3D Cinema Doesn't Work and Never Will

circletimessquare writes "Walter Murch, one of the most technically knowledgeable film editors and sound designers in the film industry today, argues, via Rogert Ebert's journal in the Chicago Sun-Times, that 3D cinema can't work, ever. Not just today's technology, but even theoretically. Nothing but true holographic images will do. The crux of his argument is simple: 600 million years of evolution has designed eyes that focus and converge in parallel, at the same distance. Look far away at a mountain, and your eyes focus and converge far away, at the same distance. Look closely at a book, and your eyes focus and converge close, at the same distance. But the problem is that 3D cinema technology asks our eyes to converge at one distance, and focus at another, in order for the illusion to work, and this becomes very taxing, if not downright debilitating, and even, for the eyes of the very young, potentially developmentally dangerous. Other problems (but these may be fixable) include the dimness of the image, and the fact that the image tends to 'gather in,' even on Imax screens, ruining the immersive experience."

Comments

Re:Another problem with 3D

[sznupi]

Deep focus while filming won't change how your eyes must maintain "focus lock" on the screen while spatial and convergence hints scream "refocus!" (and they are there, that's the whole point of "3D" - objects apparently in front or behind screen)

As a side note, many scenes in those stereoscopic toys (disk with ~dozen photos) that I've seen had very deep focus ... IMHO it makes the whole scene, paradoxically, very flat. Yes, there is "depth" of course - but feels non-gradual, like several backgrounds in old SNES platformers.

David20321

[David20321]

Looks like Ebert is really set in his curmudgeonly "new forms of media are trash and always will be" pattern. Guess what -- 2D cinema already violates many of the visual absolutes that our ancestors took for granted. This article complains that 3D separates focus and convergence, but 2D cinema already separated those from visual perspective, something that never happens in nature. We also evolved to have control over the plane that we are focusing on, which 2D cinema takes away. Even aside from depth cues, our ancestors only needed to perceive motion when they themselves were moving, there was no idea of sitting still and watching from a moving camera. I guess this "motion picture" thing will never catch on. It will always make some people motion sick from camera movement or give them headaches from the brightness and flickering.

What is with the timing of this article anyway? The most successful film of all time, Avatar, is a flagship of 3D cinema. Maybe his next article should be "why the cell phone can't work, ever" because calls sometimes drop. Or maybe "why flat TVs will never catch on" because they don't have as deep blacks as CRT.

Re:I KNOW! Ebert's point! It is bulshit.

[TheGratefulNet]

have to disagree with 5.1, though.

I'm an audio guy (realistic one who builds stuff) and I've gone back to 2.1 sound (2 spkrs, left and right plus a subwoofer). I map/downmix multitrack at the player level and then I get that nice clean 2ch open-standards spdif into my nice clean DAC. my whole audio chain, in fact, is based on pcm linear spdif which is really only 2.0. the .1 subwoofer is, of course, entirely derived and NEVER needed a channel of its own (harumph).

my config demanded I avoid multichannel. why? my audio chain is pure spdif; the htpc puts out spdif, that goes into a EQ that runs dsp code andn its spdif in and out, then into my hardware 3way crossover which, you guessed it, is spdif. only at the end where I get high/mid/low at line level for my amps do I break out of spdif. there is NO WAY to run DTS or dd5.1 into this and stay all digital. can't be done (not affordably, anyway).

so I downmix to 2.0 and get very high quality 2ch left right and subwoofer from that. I play movies thru that system and have no problem at all picking out the various soundstage entities, fully from left thru center and on to right. note there is NO center spkr - the proper left/right does all you need.

not only is 3d a bunch of BS, I don't fully buy into multichannel audio AT HOME. typical homes are small. they don't need more than 2.0 or 2.1. large theaters need more spkrs but you are NOT a large theater! your living room or bedroom is fully served with 2 decent l/r spkrs and optionally a sub.

a clean 2.* system beats even upper mid-grade 5.x and 9.x systems. multichannel is also a 'fad', its just that its easier to 'awe' someone with lotsa spkrs spraying lotsa sound in the room.

less is morer, folks. 3d/2d and audio 'dimensions', as well. simpler is better. let the story be the primary.