Has Christopher Nolan Turned the 3D Argument?

brumgrunt writes "Not only has Christopher Nolan resisted pressure to make his third Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises, in 3D, but his explanation is very much centered on it being the right decision to suit the film. With Harry Potter (temporarily) abandoning 3D too, has Hollywood's latest bandwagon hit the skids already?"

Comments

Let's face it

[elrous0]

The reason the studios are pushing so hard on 3D is because there is a lot of money in it. They can charge a lot more for a 3D ticket. And once the overhead on the equipment is paid (the projector for the theater, the cameras for the production, the trivial costs of some cheap plastic glasses), all that extra money is almost pure profit. The reason that Nolan is able to resist their push is because he's already established himself with the franchise. If they were appointing a newbie to do it, you can bet they would be TELLING him to do Batman in 3D.

3D has always a been dubious contribution to the art. For every James Cameron who likes to see what he can do with it, there are dozens of filmmakers who have it foisted on them by the studio (many of them after-the-fact). And while the big boys can resist, I doubt the pressure will let up anytime soon. As long as there is money to be made, the studios will ride this train. The only thing that will stop it would be if audiences starting to forgo the overpriced 3D versions for the 2D versions in droves, or if some kind of studio/theater price war started on 3D tickets (making it difficult for the studios to rape us so easily).

Is this a fad that probably SHOULD pass? Maybe. Is it being overused now? Definitely. Is it going anywhere, as long as the studios can reap big money off of it? Almost certainly not.

Re:Let's face it

[poetmatt]

there isn't a lot of money in it. They think there might be a lot of money in it. There's an enormous difference between those statements.

The difference between speculation and reality is in the execution, something which 3D doesn't do well because it's gimmick.

There's infinite money to be made in selling air! Our profit margins are infinite! etc. This is what people tell themselves. And then comes the reality.

Re:Let's face it

[onionman]

Is this a fad that probably SHOULD pass? Maybe. Is it being overused now? Definitely. Is it going anywhere, as long as the studios can reap big money off of it? Almost certainly not.

I hope that BAD 3D passes quickly. I find that imperfect 3D gives me a headache. Avatar was fine for me, but other 3D films that I've seen have me constantly squinting as my eyes try to resolve the slight blurs and imperfections in the image, so I often leave with a headache.

And, yes, I am aware that 3D viewing requires that one pay attention only to the main element of the scene (trying to look at the background when only the foreground is in focus will always result in blurring even with the best 3D).

Re:Let's face it

[Defenestrar]

And the fact that some have to do it after the fact just goes to show (once again) the misnomer of calling these films3D. Unless you can walk around the display and see the back of Batman's head - it ain't 3D. The bandwagon is called stereoscopic projection.

Re:Let's face it

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll notice there are 2D versions of 3D movies, simply because in order to have 3D you need 2D first (ala dual camera lenses, etc)
Let's not get all stupid and think "omg lolz fight da p0wAr!@!". I sure am glad people like you didn't exist back in the days of movies getting sound, color being added, new IMAX, technicolor, new computer generated scenery. We'd be stuck with sock puppets, still.

Re:Let's face it

[Electricity Likes Me]

And, yes, I am aware that 3D viewing requires that one pay attention only to the main element of the scene (trying to look at the background when only the foreground is in focus will always result in blurring even with the best 3D).

This to me is actually the biggest flaw of 3D. I love looking at the backgrounds of films - I like seeing all the effort and little details that have gone into them, even if the focus isn't on them. Which is why, despite seeing Avatar in 3D (because of the 3D and the "must see" that was going around) I was thoroughly disappointed in the technology: in a movie supposed to be all about the detail of the world, you spend a whole lot of time in scenes struggling to track the focus point because you WANT to look at the backgrounds when they're around.

Re:Let's face it

[pla]

And, yes, I am aware that 3d viewing requires that one pay attention only to the main element of the scene (trying to look at the background when only the foreground is in focus will always result in blurring even with the best 3d).

