I go to. There is still a "warmth" to it that digital doesn't have, but when I pay 10-12 dollars to see a movie on a big screen, I don't want parts of the movie to look blurry and parts of it look good...I want the whole thing to look good.
And, just to piss off the people that I piss off every time I do this, my review of Alice: http://livingwithanerd.com/alice-in-wonderland/
Living With a Nerd
Think of the advantages: With 4D movies, if the movie sucks, you'll be able to get the three hours of your life back that you just wasted.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
3D works for computer graphic animation, given twice the rendering capacity you would otherwise have. It's pretty simple to move the "camera" point and render again. There will be some tuning of textures, etc., to look right when viewed simultaneously from two camera points. So, given sufficient computer capacity you can get a 3D movie without significant additional labor, and it's the labor that is really expensive.
3D works for new live action, given proper cinematography.
Conversion of existing 2D film to 3D is garbage, and should rightly be called a scam. Remember colorization? It was mostly done because the tax write-offs on "new" film were more lucrative to the film company than on legacy film. It wasn't that the audience experience would be enhanced by fake color. When the tax law changed, colorization mostly went away.
It's not an experience you can't have in your home. Samsung has a "3D ready" 55 inch TV on the market now, for $2300. The price will fall quickly enough.
Bruce Perens.
It's a treadmill that the movie theaters can't get ahead on. Instead of trying to stay on the digital advancement treadmill, they should be marketing their tradition and atmosphere etc. I think it's funny that theaters are going to digital projection and touting this as if they were upgrading...even charging more, in Dallas theaters. They should be charging more for the film! It's their only niche. I think it's an obvious opportunity to market something different..."watch a 'real' film" etc...I mean if the movies come on hard drives and are played on digital projectors, then it's basically a badass home theater, with a lot annoying people. With your blu-ray and bigscreen and surround sound, why go to the theater? They tried to invent 3D to distinguish themselves, but now 3D is coming to home theater. Still, basically nobody has cans of film and a 35mm projector in their home theater.
To get the effect you need contrast. Look at Avatar. They nursed every shot and still some shots were flat. For me the most effective were the early stuff of him floating around in the space ship. The shots of haze or clouds had zero 3D effect and this was the most effective film ever made. If the film is hazy or muddy, it's done for style reasons, there won't be any 3D effect. 9 times out of 10 I final 3D films annoying and I'm a film fan. Avatar in 3D Imax inspite of the flickering was amazing. Alice in Wonderland was annoying. It made the film dark and the 3D effect was lame through most of it. Saying it'll save film is like saying whit wall ties will save gas guzzlers when gas hits $5 a gallon. Keep the cost down and quality up and there's a market out there. 3D has always and will always be a fad.
3D isn't inherently bad, but it's still in the gimmick phase. The simple fact is it's a new technology (anaglyphic doesn't count) and filmmakers aren't that familiar with it (or hate it just as much as you do.) So you're going to see several movies crash head-first into that learning curve.
And, hey, if 3D makes you sick or hurts, watch the 2D version. It's cheaper.
Can anyone tell me what was wrong with Alice's 3D exactly? I saw both versions and the 3D one was far, far better. I'm intrigued to know what the issues with it were.
I don't like the fact they encourage you to leave the glasses in a recycling bin then try and charge you for a new pair each time now. I also don't like how much more 3D films cost, but personally, 3D is about the only thing I applaud Hollywood for- all 3D films I've seen so far have been stunning, and finally, they're actually doing something to give me a reason to go to the cinema again, rather than just trying to sue pirates into giving them money without actually innovating, or trying to sell me HD copies that don't look that much better than the upscaled DVD copies of films I have already, only for twice the price.
I actually dislike this article, it's exactly what gives ammunition against the internet movement for changes to copyright because it feeds the idea that Hollywood can't win either way- they get told off for trying to protect a dated business model in the harshest way possible, and now it seems if they do something fresh to earn their money like so many people, they get slagged of for it too.
I feel dirty defending Hollywood, but is it so bad that they've decided to offer a new way of viewing movies, that for many people, like me, does in fact make the films that much more fun and enjoyable to watch, without getting rid of the classic 2D versions for those who prefer to keep watching it in 2D?
I totally agree about Alice's 3D. Honestly, I thought it added more to the film than Avatar's did.
I have to agree with the summary; I thought that Avatar's 3D was well done and unobtrusive, but I saw Alice in Wonderland this weekend & the 3D was really annoying to me. It's hard to describe but it seems like moving objects in the foreground get kind of transparent. I had noticed it during the 3D ad before Avatar, and it made me think that Avatar would be the same, but since Avatar was ok I figured maybe they'd just overdone it a bit for the trailer. I liked Alice, but I was wishing I was in the 2D version for most of the movie. The rest of my family, however, had no complaints, so I'm probably just weird.
