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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."
Just ask Jar-Jar Binks.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
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 really haven't seen anything compelling with 3D. Most tend to only have certain parts that really "show off" the effect but mostly it just distracts from the film. The push to 3D is an attempt to rekindle interest in cinema but people are still going to the theaters. I had a couple of friends who saw a 3D film only because they wanted to see the movie at that time when only it was showing. By and large, it doesn't seem like anyone really wants 3D.
Old people resist change, news at 11.
There is no reason why 3-D can't be a good thing. Arguing it's bad because some people have made bad movies with it is stupid. I loom forward to a young generation of filmmakers to be tinker with this technology.
And no, not every movie should be made 3-d. In fact I would argue if it wasn't shot in 3-d with the idea of it being shot in 3-D , then it should not be added later. All the will do is make people dislike it and kill it.
The current technique for 3-d are awesome.
The Matrix filmed with current 3-d technologies would have had people wetting in their seats.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If the story doesn't need 3D to be effective, why force people to pay the extra money?
"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."
So adding an extra 30-50% to the unit price results in a 20% increase in revenues, or an 8-20% drop in unit sales.
Why would a director complain about that?
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.
...it adds quite a bit. The scene in 'How to Train Your Dragon' where the soot is blowing in the air and the viking appears was amazing. I also thought the massive fight against the Kraken in 'Clash of the Titans' was absolutely incredible.
And I have to wear glasses normally.
It was still worth it!
No! It's a *SIG*. Keep the Special Interest Groups away! (Con joke!)
My favorite movie was shot in black and white. It has great acting from a great script with great directing and great cinematography. All of those trump special effects, even that last new thing, color. Good movies don't need gimmicks.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
My eyes - the goggles - zey do nuhsing!
The quote is "My eyes! The goggles do nothing!".
Get it right. There is no "they", nor is there any bad pronunciation. There is an accent, but it is still clearly and properly enunciated and articulated.
Just imagine if way back when, people were saying
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I'm going to start off with the full disclosure. I am currently editor of a 3D film, and have previously worked on both motion capture and stereoscopic live-action 3D films. Also, I firmly believe post-conversion is terrible and is the number one thing the industry is doing to harm the advancement of 3D. Both live action 3D films I've been involved with have been shot completely stereoscopically in true 3D.
I don't believe that directors are particularly wise to resist the move to 3D. There are a lot of benefits to shooting in 3D and to embrace the technology will allow filmmakers to be at the forefront and to dictate the advancements in the technologies - rather than having the producers dictate the advancement of the technology.
It's just like the move from black & white to colour, from mono to stereo to surround, etc. 3D is going to consume a large portion of the market share in the coming years. Also, working with 3D isn't really that much trouble. You have to be smarter with your metadata and think a bit more about what you're doing ahead of time, but that holds true with any profession as technology becomes more complicated and more capable.
People will expect more out of your product. Most people now expect cars to have airbags, ABS, air conditioning, and power locks and windows. As technology advances, people will expect new filmmaking technologies like 3D to come "standard". Will it increase the cost of films? Sure. Will ticket prices rise? Definitely. Do cars cost more now than they did 15 years ago? Absolutely. Has the experience of driving improved? I would argue that it has.
Agreed, worst meme attempt ever.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
3D or not, I bet Mars Needs MILFs would do a lot better.
I eat only the real part of complex carbohydrates.
I'm sure there were many filmmakers who resisted to push to color, a small minority with good reason.
Not every movie should be in 3D just like every movie should not necessarily be in color. But I think a lot of the pushback is from people who can't see (or handle) 3D. As others have pointed out, new directors will come up with new ways of using this, just like they did with color.
You will see new tools in the next couple of years that will make 3D movies more 'directable' as well as post-processing tools that will make it hurt your eyes less. I hope the technology catches on this time. I imagine it's easier to shoot a movie in 3D than to convert it to 3D later (this _may_ change with technology, but I kind of hope it doesn't -- watching a movie converted to 3D is as painful as watching a "colorized" classic movie). 3D to 2D conversion is trivial.
I've seen a few 3d movies now, and in my experience, you notice it for a few minutes and think "that's interesting", but if you are absorbed in the story you quickly forget that you are watching it in 3d. The point of watching a movie is to immerse yourself in the story. If you are noticing the 3d effects, you are not immersed, you are looking at the medium itself, not the story. Saying a movie was better in 3-d is kind of like saying "That novel was really good. The leather binding really made it better."
