Looks Stupider, but ‘Feels Better’- It’s 3D!
June 9th, 2007 Discussion {2}
In the ongoing crush to beat the competition and conquor the box-office, studios are working harder than ever to find ways to get people to see their movies. But the pressure isn’t just coming from competing films and tighter, tent-pole-packed summer schedules, it’s also become a battle to get audiences into theatres at all; to log off YouTube, pause their torrents, turn off their iPods, pull themselves away from their 60 inch LCDs and queue of DVDs, and venture from their houses to the multiplex. And apparently the latest idea that executives and directors are praying will reignite interest in the theatre-based movie experience is 3D. Yep, those funky glasses and slightly blurry images.
Jeffrey Katzenburg gushed recently in a New York Times article that–
“I believe that this is the single greatest opportunity for the moviegoing experience since the advent of color…It has been more than 60 years since there has been a significant enhancement or innovation to the moviegoing experience.”
Apparently James Cameron is wearing 3D glasses while veiwing dailies on his current production, and his producer Jon Landau is convinced of the benefits, explaining–
“The screen has always been an emotional barrier for audiences. Good 3-D makes the screen go away. It disappears, and you’re looking at a window into a world.”
So, there you have it - apparently wearing plastic glasses and viewing stereoscopic images is the key to transcending the emotionally stunted cinema experiences we’ve all been having for the last century. I agree that if the technology was spectacular and unobtrusive (no blurry images, no headaches, rich dimensional worlds, and slightly less stupid glasses) then maybe this would make the movies genuinely more involving.
So far, though, it seems to me that 3D has felt like an additional layer of artifice between the viewer and the story, with even the latest productions shot specifically for 3D feeling more like gimmicky amusement rides than real cinema. And in the end, I think cinema that sells itself to the audience on the basis of a new filmmaking technology is usually missing the real point of what makes a good movie.
But Mr. Katzenberg remains confidant in his lunacy on the subject, claiming that from 2009 onwards
“consumers will own their own 3-D glasses in the same way they have sunglasses for going outside.”
For more on this see the New York Times article.
Yeah, Katzenburg is totally on drugs if he thinks people are going to own 3D glasses and bring them with.
I’m not sure I really see 3D ever working very well. The main problem I’ve noticed in the few shitty 3D films I’ve seen –– some dodgy Michael Jackson vid and a ultra-lame IMAX film about space* — is that the perspective you get in a 3D film isn’t human perspective; rather it’s camera perspective and so the balance of focus and one’s general frame of reference gets screwed up. Plus it’s still only captured from a single angle so when you move your head a little the viewpoint doesn’t change at all, which just makes it feels stupid.
* To anyone planning to make space movies in 3D. Stars (unless you’re standing right next to one) are far too far away to be viewed with perspective. Making some stars visibly closer than others doesn’t lend itself too realism.
Yep, definitely - I can’t see it being the next big thing really, since it just seems too hard to implement in a way that’s not lame and uneccesary. Until some seamless, virtual-reality cinema technology comes along that actually adds to the experience, I thing 3D’s going to stay a semi-annoying gimmick.
And the stars thing! - I think I’ve seen animation where the stars scroll by in the distance with the paralax effect, so some move faster than others - hmmm….
Discussion