There are three main 3D formats out there, IMAX 3D, RealD, and Dolby 3D. IMAX 3D uses linear polarization, RealD uses circular polarization, and Dolby 3D uses the Red/Blue color separation. In the first two, the glasses appear light gray, while the last has obviously colored lenses. I saw Avatar in the first two and Alice in the third.
My personal preference is for the polarized techniques. The IMAX was definitely the most immersive. The Dolby 3D seemed too dark and sometimes lighting made me aware of reflections on the inside of the lenses. Additionally, in the Dolby 3D, some of the colors, particularly greens, just seemed off.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw
I have no idea why movies; games are going after lameass 3D and ignoring head-tracking. They also ignore binaural sound as if it wasn't the fucking coolest thing in the universe.
3D is new tech and hollywood still needs to be get accustomed for this. But movies don't have the time to thinker for a few years with new tech. As Soon as the millions on fliming the movie are spent it needs to go to the theathre as soon as possible. Thinkering arround a 6 months/years in post-production just to get the 3d correct is not acceptable, a lot of people will get broke in that period.
The 3d is just the thing movie theathres need as a gimmick, as there is no home replacement for this (YET). They want it NOW.
Movies needed ajustment for sound (bad sounding actor lost a job)
Movies needed ajustment for color (backgrounds needed more substance)
Movies needed ajustmnet for IMAX
Movies will need adjustment for 3d.
Just like coloring in BW movies will seem different, 3d added afterwards will look different.
Websites for Small Businesses in the DC Metro Area [stuartsilver.com]
Nice! I'm in Montgomery County :-) If I know anyone around here looking for services like yours, I'll point them your way.
Living With a Nerd
A former vfx animator here and cinema fan. I watched the three hour spectacle that is avatar in RealD with the circular polarized glasses and came away with no ill effects. The brightness was adequate, the new glasses let through more light than the old horizontally polarized glasses, if I remember the older IMAX experience correctly. I also thought the 3D in alice was fine, they did not go with the temptation to put the Cheshire Cat in the forward plane, which they could have because he is a floating entity that can be shown off without touching the sides of the screen, like the bird critter from Captain EO that made you cross-eyed. (with the re-release coming up you can do go to Disneyland and see what I am talking about)
I do agree that 2D -> 3D conversions of older films are the equivalent of colorizing a black and white film ted turner style, it shouldn't be done out of respect for the original film. But the industry will always exploit their properties as much as they can. If you don't like it, don't watch it. And I also agree that movies intended for stereo showings should be shot with two lenses, not converted later. Both processes bring up multiple difficulties in post production, in different ways. With true stereo shooting you can't fake nearly as much stuff, you have to map it in 3D space rather than faking comps in 2D post. With fake 3D you can do more VFX compositing in 2D, but then a thousand monkeys will spend a thousand hours rotoing into 3D.
Last year at NAB I saw some incredible demos of 30" - 50" polarized plasma sets. Every other horizontal line was polarized opposite, and with 1080 lines there was not an appreciable degradation of resolution per eye and it looked amazing. The brightness was there too since LCDs and plasmas can put out a lot of light. The first models were selling for $10,000 etc. but the price will come way down as they figure out how to manufacture it more inexpensively. As a long time fan of stereo imaging, I am looking forward to the new stereo blu ray format. It uses the same RealD circularly polarized glasses. In fact I used the RealD glasses I got from the RealD demo theater earlier in the day. The RealD theaters are powered by the Sony CineAlta 4K projectors...really nice stuff and affordable compared to what digital projection used to cost.
If you're douchey enough to go see the movies that get 3d-ified, and they suck, you only have yourself to blame.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I thought Avatar's 3D was a stupid gimmick. The parts I remember being in 3D were the ashes and the credits. Did I miss something?
http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
Cool, we're in Silver Spring - it's actually my wife who does the web design, I just help out with the geekier stuff...
Anti-Piracy types, the studios, and the cinema chains have got to be feeling a big crunch from the recession. Why on Earth would I pay $10+ for a movie ticket and another $10 for (about $1.00 worth cost-wise) soda and popcorn to be forced to sit in some seat with horrible legroom and the inevitable kid kicking the back of it and chatty neighbors when I could just wait a few months for it to come out on dvd so I can buy it and watch it at home on my 61" TV with whatever drinks and snacks I want. Or, I could probably wait a month and see it on some premium or on-demand service.
Oh, it's 3D? crap, I don't have that equipment at home, guess I have to go see it in the theater afterall.
FEH!
It doesn't surprise me at all that the industry is phoning in the 3D aspect... it's just a tool to get you to go see it at premium rates.