Because of that, and because it is extra bother to wear uncomfortable glasses, and extra expense for admission, I think 3d will prove to be a fad that settles down to a minimal sustainable level. It probably will never go away, but it will never take over either.
It's short sighted to say that 3D adds little to the movie-going experience. A director who thinks that simply lacks the imagination to realize the full potential of the medium. Using 3D, you can bring the viewer into an intimate setting, or a wide-open expanse. Characters, objects and settings can appear life-size, giving the audience a sense of scale without the need for objects of known size for comparison. The result can be a much more immerse viewing experience than was previously possible.
Of course, the 3D has to be done correctly. And directors will have to resist the urge to make objects jump out of the screen for "wow" factor. But in the end, you will have a better movie.
Some Like It Hot. La Dolce Vida. To Kill a Mockingbird. Young Frankenstein. Sunset Boulevard. The Last Picture Show.
Do they really think having 3D CGI fairies fluttering around the screen would really make these movies better than they already are?
Who do they think they're kidding?
3D, in its current form, is just another way to get the viewer involved in the space of a film. Its just a technique... and like any technique can be badly misused or carefully applied. Just like the transition from black an white to color photography, it takes time for people to learn how to use it to tell stories effectively.
What I abhor as a film maker is the desire by studios to convert films shot in 2D, with no regard to "into the plane" or "out of the plane" effects into 3D films. Its true that 3D is just a gimmick when implemented this way- and it can lead to a very unpleasant viewing experience.
One of the key elements to be reconsidered when shooting 3D is the amount of camera movement to use as well as the level of backlighting. Both of these techniques are used to enhance the sense of space in the film... by separating subjects from the background and by taking viewers on a tour of the environment. I believe that directors and cinematographers need to focus on showing the environment more simply with wider shots. Its almost required to turn back the clock in terms of cinematic motion. We need to use less movement and make that movement more subtle. This flies in the face of the MTV inspired cinema trends of wild dutch angles and whipsaw motion, as seen in Abrams Star Trek film. The use of backlighting is still a question up in the air for me. I think we still need it, but we can turn down the levels a bit.
Also to be reconsidered is the use of selective focus. (Typically done by using shallow depth of field.) We do this in order to help viewers know what we want them to pay attention to in the frame, for example racking back and forth between two speakers in a two shot. The problem is that in the real world the viewer always chooses when to look at whom, whereas in film the director, cinematographer, 1st camera assistant (or focus puller) and editor make these choices. We've learned to just follow along in 2D film as we percieve 2D to be an abstraction. 3D comes closer to a real world experience, and we expect more of the freedoms we are used to in the real world. We want to look where we want to look. So, if we look at the "wrong" persons face we are subtly frustrated as viewers.
Furthermore, how our eyes and brain react to out of focus areas is different in 2D and 3D. In 2D we accept that what we are looking at is blurry, and our eyes just slide over to the more interesting in focus areas. In 3D we tend to believe that the out of focus areas have sharp detail, and we start to attempt to bring them into focus rather than simply looking away. This is a subtle but important fact, and it can be a major source of eyestrain in current 3D film viewing.
Finally, I am not a huge fan of "out of the plane" effects, like an axe being thrown into the audience. (From the trailer to the upcoming Resident Evil movie). They are only appropriate very occasionally- and usually in the same places where you would have an object move directly towards the camera lens in 2D film making. More often, the 3D space should be treated as a window into another world we are looking into- and most of the 3D effect should be "into the plane," showing depth and perspective. We should use wider angle lenses to emphasize that perspective, and give viewers more time to absorb the scene before moving into it.
If you compare Avatar to other films you'll see that Cameron and Mauro Fiore (the cinematographer) followed my advice... they moved the camera more circumspectly and they used cameras and lighting to allow much deeper focus than normal. The story was paced so as to allow you to "go sightseeing" on Pandora (the fictional setting of the film, if you have not seen it) and even the fast action scenes used a more distant camera with a broader view than has become typical in order to let the viewer follow the action they chose to show us, rather than just wrenching your attention around like the Bourne films might.
3D can be done well, and it allows film makers to tell good stories. I can not wait to d
Don't post innacurate information
If you do, I swear by my pretty floral bonnet I will end you.
... 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'
everything HAS to be super bright, during filming, and during showing. it's lame because some movies work great with effective use of the dark negative space, which you can't do with 3D, because everything has to filmed/ shown all washed out
of course 3D is better, what's awful is current 3D technology. i'd rather watch 2D done well then 3D done badly, and all current 3D tech sucks
fix the current technology, and then 3D will be fully embraced
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I cannot see 3D (along with ?? percent of the population) so the 3D versions
are simply something to be avoided.
