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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."
I've seen Avatar twice (both times were because someone else wanted me to accompany them when they went to see it). Once in a regular theatre, and the second time in an Imax theatre.
I got headaches only with the Imax version because of the linear polarization which meant if my head was tilted even slightly to the side, there would be ghosting. The cheapo cinema used circular polarization, which was more comfortable and caused me no eye strain at all. Perhaps something similar happened to you?
Why does my post history abruptly stop? I want to laugh at the stupid things I posted as a kid.
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.
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.
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.