Besides, I wear prescription glasses and it makes those goggle things not set so well with me anyway. /get off my lawn!
The Digital Sorceress
Apparently Disney/Pixar are shooting this in 3D...who knows??
http://nathanlindsell.blogspot.com/
i saw alice in 3d imax, and while i thought the 3d was ok (they didn't do too many in-your-face effects, but the backgrounds were softer-focus so as to be, ahhh...in the b.g., same as in 2d) the imax version fills more of my field of vision, giving an immersive experience that for my money ($8 vs $13) is worth it, but not so 3d...
My gripe with the 3D movies is that they are just too darned expensive to attend for a family of four. $54 to take my family to see Avatar, and that is before refreshments. And I'm sure it is even more expensive in other parts of the country. I can own two blu-ray movies for that. And theaters claim that they are still losing money? Maybe that is because people can't afford (or refuse) to spend good money on overproduced drivel. I enjoyed Avatar, but most of today's movies are just not worth going to the theater if they are going to cost that much. Yet another modern day business model is broken by its own greed. Maybe if actors didn't command 20 million per film, and more time was spent of plot, and studio's didn't use accounting tricks to hide their profits and the MPAA wasn't just generally evil...but I digress.
In TFA, the author gripes that the glasses "take almost a full stop of light out of the image. That's almost half the amount of light!"
In fact, the glasses are designed to block at least half the light, since they are polarized to show half the content to one eye, and half to the other.
The author is similarly uninformed in other technical aspects, but I found this to be the most blatant.
I don't go to see the movie.
im anti patent, anti copyright, anti big media, and all it goes with it. im pro unbounded filesharing, free copying too, thanks to the route the media cartels and their government puppets taken in the last few years.
i dont see the point of seeing movies in a movie theater. my home is cozier, more convenient, and it doesnt matter much if i see most movies in cinema screen or a big screen tv.
but still, if movies made for big screen are made like avatar, i wont hesitate from shelling $20 a pop to see them. it was worth every single cent i spent on it, and in my country exchange rate is 1.5 to 1. so basically in usa standards i spent $30 or so on it. i dont regret it.
i dont see the point in pirating it either. i also plan on seeing it again.
Read radical news here
It's a '3d Simulation'. The people on the right side of the theater don't get a different perspective than those on the left. Avatar was not a '3d' movie, it was a 'simulated 3d' movie.
I kinda like the 'depth' that the effect brings to the screen. But what drives me nuts is that I can't bring out of focus images into focus. I think this is why I get headaches, my eyes try to focus on the 'close' stuff or the 'far' stuff and can't. Avatar drove me nuts with the stupid bugs 'in front' of the screen. I don't mind things flying out at me, they are gone quickly enough. But when things are made to appear right in front of my face and stay there, my eyes want to focus on them and can't. I found that my eyes were tired after the movie, and I wondered if that was from an unconscious attempt to focus on things that weren't in focus. My wife said she didn't notice it such an effect at all, and she didn't get a headache.
I saw Alice in Wonderland without the 3d simulation, and in the future will probably skip 3d simulated movies if I have an option. Although I might try an Imax version of Avatar if it's still out in a few weeks after reading some of the responses about not getting headaches at those theaters.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Gaithersburg here!
Living With a Nerd
Avatar's approach of putting objects (perceptually) between the screen and infinity offers a significantly more pleasurable experience than Alice's approach of trying to put everything in front of the screen. It's not a new idea, but for some reason studios think more 3D is better... Cameron got right the subtle difference between 3D and silly.
Reduced luminance resulting in an apparently dim image is an unfortunate side effect of linear/circular polarizers. Too much luminance and the viewer will see ghosting of the other eye's images. Shutter glasses solve the issue, but considering the cost of shutter glasses vs the pennies per pair of polarized glasses, I can't blame the theaters for their decision to use the 2 orders of magnitude cheaper solution.
Yes, it's all a gimmick to get more people to the theaters and give people an experience they can't have at home. Just like good sound and high resolution projection onto big screens.
It's a good thing they release stuff in standard format so anyone who doesn't like 3D can just avoid it. I think it's interesting.
Yeah I definitely agree that Alice in 3D was quite terrible 3D work. I hardly noticed I was in a 3D show other than the fact I was wearing the stupid glasses and that the screen looked much darker than normal. Maybe it was the theater I went to but I felt like they had somehow conned me into paying an extra $5 to see the not as good version of the movie.
Lots of negative comments here, I guess unsurprisingly. Actually no wait, surprisingly... 3D has got to be the geekiest thing to ever happen to the movie industry. As such I'd expect slashdotters to be thrilled. What do you people just hate anything that gets popular?