Except, you've just described my biggest peeve about 3d movies - I don't consider that a minor nuissance, but an outright show-stopper.

In an action scene (main elements moving around rapidly) or a landscape (panfocal background shot), it doesn't so much matter; Put two people talking in a room for more than five seconds, though, and I start looking at the scenery rather than the talking heads. A little bit of blur in that, I can accept; Making my eyes hurt when I dare to focus on something other than what the director wants me to, total BS.


3d will always remain a cute gimmick until we have a truly immersive environment like a holodeck. Some films can use it well, but the other 99.5% of movies should stick with 2d.

Re:Let's face it

[Anonymous Coward]

Until you can lie on the floor and look up Emma Watson's skirt you mean.

Re:Let's face it

[oh_my_080980980]

RTFA

3-D is waning. It's not they money maker they thought it was. People are not paying for the 3-D movie, they are opting for the 2-D movie instead.

Again RTFA, because Warner Bros. got their ass handed to them for Clash Of The Titans and The Last Airbender, they were not eager to push 3-D.

So yes 3-D is a fad. When DIRECTORS WANT 3-D, 3-D will take over, NOT when STUDIOS WANT 3-D.

Re:Let's face it

[netsavior]

I think 3D is more about providing an experience that can't (yet) be pirated successfully. I have seen damn good CAMs where they have used the Hard of hearing accessibilty device to rip the sound straight from the equipment, recorded in a dark empty theater on a tripod on an HD camera (this is done by theater employees).

with a telesync that good, or a screener dvd rip, lots of people have projectors or nice big TVs in their house and there really is no reason to go to some crappy theater where people will be hollering and the floor is sticky.
3D and IMAX movies are the only movie theater experiences that are significantly better than pirating (or waiting for DVD) for me nowadays.

I still go to other movies sometimes, but I really make time for decent 3d releases that I (or my kids) want to see.

I think the pirating problem is not as big as the film industry thinks it is, but I think anti-pirating is no small part of their push for 3D.

Re:Let's face it

[Eivind Eklund]

A bunch of us happen to like it. I preferentially select watching a movie in the theater when it's in 3D; otherwise, I'll more often wait until it is available on DVD.

Eivind.

Re:Let's face it

[the_humeister]

Well, if you really want to be pedantic, it is 3D with stereoscopic projection. All movies have been in 3D. A 2D movie is not really a movie. We call those still images. Your description of walking around the movie display and able to see the back of Batman's head, that's 4D.

Re:Let's face it

[Hoi Polloi]

The problem with 3D as it currently stands is that I never forget that I'm watching a 3D movie. I never feel immersed in the effect, I always am aware of it and think "Ohhh, they did a 3D thing here." It feels more like a gimmick than a natural part of the experience.

Re:Let's face it

[geekoid]

3d is no more of a gimmick then sound or color. 3d does make them a lot of extra money. Book money not speculation money.
3d is atoll that is now here to stay. It won't be used for all movies, but there will probably always be at least one or two movies using it.

Re:Let's face it

[bennomatic]

I remember when I saw Toy Story, thinking, "Wouldn't it be cool if, in addition to a normal DVD release, they released a version with all of the model, action, sound and lighting information, but where you could grab the "camera" and move it anywhere in the story's defined universe?" With live action films, stereoscopic projection is as good as it will realistically get, but there's no reason that 100% CG movies couldn't allow for some more immersive features.

Even DVDs, when they first came out, were supposed to be revolutionary because they allowed directors to include multiple angles for the same scene. How many movies have that? I haven't seen any. But imagine if you could re-shoot the whole thing. Even if you couldn't change the audio, sets and the action, imagine being able to muck with the lighting and camera angles and make a noir version of your favorite episode of Dinosaur Train...

Re:Let's face it

[nine-times]

Yeah, it's worth noting that our brains use a lot of different cues to decode a 3D scene, and stereoscopic vision is just one of those cues. We also use light and shadow, motion, perspective, and parallax, for example. Shadow and perspective are available in traditional "2D" films, and we do in fact decode "2D" pictures into 3D scenes without stereoscopic vision. However, eve the stereoscopic "3D" movies lack the ability to move your head and "look around" an object the way you could if you had real parallax.

