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Why 3D doesn't work and never will.

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Re: Why 3D doesn't work and never will.

#181

Post by roc »

mrtron wrote: post #179
roc wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't get hundreds of millions of people interested in anything unless you design it to appeal to a broad audience. If it was 2D it would have likely sold the same number of tickets, just at a lower per-ticket price. Consider that it's DVD and Blu-Ray sales are commensurate with its box-office gross, with no 3D on offer.

I disagree. If it hadn't been built for 3D with amazing effects it would not have had the hype, people going to watch the movie several times, etc that really pushed it to the next level. You are underestimating the marketing value of the 3D effects. Of course the DVD sales will be great, because it has been on everyones radar for the last year+. 3D effects were a big part of that.

Agree to disagree. The marketing value of 3D effects? How exactly does one market 3D effects when the only displays that can showcase them are in the movie theatres behind clunky glasses?

People saw AVATAR because hundreds of millions were spent on marketing, it had James Cameron's name attached, and it was well liked by popular critics and audiences. 3D was a footnote compared to that attention.

3D effects do no marketing favors for middling or outright-poor movies. The only thing they consistently do, is increase average ticket prices.

Re: Why 3D doesn't work and never will.

#183

Post by [deleted] »

henrikschroder wrote: post #23
gjm11 wrote: post #8

My own prejudices go along with this completely, but ... (Arthur C) Clarke's First Law: "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; when he states that something is impossible, he is probably wrong." ... has turned out to be correct often enough that I wouldn't want to place large bets on this. (Digression: there's an obvious difficulty in assessing Cla…

Except it doesn't apply in this case. He is saying that true 3D, some sort of holographic display would work fine, but the current fake 3D has a lot of problems. It places constraints on the cinematography, and it doesn't always enhance the end result.

[deleted]

Re: Why 3D doesn't work and never will.

#184

Post by [deleted] »

simcop2387 wrote: post #122
GrandMasterBirt wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except there are studies coming out about the harm to developing eyes and such. The point is that we're not meant for 3D. 3D though is a great way theaters try to "add value" to movies forcing us to pay more. Tangled was playing ONLY in 3D in theaters around me xept for like 1 showing. Guess which is the only showing I could take my daughter to. She would throw the glasses off in 15 minutes due to headache an thats t…

This makes me wonder why someone doesn't put out a set of glasses with just clockwise (or counterclockwise, shouldn't matter) polarized filters in them so that both eyes see the same image and you don't get the headache. While it would suck to pay extra and not get it; it would help those that can't get it anyway.

[deleted]

Re: Why 3D doesn't work and never will.

#185

Post by MartinCron »

kragen wrote: post #152

There are some comments here accusing Murch of Luddism, more or less, and attributing his 3-D skepticism to that. It's worth pointing out that after spending his entire career editing film by hand, he was one of the first editors to switch to editing film with Avid; and after being a prominent proponent of Avid, he was the first film editor to edit a major motion picture with Apple's Final Cut Pro, somewhat against t…

Also, this is a good place to mention that his book, In the Blink of an Eye is an essential book for anyone who is interested in film editing, and an enjoyable book for anyone who is interested in watching movies. Fascinating stuff. Brilliant guy.

Note: He's not my father-in-law. I've never met him, just a fan.

Re: Why 3D doesn't work and never will.

#186

Post by ars »

joebananas wrote: post #74
ars wrote: post #15

They said the same thing about "Talkies", and I'll quote from wikipedia: "....the new development was treated with suspicion by many filmmakers and critics, who worried that a focus on dialogue would subvert the unique aesthetic virtues of soundless cinema."

Adding sound didn't mean we had to start listening in an entirely new way hereto unknown to humans.

Actually that's not true. Never before has sound not originated from the actual location of the sound maker.

In this new Talkies all the sound comes from one speaker on the floor and it doesn't sound like it's coming from the actor at all.

Obviously I'm being facetious, but there is no reason to suppose people won't learn to handle cinema 3D.

Re: Why 3D doesn't work and never will.

#187

Post by mrtron »

roc wrote: post #181
mrtron wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. If it hadn't been built for 3D with amazing effects it would not have had the hype, people going to watch the movie several times, etc that really pushed it to the next level. You are underestimating the marketing value of the 3D effects. Of course the DVD sales will be great, because it has been on everyones radar for the last year+. 3D effects were a big part of that.

Agree to disagree. The marketing value of 3D effects? How exactly does one market 3D effects when the only displays that can showcase them are in the movie theatres behind clunky glasses? People saw AVATAR because hundreds of millions were spent on marketing, it had James Cameron's name attached, and it was well liked by popular critics and audiences. 3D was a footnote compared to that attention. 3D effects do no mar…

As many people have posted in this thread - they went to see it just to see how the 3D effects look. It is the mystique behind how realistic the effects are that is such a great marketing tool.