Anyways, I for one love watching movies in 3D. I'm really happy it is finally catching on after mostly disappearing when it was obvious the red-blue glasses from the 50's weren't the way forward.
I think the fact that it's coming now is to do with the fact that the technology for it is sort of finally "here". Of course it's not perfect, not all systems are equal (linear vs. circular polarization, the fact that you have to wear glasses at all, etc.) But I think the fact that we can now do this in color, on Imax, combined with the fact that we are reaching a stage where many, many movies have a significant portion of content that is "naturally" 3D (because it is computer-generated), combines to make this something that can finally be here to stay.
Personally I'm really happy about it, I really think it makes for a more immersive experience. It will be really something when the directors finally stop doing stupid things like throwing objects out at the audience or have poky things come at you.. when it becomes a more subtle and well-understood element of moviemaking it will really be something. (Just like CG is only finally beginning to get to that point these days..) I think any new technology takes 10 to 20 years to mature, not only in a technical sense, but an artistic one as well, as artists begin to understand how to use it.
i start getting a headache after about an hour. people that wear glasses can't enjoy it. it costs more at the box-office. it's a gimmick. i hope/can't-wait for it to die.
You should do what I did for my 3yo daughter. After the second 3D movie in which we received the cheap plastic one-size-fits-a-few glasses, we opted not to recycle them in the drop box. When we got home, I popped out the lenses of the 3D glasses and the lenses out of some old sunglasses my daughter didn't wear anymore. I trimmed up the polarized film using the lenses from the sunglasses as a mask. then popped the new polarized lenses into the old sunglasses. Now, until she outgrows her old sunglasses, she has a custom pair of 3D glasses. compatible with all RealD-3D projectors.
I imagine you could do something similar, possibly even attaching the filters to your existing prescription glasses.
I paid to see Avatar and Alice with depth perception, and that's what I got. It would be a scam if I paid to see them in 3D and only got a 2D showing. This is just a clever way to appeal to viewers. I enjoy it, so who cares?
I dislike the 3D movies as well. Though, in my case, it was because of how they played with the depth of field. Much of Avatar was stunningly beautiful, but half of the time my ADD mind wanted to look at things that Cameron didn't want me to look at, and were thus out of focus. The strain of trying to focus on things that my brain was telling me I should be able to focus on, but couldn't, drove me nuts.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
Who's going to listen? I could tell you about the scam that Church & Dwight perpetrated on consumers when it quietly decided to abandon the decades-old standard* for diameter of toothpaste tube mouth and cap, for no other reason than to maneuver people into using more toothpaste, but you would you even listen? Would you actually make different decisions based on that revelation? Would you rebel and make your own toothpaste? No? I didn't think so. Are average consumers, even after hearing/reading this, really going to change their behavior and choose not to consume these 3D movies?
There are SO MANY such corporate "scams" that they're actually the rule, not the exception. When it comes to imagining ways to divest people of money, corporations have NO ethics at all short of that codified as "law". That Libertarian "no force, no fraud" refrain is a joke. The corporate world IS ALL ABOUT FRAUD. Even a diligent consumer like me has a hard time keeping track of all of them; what of less educated or dedicated consumers?
* (It was such a de facto standard that third parties could make products like a "backpacker's toothbrush" that included a miniature tube that could be refilled by threading a regular toothpaste tube onto it. Imagine my surprise to discover that my latest tube of Aim Toothpaste no longer fit the opening of my backpacker toothbrush that I bought at REI in the 80s. Toothpaste and toothbrushes have become a ridiculously manipulative market in the last few decades. They even went so far as to add extra static brush surface to some of the oscillating brushes - Crest, I'm looking at YOU - in the hope that people would mindlessly cover all of it with toothpaste, thus using more than actually necessary. Isn't it ironic that corporations are going "green" even while still encouraging waste and premature obsolescence?)
It’s stereo 2D. You can’t rotate it (or walk around it) on 3 axes and you can’t slice (= focus different parts) it on 3 axes. ;)
Or, if you want, you can say that the whole movie is a tuple of 3D cube stills. But that would stop it from being a movie, and make it a picture
It’s like drawing two vertical lines on the same place, and calling it a full (2D) picture.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Slight correction: "It uses the same RealD circularly polarized glasses." The screens I saw do, not the stereo blu ray format, which is display agnostic.
Wake me when 3D improves on movies like Casablanca or Seven Samurai.
A lot's being said about the studios and the movie experience - face it, as already pointed out in at least one other comment, this is also hitting the home theater market as hard as possible this year (with active glasses - whoopie). And that whole trend is driven by more Blu-ray sales.
The profit motive for 3D is huge - it's out and it's not going away, any more than next year's Britney Spears will.