The film makers don't want 3D. The moviegoers don't want 3D. The MPAA members do want 3D, because it allows them to charge more per ticket, plus it makes it near impossible to bootleg a film by smuggling a camera into a theater. Now do you understand why 3D is being pushed so hard, and who is doing the pushing?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Turanga Leela.
Every so often, Hollywood et al come up with some new technology that "improves" the experience.
Sometimes, these are quite good. THX, for example. More often, they're just "ok".
The good:
I can see 3D being used to very good effect when the story has the right kind of overwhelming scenery that (and this is the key) is integral to or at least relates closely to the plot.
Avatar did that part of it pretty well. We had a colorful world with surprising depth relationships (floating mountains, lots of flight scenes, etc) that played well in 3D. The acrobatic abilities of the Na'vi were a core part of their lifestyle, rather than just something tacked on, and that worked well in 3D
Personally, I think the script could have been done better, but then again, no one is going to give me a fair fraction of a billion dollars to make a movie. They will give it to James Cameron.
The bad:
It's the current gimmick. Like Sensurround with its vibrations was in the 70s.
Movies are being made in 3D whether it makes a major addition to an existing set of scenery/plot or not. And, in many of the current crop of 3D films, they insert scenes just for the 3D effect.
Regardless of the technical prowess, you can't substitute for the old maxim "Good Story, told well."
Reading through quite a few response, it's pretty clear that there are those of us who prefer a good plot, well acted and directed and those who prefer special effects. I've watched some really good movies in black and white and also some foreign films with only English subtitles (almost like watching a silent film but you can still hear the emotion in the actors' voices and whether they are whispering, etc.). I didn't need anything more than the movie as I saw it to really enjoy it. I've also seen some just god awful crap that was supposed to be wonderful because of special effects, 3D or whatever.
A movie with a good story line and good acting doesn't need special effects to be good. For some movies, special effects, 3D surround sound, color and whatever else aren't enough to turn it into anything worth wasting your time watching. As an example, "Avatar" had a two bit, recycled plot (big bad corporations is willing to kill off indigenous people for profit) that wouldn't have gotten beyond the late night re-runs if it hadn't been in 3D with lots of CGI effects. I'll take a movie like "Black Book" that had a great plot and acting but no 3D any time over "Avatar".
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Old people resist change, news at 11.
Old people resisted this particular change when they were young. 3D has been showing up every 10 or 15 years for decades, realizes that no one wants it, and wanders off. Only difference this time is that Cameron used it on a film that would have been an equally huge hit without it and now we have the creative masterminds in Hollywood pushing to film all of their comic book adaptations in 3D.
Face it: a new era is here and the kids love it. -I- love it. My kids, all under ten, all expect to see 3D when they go to the cinema now.
That's because your kids are idiots.
No, really, I don't mean that to be a flame, but kids are, well, stupid. Sit them in front of a great film like 2001 or The Shining and they'll get bored out of their minds because, guess what, *they're kids*.
Gauging the relative merits of a technology based on whether or not your 7-year-old likes it is probably one of the worst metrics I can think of...
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.
Most movies are going to be watched on 2D screens. Most homes have 2D only setups, and that's where a lot of movies get seen. It is going to stay that way too. Never mind the cost, there's the simple inconvenience factor of needing glasses or having an unwatchable image. When a movie is in 3D and you don't have glasses on, it is a blurry mess. That means that for someone who walks through the room they can't watch it for a bit unless they go get some glasses themselves.
Ok well this also implies that the 2D version of the movie has to look good, it cannot suffer for the 3D version, at least not if you want to have good sales.
Plus there's the fact that the new fake 3D only goes so far. It does not produce a real 3D experience. While it presents separate images to the eyes, focus is not dealt with, nor is head tracking. So sure it looks "more" 3D than a single flat image but it doesn't look real. A neat effect, but not necessarily any more "realistic" than a transformation to a flat screen.
Also you run in to problem with regards to colour and contrast. Those flicking shutters? They aren't just filtered out to nothingness by the brain. They are perceived and what it does is has the effect of messing with the perceived contrast as well as colours.
It is kinda cool and all, but when you get down to it there are plenty of downsides and you still have to deal with the fact that most people aren't going to see it in 3D. This even includes people with better gear. I just bought a TV this year, nice 46" LCD to go with my large 5.1 setup. No 3D support though, way too expensive. So I've got a real "home theater" setup, and I don't have 3D support, and I'm not replacing that TV any time soon. Then of course there's plenty of people who just have a TV (sometimes even a CRT still) and aren't interested in "home theater" at all. You have to deal with this market, like it or not.
