Slashdot Mirror
How James Cameron Pumped Volume Into Titanic
MrSeb writes with ExtremeTech's account of how director (and deep sea explorer) James Cameron spent a reported $18 million converting his blockbuster movie, Titantic, to 3D. The article "looks at the primary way of managing depth in 3D films (parallax), how you add depth to a movie that was originally filmed in 2D, and some of the software (both computer and human-brain) difficulties that Cameron had to overcome in the more-than-two-year process to convert Titanic into 3D."
...who really wanted to see Titanic in 3D?
Nothing else matters if they can't get naked Kate to look right.
And yet nothing of value was added.
I'd like to see a Titanic themed ride at Universal or whatever. Throw in some 1910s decorations. Some classical music. And then have it like a roller coaster or tower of terror but in sub zero degrees at one of the drops to simulate the ship plunging into the ocean.
Yes, yes. Let's take an incident that killed 1,500 people in the frozen waters of the North Atlantic and make it a ride. It's bad enough that Cameron turned the tragedy into some bogus "love story" - that scene in the water with Winslet and DiCaprio makes me want to puke - then the woman ditches the necklace into the open water with an "oops". Call me jaded, but I think the movie is a bigger tragedy than the actual event.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
While I don't necessarily disagree with you, people said the same thing about color. Color film (vs B&W) is a more "real-life" experience. Evidence suggests that "real-life" experience has a lot to do with movies - from color, to picture quality, to positional audio. 3D is a (if not the) next logical step.
To be honest, I thought Avatar was a masterfully executed film, if a bit cliched. It's certainly cohesive and "all-encompassing" in a way that few movies are. It's a shame the plot was so pedestrian. The 3D made the movie impressive, but since it seemed like a tech demo more than a proper flick, it came at the expense of me wanting to watch it again in 2D. By comparison, black&white never stopped me watching Casablanca, or Citizen Kane.
But there's all sorts of movies that are a lot of fun, if "safe". I can't exactly call them bad, in the same way that I can't call any of those Sundance films bad despite the fact that they're so boring. It's just a different kind of movie.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
They spent 18 million reworking it to 3D. I haven't seen a lot of publicity so it's unlikely they spent more than 18 million for prints and advertizing. They made 17.4 million on the opening weekend just on domestic box office. It almost certainly will make 50 million domestic and could hit a 100 million although somewhere in the middle is more likely. Foreign is less for 3D but it sold strong overseas so it could match the US take. Break the numbers down and for a 36 million investment they get around 50 to 100 million back after you factor out the theater take. They either double or triple their money and that doesn't factor in a spike in DVD and Blu-rays since they are likely to also release a special addition. The studios are in it to make money not films. Why risk 18 million on a film that could bomb when they make 30 to 70 million in profit by recycling a hit? Disney survived through many bleak years after Walt died re-releasing old animated films.