Maybe - maybe - I'll change my mind when someone figures out to incorporate Johnny Lee's head tracking system for *all* viewers in the room.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw
I'm not reactionary to 3D because it's new - I'm reactionary to it because it's yet one more thing that doesn't hold the studios feet to the fire to give us better movies and better distribution models (read: no DRM), but it sure is lining their coffers like crazy. The more of this that gets consumed, the more they're validated in their practices - simple.
And I note a distinct lack of BD DRM complaints when people discuss Avatar - no, that's all about how it looked in the theater and gee, can't wait for 3D at home.
My favorite quote on that movie came from my local indie newspaper: there's no question that Avatar is a great movie, but only time will prove if it's a good movie.
For me, this phrase has never been truer: nothing to see here, move along.
I'll see you in the balcony - tonight, they're showing Ghost Dog, and I highly recommend it.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
Everything that's come out of hollywood has ever been a scam.
Selling not-so-cheap copies of media? That's based entirely on a government granted monopoly, absurd fines, and artificial scarcity of goods. The profit margins on plastic discs make the margins on furniture and electronics look pathetic by comparison.
Re-selling you your movies every time a new format comes out? Given that you supposedly bought the rights to a copy of the movie the first time, they should be free, but obviously aren't.
Trying to force RedBox to buy movies later? That's so they can finish milking you via the theaters.
What's sad, is that in this digital age seeing the business models propped up by new, invasive, unfair laws instead of fading into obsolecence/niche markets like the oil lamp, and horse-drawn carriage have.
Question everything
The problem is that while there is now a perception of depth, the viewer isn't able to focus on what takes their attention. If the camera is focused on the foreground and you want to look at something in the background, it will be blurry. Your eye attempts to correct this but it doesn't work. This is confusing to the optical system and it's why a some people come out of 3D viewings with a headache. It's not at all obvious how this can be corrected without a personalised viewing experience that detects the viewers point of interest and brings it into focus.
Shouldn't they focus on producing porn in 3D first? Here's the money shot -- comin' right at ya!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
So what's the problem?
1. Scam today
2. Profits later today and into early next week.
3. Fallout from the scam late next week, an outing by some nosy profit-hating group or other, groupies from the group going to rage against the films (and more profit).
4. A new scam in a few more weeks, people going to regular films (profit), decrying 'whatever happened to that 3d glasses fad blah blah'.
5. storage of the scam. Lock it up for 15 years, then roll it back out: Look! 3D in SSSensuroundDDD... profit...
...any questions?
I have a lot of Blu Ray and for sure can tell you that at least half of all "1080p" content is nothing more than the movie studioes upscaling standard DVD, SD, printing it to Blu Ray and selling it for $30 as HD. A total rip off.
Especially with Blu Ray TV box sets. The HD broadcast is way better than the quality on disk.
So there is no surprise they are doing the same thing with 3D.
My Sony PS3 upscales better than the scammed Blu Ray disks. A lot of Blu Ray is pixelated and blurry.
You'd think that if Hollywood were going to scam consumers they would use a better upscale converter than they are.
Heck, use a PS3. Blu Ray is a joke except when the content really is 1080p.
the free conjunctivitis included from that nasty greasy dirty glasses!!!
I saw Avatar in 3D (twice) and I do like the new polarization method versus the old color seperation method, which always made colors weird for me. However the low FPS of movies is much more annoying with 3D. Quick moving objects in a close z-axis really strobe across the screen
Care to explain how launching a movie in many countries simultaneously drives copying? If anything, NOT launching it everywhere at once would. If the movie is available but I can't see it in my country, the temptation to pirate it goes up, not down.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I think it's a perspective problem. And it's going to vary from person to person.
The objects are not originally recorded in 3D, and therefore the 2D image is mapped onto a 3D plane. Try doing this with Google Earth sometime - turn on "terrain" and then zoom in close to some natural feature, set your angle so you are not looking straight down, and rotate around. A hill just looks different from the top than it does from the sides, and trying to reconstruct a parallax view of it needs two distinct and different images to work. Obviously the studios are doing something slightly more sophisticated than Google Earth, but the base problem remains - you can't accurately express information that does not exist - you have to create it.
With 2D, you see someone's nose straight on and your mind is filling in the fact that it's three-dimensional based on your knowledge that noses stick out. Both eyes see the same image, and there's no depth, but your mind is quite capable of setting that "unreality" aside and filling in stuff.
With "proper" 3D, there are actually two images of the nose from slightly different angles being projected, similar to how you'd see it in real life. The glasses act to send one image to your right eye and one to your left, and it works. It's mimicking exactly how your real eyes work, and expressing that information to them in the format you are used to. Tip your head, or even bend the glasses wrong or have them too far from or too close to your eyes, and it throws off the image separation, but keep it level and at the right depth-of-field and it works fine.
