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."

Comments

Avatar pains

[Trent Hawkins]

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.).

Re:Avatar pains

[Shirakawasuna]

Wikipedia is wrong. IMAX 3D is and has been linear polarization for quite some time now (when it wasn't the shuttered glasses). The only way it could be accurate is if IMAX switched within the last few weeks, which would not represent an Avatar experience anyways.


I know this because I've worked at an IMAX theater for ~4 years. Here's a quick test to see if the 3D glasses you are using are circularly or linearly polarized:

1. Get to pairs of glasses (borrow a friend's).

2. Place one of the lenses of one pair in front of one from the other so that you're looking through two lenses at once.

3. Rotate the glasses, see if the light getting through cycle through black/clear (a period of 180).


Linearly polarized glasses will do this, since it relies on the angle at which you overlap the glasses/projected image. Circularly polarized will not and will be either all-dark or all-light regardless of rotation.

Depends on Which 3D Tech...

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

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.

Re:Depends on Which 3D Tech...

[Tacvek]

The IMAX3D is pure marketing. The technology used is not standardized. In some locations they use linear polarization, in others they use circular polarization, and in some places they even use LCD shutter glasses.

RealD always uses circular polarization, although the glasses polarization is actually slightly elliptical. If you tilt you head while wearing them the brightness of the film can vary some, but ghosting does not occur. Of course, tilting your head by too much will destroy the image. (Thing about watching the move with your head at a 90 degree angle to the horizon. The images would then appear to overlap "vertically" rather than horizontally, and since they don't when overlapped) like that...)

Dolby 3D does not use the old 2 color glasses trick, but does use a related trick, where there are two red wavelengths used, two blue wavelengths used, and 2 green wavelengths used. One set of RGB wavelengths is intended for each eye, and the glasses contain filters so only the correct light for each eye enters. This can cause some issues with color perception, as at most one of those could be tuned to the optimal wavelengths for each of the cones in the eye. Further the fact that the different eyes are seeing different wavelengths can result in different perceptions of brightness of two "equal" reds for example.

Re:Where 3D works

[Bruce Perens]

I would imagine they did save the data and backups of the software. But don't underestimate the complexity of this task. There is a lot of one-off software and if you don't have someone who understands it still in house, you might be stuck. When I was at Pixar a technical director had to know 29 computer languages, due to the 30-year continuous evolution of their software. I think in the case of Toy Story there was a lot of conscious work put into keeping the film in a state that it could be re-rendered, simply because the folks involved knew how much faster computers would be in a few years, and they hoped to be able to make a sequel - it was a key to selling Pixar as a film studio worth the investment.

Re:Well, Yes

[Opportunist]

Social? Movies? If anything, the people around me are the biggest reason why I would NOT go.

Quite seriously: When I hear "social", I'd expect some kind of interaction. Sitting next to each other watching something and not having anything in common but to be annoyed by the chattering teens behind us is not what I'd consider a social experience.