Ok, maybe I'm alone on this one, but when I watch a black & white movie, say, Dr. Strangelove, after about the first 10 minutes I don't consciously notice the "black & white" - I'm absorbed in the story. If I get distracted from the tv for a minute, I'll come back aware that the movie is in black & white, but I don't notice it much during the experience. The characters aren't "less real" because of the presentation.
Now before you call me a geezer I'm under 35, so I promise I'm not doing the "back in my day" thing.
It's just that I've seen many movies in different formats over the years, and like most people this includes everything from grainy cable channels to VHS tapes whose tracking won't settle down. And in every case where the movie is interesting at all, when I get engrossed in the story I don't generally notice the imperfections of the delivery.
This being the case, I feel like 3d is pointless in movies. Since you can't actually change your viewing angle relative to the characters, (which would be cool and actually 3d), it's instead only a depth-perception trick.(!) And worse, as above, if it's not there you don't miss it, and when it is there, if you're involved in the story you stop noticing it until it's rammed down your throat.
I'm not against movies being done in 3d, but I'm certainly not that impressed. The signal to noise, or "hype to reward" ratio is really really low IMHO.
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117983864.html?categoryid=1009&cs=1
I'm hearing that there are already calls to increase the frame rate to at least 30 fps for digital 3-D because certain camera moves, especially pans, look jumpy in 3-D. I saw that in the Imax 3-D "Beowulf." You've been an advocate for both 3-D and higher frame rates. Have you seen the problem and do you have any thoughts on it?
For three-fourths of a century of 2-D cinema, we have grown accustomed to the strobing effect produced by the 24 frame per second display rate. When we see the same thing in 3-D, it stands out more, not because it is intrinsically worse, but because all other things have gotten better. Suddenly the image looks so real it's like you're standing there in the room with the characters, but when the camera pans, there is this strange motion artifact. It's like you never saw it before, when in fact it's been hiding in plain sight the whole time. Some people call it judder, others strobing. I call it annoying. It's also easily fixed, because the stereo renaissance is enabled by digital cinema, and digital cinema supplies the answer to the strobing problem.
The DLP chip in our current generation of digital projectors can currently run up to 144 frames per second, and they are still being improved. The maximum data rate currently supports stereo at 24 frames per second or 2-D at 48 frames per second. So right now, today, we could be shooting 2-D movies at 48 frames and running them at that speed. This alone would make 2-D movies look astonishingly clear and sharp, at very little extra cost, with equipment that's already installed or being installed.
Increasing the data-handling capacity of the projectors and servers is not a big deal, if there is demand. I've run tests on 48 frame per second stereo and it is stunning. The cameras can do it, the projectors can (with a small modification) do it. So why aren't we doing it, as an industry?
Because people have been asking the wrong question for years. They have been so focused on resolution, and counting pixels and lines, that they have forgotten about frame rate. Perceived resolution = pixels x replacement rate. A 2K image at 48 frames per second looks as sharp as a 4K image at 24 frames per second ... with one fundamental difference: the 4K/24 image will judder miserably during a panning shot, and the 2K/48 won't. Higher pixel counts only preserve motion artifacts like strobing with greater fidelity. They don't solve them at all.
If every single digital theater was perceived by the audience as being equivalent to Imax or Showscan in image quality, which is readily achievable with off-the-shelf technology now, running at higher frame rates, then isn't that the same kind of marketing hook as 3-D itself? Something you can't get at home. An aspect of the film that you can't pirate.
Other than that, for digital 3-D, would you rather see energy going into moving from 2K to 4K, or into moving from 24 fps to 48 or 72 fps, and why?
4K is a concept born in fear. When the studios were looking at converting to digital cinemas, they were afraid of change, and searched for reasons not to do it. One reason they hit upon was that if people were buying HD monitors for the home, with 1080x1920 resolution, and that was virtually the same as the 2K standard being proposed, then why would people go to the cinema? Which ignores the fact that the social situation is entirely different, and that the cinema screen is 100 times larger in area. So they somehow hit on 4K, which people should remember is not twice the amount of picture data, it is four times the data. Meaning servers need to be four times the capacity, as does the delivery pipe to the theater, etc.
But 4K doesn't solve the curse of 24 frames per second. In fact it tends to stand in the way of the solutions to that more fundamental problem. The NBA e
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