So in general I'd say the distinction between "2D" and "3D" films is not as meaningful as most people believe. It's not as though the "2D" films are actually presenting you with a 2 dimensional scene without any depth, and it's not as though the "3D" films are actually giving you a full 3D representation of the scene.

Let me say:

[RulerOf]

has Hollywood's latest bandwagon hit the skids already?

I sure as hell hope so.

Here's to hoping

[Pojut]

3D is great, so long as a movie is made from the very beginning with it in mind, isn't used in a gimmicky sort of way, and isn't thrown in "just because".

I've only seen three movies that meet those requirements: Avatar, UP, and Coraline.

Re:Here's to hoping

[Tony]

So basically, you've seen ONE movie where it wasn't thrown in "just because". UP and Coraline were entirely computer-generated video, and re-rendering with the "camera" in a different position is a matter of tweaking a couple of settings. They could re-make ANY all-CGI film (Ice Age, Wall-E, etc) as 3D if they still had the original files and rendering programs. And probably make money on them.

(Note: Avatar used lots of computer-generated imagery...but not exclusively, and did a lot more with motion capture than is normal.)

Have you even seen Coraline? It was produced via stop-motion, using 3D cameras. There were some digital effects, but not many. So, no. For Coraline, it wasn't thrown in "just because."

We only see the 2D version

[roc97007]

We've skipped movies because the theater was only showing 3D. After the novelty wore off (took about two films) the greater expense and poor user experience killed it for us. If producers try to force 3D on us in theaters, I'll wait for the video release.

Don't ask the monkey, ask the organ grinder

[Rogerborg]

Just because WB won't pay to shoot in stereo doesn't mean they won't then get some Korean sweatshop to post-processed the movies. Why invest more than they need to, when they already know that audiences paid a premium to watch Alice and Titans in "3D"?

So, no, I don't think we're seeing the end of "3D", I just think we're seeing the end of pretending to care about the quality of it.

Re:Don't ask the monkey, ask the organ grinder

[Graymalkin]

There's a lot more to it than that. Shooting in 3D limits the number of in-camera effects that are available and requires the director to make hard choices about focus and focal points. Once principal production is complete (with those limitations) all of the post-production needs to take the 3D projection into account. Having to project in 3D is going to affect every edit, effect, and color grading. It's a lot of extra work to shoot in 3D and then actually project in 2D.

Re:Don't ask the monkey, ask the organ grinder

[Rogerborg]

It's much much cheaper to shoot in 3D than to do it in post-processing

Says you. A CGI professioanl says shooting stereoscopic is more expensive. Who am I going to believe?

We'd have to reinvent drama for 3-D

[Gopal.V]

Most of the action/epic movie genre shot in real life, rather than on a green screen heavily uses perspective effects to achieve drama.

Something like the famous contra-zoom would be a complete failure in 3-D. The entire sequence in LoTR where Gandalf and Frodo are in the same shot would just not work in 3-D unless you went in and fixed the perspective for every frame.

Half of the hollywood real-life special effects would need to be re-invented for 3-D to work right. Or the CGI versions need to catch up to the old-school effects.

And then there are people like me who accidentally distracted by the background. I take a look at it and then my eyes sort of complain about not being able to bring a backdrop object into focus. Totally kills the immersion for me. I want 3-D movies, but not this polarized lenses in each eye monstrosity (I wonder if I could get contacts with those).

Re:We'd have to reinvent drama for 3-D

[Colonel Korn]

And then there are people like me who accidentally distracted by the background. I take a look at it and then my eyes sort of complain about not being able to bring a backdrop object into focus. Totally kills the immersion for me.