With interpolated 3D, you see someone's nose straight on, but two images of it that have been distorted in different ways to give you the impression that you are seeing it in 3D. It's close enough to reality that our minds want to process it as reality, but it's not close enough that we really can. At least some people.
This is somewhat like the cartoon-ishy/real-ishy version of Beowulf that came out a few years ago. Slashdotters will remember it as the "Liquid Metal Naked Angelina Jolie Movie, Grendel's Mom Was Hot". Well-executed story, technically brilliant graphics, but the characters were in the "distorted reality zone" for me - not quite real enough to accept as real, but a tad too real to accept as fully unreal. Every time they did a close-up of a face in that movie, it threw me out of the story for a second. My visual cortex kept trying to process them as people, then cartoons, then people, and eventually curled up in a scared little ball in the corner of my head and started sobbing uncontrollably. Even though I thought their telling of a backstory to the whole Beowulf/Grendel relationship was quite good, I actually ended up pausing the movie a few times to monkey-brain could get over the whole "what IS that, a person or a cartoon?" bit, and the dichotomy occasionally had me feeling a bit queasy after a while. I have little interest in repeating the experience.
I imagine if you watch a few interpolated 3D movies you'll adjust to them. Or maybe not. I have yet to see one, hell I have yet to see a "real" 3D movie. I don't know if I could handle the perspective shift well, and I'm pretty happy with 2D movies frankly.
The "distorted reality zone" (my term, there may be an official term for it) is different for each person. My wife found Beowulf merely annoying in terms of the animation. Some people I know really loved it. I found it vaguely disturbing.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
Nothing wrong with books. Our brain fills in the images. Been doing it for eons with other types of writing.
There is an entire art of photographic/cinematographic composition that relates to how lines, shapes and form relate to the frame.
To paraphrase.... "Back in my day, we used lines, shapes and form to relate to the frame."
No new media is used to its full potential when it first comes out. But, art comes out of every media. I am sure there will be a lot of crappy 3D films. But there will also be some amazing ones as talented people get used to the new technology.
Sorry Grandpa... I will get off your lawn now.
Technology doesn't progress unless you can show an audience why they like it. 3D tech has to start somewhere. Looking at history, a lot of new technology started off appearing as a scam to some moderately intelligent douchebag, sold to an even less informed person.
Is slashdot about quantity or quality, i wonder.
was the low frame rate. The 3D was beautiful, but camera movements were still restricted by either moving very slowly or introducing jarring strobing artifacts. That part hasn't changed since 24 fps was introduced 4096 years ago or whenever it was. And James Cameron knows it - he was shot down for trying to film Avatar at 48fps.
While cinemas are busy upgrading to digital this and 3D that, it would seem a perfect time to apply a small firmware upgrade to digital projectors and begin moving on from the horrible 24fps cinema format.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
So "scam" is now the equivalent business concept of "striking while the iron is hot". Interesting.
By the way, the best part of Avatar at my local Imax theater was not the big screen or the 3d--it was the awesome sound system. Maybe theaters should work on having a nice 2d image (as opposed to dim/murky grainy film technology of 30 years ago) and decent surround sound before worrying about 3d.
And there is no way I'm missing Toy Story 3, even if it IS in 3D.
as low as $1 per 6 hours
Or as low as $1 per 24+ hours (sometime today till 9pm tomorrow) at redbox.
Never let a mediocre career stand in the way of a good time
For $2000 I'll make you one that goes to 5D!
http://www.xkcd.com/670/
I find IMAX to be useless for non-landscape footage.
Yes, IMAX is great when you are looking out over an ocean, or a moonscape, or a desert, or whatever, when you are simply "taking in a scene".
But IMAX is terrible for movies where there are characters on either end of the screen talking to each other.
For example, we went to see one of the Harry Potter movies in IMAX. It is like watching tennis - you constantly have to drive your attention, and turn your head, from the left to the right, in order to follow the dialog. And while you are looking at the person speaking on one side of the screen, you are missing the facial and other reaction by the characters on the OTHER side of the screen.
Unless a film was shot for IMAX, just blowing up the image size does not make it better.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
One of my eyes has very weak vision, so much so that I only developed peripheral vision in that eye. My brain does not process image from that eye properly, sometimes not at all. This renders me "immune" I suppose to the trick used to simulate 3d images. So 3d is worthless fad for me, I would not even go see a move that was only available in 3d.
Despite this I have good depth perception. I guess it's good humans use more than one way of perceiving depth of objects.
