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Filmmakers Resisting Hollywood's 3-D Push
gollum123 passes along a piece from the NY Times on the building resistance to Hollywood's 3-D plans — from filmmakers. "A joke making the rounds online involves a pair of red and green glasses and some blurry letters that say, 'If you can’t make it good, make it 3-D.' While Hollywood rushes dozens of 3-D movies to the screen — nearly 60 are planned in the next two years, including 'Saw VII' and 'Mars Needs Moms!' — a rebellion among some filmmakers and viewers has been complicating the industry’s jump into the third dimension. Several influential directors took surprisingly public potshots at the 3-D boom during the recent Comic-Con... Behind the scenes..., filmmakers have begun to resist production executives eager for 3-D sales. For reasons both aesthetic and practical, some directors often do not want to convert a film to 3-D or go to the trouble and expense of shooting with 3-D cameras, which are still relatively untested on big movies with complex stunts and locations. Tickets for 3-D films carry a $3 to $5 premium, and industry executives roughly estimate that 3-D pictures average an extra 20 percent at the box office. Filmmakers like Mr. Whedon and Mr. Abrams argue that 3-D technology does little to enhance a cinematic story, while adding a lot of bother."
Well, at least someone is making a stand. I really don't understand the push to 3-D. Yes, it's "new" and "exciting" for 7-year olds, but, in my opinion it doesn't add any real value for the rest of us movie-goers. It's just a way to increase ticket prices.
I loved Avatar in IMAX 3D, and the 3D definitely looked cool, at least in the exterior CG shots.
But I don't know that I believe 3D is really capable of adding emotion to a film presentation, and if you can't heighten the emotion somehow, then how are you going to say the experience is $3 better?
I think maybe it's something like this: If you don't provide explicit 3D information to the brain, it seems to be quite happy to generate that information itself based on the visual cues it gets from analyzing the scene. The end result is that a short time later you'll have the same memory of the scene whether it was presented in 3D or not.
Anyhow, I'm almost certain there are some basic biological limits like this on how much you can get out of 3D in the theater, since we just haven't evolved to care about stereo-derived depth as important information. We care a lot about spatial positioning and relationships, but we have lots of ways of computing that information and stereo isn't that important for the sorts of scenes presented in a movie.
I saw Toy Story 3 the other day in RealD 3D and honestly for most of the movie I really didn't notice the 3D effect unless I actually looked for it. My mind seemed to prefer its own analysis of the images over that provided by the 3D.
So unless Jim Cameron can keep cranking out 3D epics fast enough, I think the rest of the industry is going to have a hard time keeping 3D afloat.
I think 3D capability (with glasses) will be with us forever on TV and computer displays (since it costs virtually nothing to add to a modern TV) and you'll see it used for sports and some special programming, and definitely it adds a lot to video games potentially (or any kind of interactive environment).
But for your average movie, not so much.
G.
I really haven't seen anything compelling with 3D.
Basically the only reason to see Avatar was the 3D. Completely forgettable storyline. Hell of a show on the screen though. Saw it again on DVD... Couldn't even sit through the thing.
Up and Coraline were both very good movies, thoroughly enjoyable in 2D, but the 3D genuinely added some depth to the film.
Most tend to only have certain parts that really "show off" the effect but mostly it just distracts from the film.
My Bloody Valentine was absolutely awful, 3D or no. The 3D sure as hell didn't help... But I don't think anything could have saved that thing.
The push to 3D is an attempt to rekindle interest in cinema but people are still going to the theaters.
These days I really need a good reason to go to the theater.
I don't like people. I don't like dealing with the crowds, the cell phones, the kids, etc. I'd much rather watch something in the privacy of my own home. And these days I can watch something on pay-per-view almost before it leaves theaters. Plus, with a large HD television and a blu-ray player there isn't a whole lot of difference in visual quality between home and theater viewing.
The one thing I can't really get at home is a decent 3D movie.
That may change as 3D televisions become more common... But, for now, if I want to see 3D I have to go in to the theater. And these days that's about the only thing that will get me to pay for a ticket.
By and large, it doesn't seem like anyone really wants 3D.
I do.
I wouldn't say it belongs in every single film made... But it's a handy tool, just like pyrotechnics or green screens or digital effects. Sure, right now it's going to get abused... Just like every new gadget and gizmo before it. But once folks figure out how to make it work, and figure out where it is appropriate, it'll make a nice addition to the toolbox.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
... from somebody that works in a theatre that 3d films apparently make it harder for people to record them in the theatre, so maybe the push is partly driven to fight piracy. I don't know how accurate that assessment actually is, but it's an interesting take on the situation.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I saw Avatar at the cinema in RealD 3D and I found it distracting at best and it gave me a dreadful headache after an hour or so. Watching it again recently just off DVD on my 100" projection screen and enjoyed it a lot more. It wasn't as high res as the cinema and it wasn't 3D but despite that the experience was better.
The other issue I have with 3D is on TVs. Films shot fro 3D are shown on a really large screen and it works fine but if you shrink the screen down to domestic sizes, everything on the screen similarly gets scaled and the effect is really odd. I watched a demo on a 50" 3D set recently and it looked pretty good if you stood 1m away from the screen but any further away and the people on screen seemed to shrink down to the size of puppets. Very odd experience.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
... is the distance that the film is usually viewed at... it's often from 80 feet away or more. To focus cleanly on objects at that distance, the left and right eye views are going to be virtually identical. If you move the images for the left and right eyes for near objects further away from eachother, you may create a greater sense of depth in the resulting image, but as the eyes are almost parallel already (unless you are sitting in almost the front row), this forces your eyes to go outwards from the natural position for focussing on objects at that distance, creating a sort of anti-cross-eyed effect. This is the key problem with 3d, and to the best of my knowledge there is no current-technology solution that can get around it in the public theatre setting.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I don't like people. I don't like dealing with the crowds, the cell phones, the kids, etc.
I know the feeling ;)
There are theaters around now that have policies prohibiting cell phones and children in the theater. You can also pick your seat. I know in So Cal, there's one in Hollywood, the Arclight, and one in Orange County (can't remember the name of it right now, but it's at the Garden Walk in Anaheim). If you like to go to movies and don't like all those things, check out one of those theaters. You get the movie experience without the bullshit.
You jest, but I have one bad eye so 3D is right out for me. If they force this gimmick on everyone I'll have to give up movies. Then there's the people will decent eyesight that get headaches from the 3D effect. It's a hack and a poor one at that.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Cameron made a good 3D film, in which he used depth effects with restraint. This was then followed by a slew of films in crap post-processed from 2D to stereoscopic 3D. Not a good thing.
Cameron has been quoted as saying that what he really wants is a higher frame rate, at least 48FPS. It's obvious why. Cameron orders up good high=-detail backgrounds, and panning shots across high-detail backgrounds produce seriously annoying edge effects at 24FPS. So you don't do medium speed pans over a high-detail background today. He'd like to get past that.
Remember, depth in 3D movies is horribly fake, because it's scaled. In the real world, there are no visible stereoscopic effects beyond 3 meters or so. This really bothers some small kids. Kids also have to face the headache-inducing effect of films scaled for adult inter-ocular distance. Seen with kid-sized eye spacing, it forces the eyes into a cross-eyed situation, which usually induces a headache.
Also, watching 3D TV while lying sideways on the couch is not going to be fun.