A friend sees the movie and says 'you HAVE to see this in 3D' and it becomes less about the plot, and more about the effects driving them to purchase a ticket.

Re: Why 3D doesn't work and never will.

#188

Post by vacri »

henrikschroder wrote: post #23
gjm11 wrote: post #8

My own prejudices go along with this completely, but ... (Arthur C) Clarke's First Law: "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; when he states that something is impossible, he is probably wrong." ... has turned out to be correct often enough that I wouldn't want to place large bets on this. (Digression: there's an obvious difficulty in assessing Cla…

Except it doesn't apply in this case. He is saying that true 3D, some sort of holographic display would work fine, but the current fake 3D has a lot of problems. It places constraints on the cinematography, and it doesn't always enhance the end result.

Except that it does apply in this case. If your director can keep away from close foreground shots, you don't get this problem. The angles between the eyes and the focusing power of the lens differ minimally once you get several meters away on out to infinity. From several meters to your nose, yes, heaps of variance is required and it would be very hard to do.

This is just Ebert being an idiot and saying "This is my opinion, stated as fact, case closed. I won't enter into any discussion because I might be wrong", just like he said when he declared video games weren't art. It is /profoundly/ unscientific to dismiss something as unfactual simply because you don't like it.

Back in the day, my honours degree was specifically involved in investigating ocular vergence (research jargon as 'angle between the eyes' as opposed to the /action/ of converging), comparing between a collimated image (= light coming to the eye in 'parallel' - from a military helicoptor pilot's HUD) and a real image (= light coming in 'non-parallel') displayed at 3m. At that distance there is already not much difference between focusing or vergence at 3m and at infinity (ie collimated), though discrepancies slightly increase as you move towards the periphery of your vision, though this may have been an artifact of the presentation of the HUD.

I am not an expert in 3D and don't proclaim it to be 'there yet'. I do think that 3D is doable if the director stops the temptation of the 'power' closeup to showoff the 3D. So yeah, I think within constraints, 3D is doable. All film has constraints though, and those constraints are gradually eroded over time - such as night-time filming. Fifty years ago we would have heard Ebert proclaiming that it's impossible to film in natural light at night because film needs a certain amount of light, case closed, yet we've seen some amazing cameras arrive recently that can film at night using natural light.

EDIT: Another example constraint is limiting yourself to a 'viewing box' - you can't turn your head for a full view of the scene in a movie. You're limited to a particular forced view. Despite this rather incredibly limiting constraint, film has managed to do some pretty amazing stuff.

Re: Why 3D doesn't work and never will.

#189

Post by saturn »

dagw wrote: post #76
bambax wrote: post #34

The master quote is this: a good story will give you more dimensionality than you can ever cope with . Don't bother with technology. What "piracy" proves is that people are more than willing to trade quality for convenience. People will put up with crappy image and garbled sound if it means they can watch what they want faster. The movie industry loves technology because technology scales (sort of); but what sells ti…

Avatar kind of disproves your whole thesis. It had neither story nor acting talent worth speaking of, and bucket loads of technology. Yet it sold more tickets than just about any other movie in history. I really wish what you said was true and that filmmakers would focus more on great stories, but box office takes show again and again that flashy effects beat great stories 4 times out of 5.

> It had neither story nor acting talent worth speaking of

Oh come on. Avatar may not have been the greatest story ever conceived by the minds of men but it was entertaining, thought provoking and the whole imagined world was a kind of story in itself.

Now if we were talking about Transformers 2, then I would agree ..

Re: Why 3D doesn't work and never will.

#190

Post by joe_the_user »

Hmm,

It is interesting to think that perhaps we're technologically approaching something like a _boundary_, a point past-which the synthetic simulation of sensory experiences cannot be taken-in merely as entertainment but rather has strong physiological effects.

Consider the effects of effects of Ultra-High Resolution Video: "The footage was later projected on a 4 x 7 metre screen for public demonstration and the public were astonished. As the visual effect of the footage travelling down a road was so realistic, some viewers even experienced nausea as a side effect of seeing ultra realistic motion, but not physically feeling the motion. It's like the opposite of seasickness where you can feel movement, but cannot see it while in an enclosed section."

http://forum.doom9.org/archive/index.php/t-62376.html

I think that implies that at the very least, the producers of the most advanced sensory-simulations are going to be somewhat constrained in what they can produce, the opposite of what one thinks of in considering the freedom of film...

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