First i just want to say that i think 3D movies are gimmicky and don't really add to the experience. I saw Avatar in 2D, then 3D and to be honest I wasn't that impressed. But the reality is movie studios (and theaters) need something to stay ahead of the curve, with high quality HD home cinema equipment becoming more and more affordable you can get that kind of cinema experience at home, the theaters need to offer something more, redefine the 'cinema experience' as something special that you can only get at the movies, at the moment all they have is the advance time before it gets to DVD/Bluray/Streaming. I don't think 3D is it, but it seems they are desperately trying to find something compelling to win back audiences.
I do agree that 2D -> 3D conversions of older films are the equivalent of colorizing a black and white film ted turner style, it shouldn't be done out of respect for the original film.
I'm somewhat, but not completely sympathetic with this viewpoint, especially with color which has the potential to mess up a print and could make it harder to find a non-colorized (non-messed-up) copy. But with 3D, it generally won't completely replace a non-3D version-- in fact, I would think if it were to become prevalent (which I doubt), I would think a blu-ray edition would likely contain a non-3D playback mode as well.
The reason I hedge on not converting older films, is that I do think there could be some classics that might be worth checking out in a 3D conversion, such as the original "Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," and I'm sure a little thought could dredge up a few others. In fact, possibly some really bad old movies might actually end up watchable in a 3D conversion...
Everyone but Deckard is a replicant, only he doesn't know it...
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
... It is probably means vision problems: http://www.connectmidmichigan.com/news/story.aspx?id=253449
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
You said exactly what I meant. My post is pretty unclear, now that I've read it again. Sorry about that.
Why does my post history abruptly stop? I want to laugh at the stupid things I posted as a kid.
Geek that I am, I tried to observe the polarization in the glasses while waiting for Avatar to start. Not noticing anything I used my phone and looked up Dolby 3D ( which was used in this theater ) and found it doesn't use polarized lenses, but different color filters.
Unlike the old cereal box red/blue glasses though, they block part of what we see as a particular color, so we're still seeing some of each of the blocked colors in each eye, just not the full frequency range. Dichroic filters are incorporated into the lenses to pass/reflect the appropriate frequencies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_3D
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infitec
3D is bad for your eyes.
No, I don't want to be able to pan around while watching Lord of the Rings or any other movie. If I wanted to do that, I will play a computer game, where the ability to pan around is important to control RTS units for example. If I could look around a scene in a movie, I could easily miss important plot points and ruin my viewing experience. It would also make making a movie more complicated for the director. He now has to make sure that the filmed scene is perfect all 360 degrees instead of just the scene in front of the camera.
An example of how bad was Alice 3D in comparison with Avatar 3D are subtitles.
In Avatar 3D, subtitles were placed were the action was happening. So if you were watching somebody talking, you just moved your eyes a little and read the subtitles.
On the other hand, Alice has the subtitles in the regular place, at the bottom of the screen. This would be ok in a 2d movie, but in 3d there is another problem and that's that you have to refocus each time you want to read. So the result is very annoying, focusing back and forth from the scene to the subtitles.
Of course there's also the problem of the movie being too dark. And too boring :D
SCTV. Check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87WgmGHz9U4 for some thrilling 3D cinematics. Or just skip over to 2:12 to see what I mean.
How is it a scam to give paying customers what they want? This is just capitalism at work. If customers don't like the latest crop 3D movies they won't pay to see them, and the fad will die quickly. If they do like it enough to pay $10+ a ticket, then what is the complaint?
One can grouse about poor quality and cheap conversions, but right now 3D entertainment is in its infancy. It's little more than a novelty. But hey, isn't novelty and vapid thrills what movies are all about? It's not like this is something even remotely important. Besides if this is successful the technology will improve, the quality will improve, and the infrastructure will be upgraded.
It's no different than color movies. If people want to see an old B&W movie in color, why not colorize it? If they want to see Titanic in 3D who cares? The original is still there for purists.
Tech is always this way: you live with half-baked goods for years before the technology matures. Some people (early adopters) pay for it, others stay away until later. The Apple II was a scam by this logic.
I have a mild vision impairment and can't properly view 3D but I can view 2D movies just fine.
I am likely not the only one with such problems.
The conversions done by In-Three which include G-Force and Alice and Wonderland are done by hundreds of people, frame by frame, and are very well done.
There is no difference between the amount of light lost using 3 cent polarized glasses or more expensive ones. While lighting is an issue for 3D movie releases that doesn't make 3D movies a scam.
The market has spoken 3D is the future. 3D is coming to the home in a massive way.
Automated real-time 2D to 3D is not acceptable qualityat all yet Alice and Wonderland and the upcoming Titanic are a completely different story.
I would be that this guy that wanted to rip his glasses off probably already wears corrective lenses every day (usually the case with these types)
Recall there were those that said that movies with sound and color were a fad.