That's a bigger problem than you make it out to be, and it affects everyone, from the directors to the viewers. Use of selective focus for dramatic purposes is an incredibly widespread and effective tool in film. However, it just doesn't work at all in 3-d. The 3-d director must make a choice between two bad options: 1) use normal selective focus, eliminating the point of a 3-d scene and going 3/4 of the way toward collapsing the illusion, or 2) allow the eye to focus anywhere, giving up the most successful technique in the artform for drawing the eye to a particular point. Even Avatar had this problem, and it's the main reason it was better in 2-d.

I hope not, 3d is saving me money

[Tridus]

I refuse to see any movie in 3d, because it's hard on my eyes and most of the conversions are terrible. As a result with some movies being hard to find in 2d, I spend $0 on them. Hollywood is doing a good job of saving me money, and I hope they convert everything in sight so I have no reason to ever visit a movie theatre again.

Re:Is Hollywood leaving money on the table?

[O('_')O_Bush]

I put "3d movies are" into the google searchbar, and it autofilled:

"3d movies are a gimmick
3d movies are overrated
3d movies are bullshit
3d movies are crap
3d movies are annoying"

as the first 5 options.

I think the massive backlash is because many people view 3d as the first result, a gimmick to pass off lower quality films while trying to keep the same revenue. After all, the hollywood revenue stream has two factors. One being ticket prices, which can be boosted for the gimmick, and the other being production costs which can be reduced if the film expectations are lowered.

My $0.02

3D

[ledow]

3D has come and gone in just about every decade for the last 5-6 decades.

It's pretty but there are a number of things that have never been solved:

- it doesn't work AT ALL for a percentage of people. If they don't go, your audience is lessened by their numbers plus a bit more (to account for those groups who say "Yeah, but John can't see it - let's go watch something 2D instead").
- it can induce headaches, motion sickness and all sorts of problems in others.
- it's not "true" 3D, I can't get out of my seat and look at the film from the side. I also can't "stick my head inside" an object that's coming out the screen towards me. It's usually only ever "2D plus depth tricks" which isn't the same.
- it's more expensive than 2D
- it requires more specialist hardware than 2D (and often requires people to don some sort of equipment THEMSELVES to do that)
- it's used as nothing more than a gimmick rather than an actual way to put the viewer "on-stage".

Even a simple theatre is more "3D" than "3D TV" and they can do all sorts of tricks that makes you think an elephant has disappeared, that actors are smaller than they actually are, and that there's a ghost hovering mid-stage. I can't name a single work of art that uses "3D technology" to its advantage and yet an awful lot of art is designed to be 3D (e.g. every statue).

I have at least three games on my hard drive that use "3D" technology if my display supports it - some of them go back decades. Trackmania can do the red/blue glasses thing and, way back when, you could do it in Fractint too. I have "3D" pictures collected from comics when I was young. I played on a "3D" holographic game in the arcades before I was young enough to even work out what buttons I was supposed to be pressing (which, incidentally, was infinitely more impressive than anything you can get on a 3DTV). Nintendo have a console that FLOPPED despite being years ahead of its time because it relied on the "3D" gimmick. I have regularly dug out a pair of red/blue glasses from my childhood days to amuse myself with things that come in boxes of cereal. Even in my parent's day you could go watch a 3D movie at a cinema without having to track one down.

But still, the above problems are always there with any type of "3D". When you *solve* them, come back and we'll take a look. Otherwise, it's a faddy gimmick that'll disappear and be revived next decade too.

HP

[Spad]

The only reason that Harry Potter has "abandoned" 3D is because they couldn't retro-fit it into the latest instalment in time for the planned release date. They're still fully intending to go back and 3D all the old films plus this latest one and re-release them to cash in.

3D is lame

[brxndxn]

I think this 3D fad is one of the most poorly-executed technologies that will end up with an impact like the original laser disc or divx players. First, Avatar has been the only real 3D movie.. and it was awesome. Then, Alice in Wonderland came around and claimed 3D and it looked like a hackjob.

Every part of this '3D' technology is executed badly.
1. The content.. There is a lot of talk about content yet very little available. Where is my ESPN 3D sports channel? Where are all the 3D movies?

