Slashdot Mirror
Hobbit Film Finally Gets Green Light, To Be Shot in 3-D
An anonymous reader writes with word that "after much kerfuffle and uncertainty, the Hobbit film has finally been greenlit," with Peter Jackson as director. Says the linked story: "The announcement did not state whether the two-part prequel to The Lord of the Rings would be shot in New Zealand. Matt Dravitzki, Jackson's assistant at Wingnut Films, said an annoucement on the place of filming would be 'probably a week or two away.'"
So when the whole fad dies we'll expect your apology, where?
How we know is more important than what we know.
Using the term 3D for stereoscopic video is probably already so entrenched in the media that it's useless to try and correct them, but it irritates the hell out of me...
There's a huge difference though. A 3D image (the closest we have is a hologram) is one where you can change your viewpoint by moving your head. The perspective changes when you move away or closer. This means that no matter where you are relative to the image, the stereoscopic image that your eyes register is always correct. The fixed images of stereoscopic video don't change, and the perspective is only correct for one position relative to the image. This is what gives people headaches.
I'm holding out for holographic (worthy of the term 3D) displays!
Maybe if 3D actually worked for more people, was used in ways that improved the overall storytelling process and was less expensive, you wouldn't hear so many criticisms of it. It works for me, marginally, but I usually end up with a headache and after a few minutes I lose interest. It ruins immersion for me, whether it's a game, or a movie so it's safe to say I'm not a big fan.
Peter Jackson was able to get very good visual effects on the LotR trilogy because he used camera tricks rather than digital editing to achieve the illusion of a world populated by big and little people.
The technique called "foreshortening" was used quite a bit, like when Gandalf first sits with Bilbo and has tea in his kitchen. The actors were there, but the set was arranged and props and actors placed so that Bilbo was farther away from the camera than Gandalf, and therefore appeared little while Gandalf was 'human sized'. Its a simple gimmick and worked great. Using a 3D camera setup may not work with this unless you deliberately went frame by frame and edited the 3D in afterward since shooting it with multiple cameras would cancel out the single-perspective trick of foreshortening.
Look, it's an extra technology that improves movie for those that like the 3-D effect. It doesn't affect the quality of the movie. Good and bad movies will still be made. It's weird that here on slashdot, a news for nerd site, people are so much against emerging technologies.
Wrong.
Scenes are added to even the very best 3D movie to do nothing but show off the 3D effect. When viewed in 2D (and often in 3D actually) they end up looking truely awful, and serving to do nothing but ruin immersion and make you remember you're in a cinema.
It's not amazing that nerds are against it – nerds are often against tech that makes things worse, not better.
the story! That's what Bilbo Baggins hates!!
"Lit" is a perfectly acceptable past tense of "light". In fact, I prefer it.
Look, it's an extra technology that improves movie for those that like the 3-D effect. It doesn't affect the quality of the movie. Good and bad movies will still be made. It's weird that here on slashdot, a news for nerd site, people are so much against emerging technologies.
Wrong.
Scenes are added to even the very best 3D movie to do nothing but show off the 3D effect. When viewed in 2D (and often in 3D actually) they end up looking truely awful, and serving to do nothing but ruin immersion and make you remember you're in a cinema.
This. Also, the director will always avoid partial objects in the foreground (no one wants a fuzzy half of a face jumping out at them). In my opinion, what is lost (artistic ability/license) is far greater than what is gained (axes/bullets/spears appearing to fly directly at me). I thought Avatar was visually breathtaking, but the likelihood of the shooting of 'Riddles in the Dark' being hamstrung by 3D "aesthetic requirements" is pretty fucking disappointing.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
wtf?
First off, nerds already wear glasses, so wearing glasses over glasses is awkward. Second, 3D television sales have been a disaster, so it's a pointless technology that only works well on a gigantic screen and not a standard sized television. Third, people mock 3D because they see it exactly for what it is--a desperate gimmick for theaters trying to compete with technology in the home as well as an excuse to charge extra for ticket prices, which was the primary reason Avatar became the highest grossing film.
People aren't "against emerging technologies." It's not even a new technology. People are against cheesy gimmicks. You cite a videogame as an example for 3D, which already shows you how gimmicky it is and how it places emphasis on visuals, not storytelling. It may be great for Left 4 Dead, but for a two hour movie trying to tell a story?
3D fads in film have come and gone several times before. It's not some new trend. They had this shit in the 1950s with the old red and blue glasses.
Yeah, Jackson sure proved how much he cared about the source material. I'm sure Tolkien fans loved seeing Gimli rolling down a hill for comic relief, Aragorn's life-saving horse, and Galadriel the Incredible Hulk.
Del Toro prefers animatronics because CGI doesn't look real enough for creature footage. You probably would have gotten a more authentic film from him than "pan the camera around everything" Jackson. A lot of the outdoor scenery in the LOTR films was pretty bland and ordinary-looking compared to the version of Middle-Earth in the book, which was alive, conscious, and menacing. In the book, Saruman didn't try to take down the mountain to stop the fellowship--the mountain itself did. That kind of ominous threat from the world around them would have come through in a Del Toro version. It would have been surreal and fantastical instead of just static footage of New Zealand plains.
That statement is as insightful as ever.
Just think about what it implies. Of course, I do not know if it truely was an ignorant comment, but to me it reads as very terse, subtle and clever commentary about human nature
Bot Assisted Blogging
Terrific! I'd pay to see a hobbit being shot, whether it was in 3-D or not. Furry little bastards!
No left turn unstoned.
Except that I can say without a doubt (as a doctoral compsci student) that computers raise more questions than they answer. Compared to humans, computers are severely limited as to what they can do; investigating their limits is fascinating and strange, and those insights feed back into human knowledge in unexpected ways. Cryptography, for instance, played (some would say) a deciding role in the last world war, and compared to today, that field was in its infancy. The outcome of that early research is what allows modern commerce to happen.
I think extraordinary people can say dumb things, just like the rest of us. I think it's still a dumb comment, unless you mean to say that it's somehow a self-referentially terse, subtle and clever about how stupid people can be. In which case, wow.