I'm holding out for Smell-O-Vision (the real deal, not a John Waters film with scratch-n-sniff cards).
I read this headline and assumed at first it was an article about the fact that the "3D" in cinemas isn't really 3D at all (assuming that D refers to a spatial dimension). I got really excited when I heard about TV companies making a big drive for "3D television" but then lost interest as soon as I saw glasses. All you are getting is 2 x 2D (which isn't 4D... more 2.5D). It is all just an illusion (OK, so that's pretty much all film is anyway, but you know what I mean). There is no movement; when something comes at you from the screen, you can't dodge. You can't look behind things, you can't change your view.
It is interesting because I remember "3D" films being around for over 10 years (usually at places like the various Disney sites) and they were just shiny, let's-all-have-some-fun gimmicks. I even remember getting red-blue glasses with cereal boxes some time ago. False-3D is old and boring, it's been around for ages and is extremely limited.
What I am waiting for is true 3D filming. This would probably only be possible with cartoons etc. for a while, but the idea of having a film that you can really walk around (or through) is quite appealing. Obviously the film-making process would become considerably more complicated (more like producing a computer game) and the hardware at the viewer end could be quite complicated.
Alternatively, one way of achieving some sort of 3D would be to capitalise on the increasing cross-over between televisions and computers; you could set up a film as some sort of 3D environment that the viewer could wander around as you would in an FPS (or something) and focus on whatever you were more interested in; obviously you could still just watch it all from the default PoV (and it might mess things up when watching with other people), but personally I think it could be an interesting idea.
steal as in do not obey the forced medieval feudalism of a tiny minority to profit exceedingly over your activities to the point of limiting your freedoms without any hesitations ? to the point of circumventing democratical measures to force repressive controls to protect their medieval rights ?
then yea yea. steal.
and also, wake up.
Read radical news here
When I saw Avatar on 3D IMAX using the older 70mm projector with the ultra-bright lamp; the picture was plenty bright enough. Then, when I saw it in a multiplex IMAX with a digital projector and the picture was much darker. So, IMO, 3D on a 70mm IMAX is really the best way to do it; until the digital projectors get better.
No, I will not work for your startup
3D in the theater is not just about selling overpriced tickets. We all have been reading about new 3D TVs and 3D bluray. What are we going to watch on all these new toys? Why all the great new 3D movies and 3D remakes. No media makes for poor sellers for new players.
In ways the movie reminded me of the first days of stereo music where people were too keen to demonstrate that they were "stereo" rather than use it for more natural sound. Classic example: "Play that funky music" by Wild Cherry. With 3D too there are some compulsory elements, like the things that fly "out" of the screen (every 3D movie so far has had them, even the red/green ones).
Alice in Wonderland has what I call "cardboard" 3D, 3D as 2D animators make it by putting various "walls" in to create the illusion of depth, and so wastes great potential. I think the good news is that Avatar really set a high standard to compete against (it's a real credit to the innovation in that movie that they've gone so far to get it right), so anyone who's seen that will recognise the cheap rubbish for the con it is and avoid it. A full animation like Shrek *may* get it right, we'll see. It's early days..
Insert
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when this all fails, they are going to blame it on piracy anyways.
In fact, they know 3d won't work, they are just going to use it to get more DRM hooks into us.
Be seeing you...
I saw both (Avatar & Alice) in 3D and Alice had the best 3D effects.
I'm surprised to read here was filmed in 2D as i would never guess.
On a side note i saw Alice in IMAX 3d and saw Avatar with xpand glasses. I found IMAX 3D more pleasing.
What bothered me in Avatar was that depth layers were visible in long objects along the z axis.
The Alice movie didn't have such thing, and everything was smooth along the z axis.
Hivemind harvest in progress..
We always get to the theater early to get good seats. I know just where to sit in our IMAX theater. This doesn't change the fact that IMAX, by definition, spans the scope of usual human eyesight, from periphery to periphery. And when an actor is talking on one periphery, you naturally move your focus there, and thus you miss the reaction of what is happening on the opposite side of the screen, even without moving your head, only your eyes.
Nonetheless, one typically, does naturally move their head towards the focus of attention.
IMAX works best with large landscapes where there is no particular focus of attention.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
You're right, of course. I feel sheepish at my lack recall.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
There is still a "warmth" to it that digital doesn't have
That's why they filmed most of the last Star Trek movie in film, then digitized the film (see the extras on the DVD where they note this).
I don't want parts of the movie to look blurry and parts of it look good...I want the whole thing to look good
That's the fault of the theater's projectionist, not the film maker, unless he WANTS parts of it to look blurry for artistic reasons.
Free Martian Whores!