2. The home theater.. '3D capable' does not seem to mean shit since even techno-geeks like me don't know what exactly you need to watch 3D. I know the technology requires 120hz+ refresh rates and a 3d-capable player and glasses.. but are all brands interchangeable? If I have a 240hz TV, is that good enough or do I need to blow money a '3D' tv?

3. The glasses.. lol.. Charge me $99/pair? WTF.. Why can't we just use the cheap ones you get in the theatres at home? But seriously.. $99/pair? They're the cheapest plasticky things you can get at the electronics shop and they're $99/each? Freaking joke.. They can't cost more than $3 to make.

The technology looks impressive when watching Avatar at a good theater.. or watching the demos at the Sony store.. But getting that into the home looks like an exercise in frustration even to the most geeky of consumers.

Re:3D is lame

[PieSquared]

There are three ways to do 3D. In each case you give up something in order to add a second picture on top of the first. The most basic is the red-blue version, where you give up color and wear glasses with red and blue lenses. The version currently popular in theaters is polarization, where you give up the polarization of light (which you don't notice in any case) and wear glasses with lenses polarized in two different directions. The third version is one in which you flip back and forth between two different pictures, giving up half your refresh rate and wearing glasses with shutters that block light to one eye at a time, at your refresh rate.

You seem to be conflating options two and three. Theaters can use cheap polarized glasses that indeed cost a couple of dollars at most. But the type of 3D where refresh rate matters requires glasses that can switch between black and clear perfectly in sync with your television, which as you say must be 120hz or more. THAT hardware isn't going to be cheap. (And to use the polarization-type 3D at home you'd need a special screen that I don't think you can buy at this point.)

Re:3D is lame

[blind biker]

Theaters can use cheap polarized glasses that indeed cost a couple of dollars at most. But the type of 3D where refresh rate matters requires glasses that can switch between black and clear perfectly in sync with your television, which as you say must be 120hz or more. THAT hardware isn't going to be cheap.

No, those glasses with switching are very cheap indeed - I got them for free with an old ATI All-in-wonder graphics card. I still have them in a cupboard in the corridor.

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Re:Is Hollywood leaving money on the table?

[Yvan256]

I remember using one of the first 3D shutter-glasses system with an old 3Dfx graphic card. One of the demo had that "out of the screen" effect and not only did it look like crap, trying to focus on objects in front of my screen just gave me a headache pretty fast.

The demos that tried to add depth to my screen, however, were really amazing. I seem to recall playing Quake 1 in 3D with only in-screen depth and it completely changed the game (in a good way).

When you go see a movie, the action takes places on the damn screen. If things start coming out of it, it's just stupid. You can't have the movie happening inside the theater. But if you use 3D to make the screen have depth, there is still that needed disconnection with the movie vs the theater yet you gain a perceived dimension for the movie itself.

As soon as they stop doing "out-of-screen 3D", we'll be better off.

Re:Is Hollywood leaving money on the table?

[Pinky's Brain]

Action works just fine in stereoscopic view. Quick cuts and shaky cam not so much ... which is the greatest reason I like it, even more than the effect itself. Nothing lazier than turning the screen into one gigantic 24 Hz clusterfuck of juddering unrecognisable crap to imply action. Anything that reduces shaky cam is okay in my book.

PS. Nolan's love of shaky cam is probably part of the reason for remaining 2D ...

good riddance.

[Triv]

Good. Get rid of them. I'm sick to death of trying to find a theater playing movies in 2D - the annoyances associated with the fight between my glasses and the stereoscopic ones and the nausea induced by the movie essentially forcing me to look at it cross-eyed to figure it out completely destroy any immersion I may have experienced. I want my suspension of disbelief back.

Went to the movies last night

[OzPeter]

we chose to go to the movies rather than watch something on Netflix not because of wanting to see a film in 3D, but because there is a new theatre in town - Cinebistro You have to be over 21 to buy a ticket, they serve food and alcohol at your seat in the theatre and they treat you like adults. *That* is an experience that will bring me back to going to theatres, not some 3D gimmick.