There were complaints about nausea from Cloverfield's filming technique, despite this technique being used many times before without nearly as much camera control (Blare Witch project had some awful shaky scenes far worse than Cloverfield).
I don't buy any of these articles. Yes some people won't respond well to 3D, but the vast majority does and has in every implementation. This is as absurd as saying when the Model T was released, that because of a minority of the population having motion sickness that the automobile is destined to fail.
I don't know a single person who has a problem with 3D. Well technically that's a lie, I know someone who's blind in one eye, so with the glasses they're just watching an over expensive 2D movie and without they're just watching a very fuzzy movie.
I think Murch/Ebert are implicitly drawing a distinction between 3D being something people can watch without having a physical response and 3D as a viable technique for making movies. I understood the argument to be twofold. Firstly, even if you don't get headaches, your brain is still working overtime, which makes your movie-watching experience less pleasurable than it would be if you were watching a true holographic movie. Secondly, because of the way the brain processes images and the illusion created by 3D movies, the technique limits the genre because one cannot use edits that are very rapid or have shots with a lot of horizontal movement.
Whether that amounts to "not working" is perhaps up for discussion, but I think they have a point that the problems with 3D extend far beyond the fact that some people have adverse physiological reactions while watching.
I, and a bunch of my friends get headaches with 3D movies. Avatar included. The difference with the Model T is that people were willing to bear out neasea for the massive convenience a car brought. Blue aliens are less compelling.
It's not out of the question. When I was very young my eyesight was good enough to develop depth perception, but since then my eyes have gone a bit nearsighted. It's not so bad I wear glasses, but it's bad enough that I don't have reliable parallax-based depth perception. I recently went to see the Tron movie in 3D as an experiment, but I wasn't sure I'd even get depth perception in it.
In fact I did, and I also can't say that it bothered me any more than a normal movie. I think that's because I didn't have the conflict the other people are talking about because my brain stopped rigidly expecting depth perception a while ago. But you can't build the 3D market on people like me.
This letter is from Walter Murch, seen at left, the most respected film editor and sound designer in the modern cinema.
I'd hate to be introduced like that.
That said, his points make sense. I don't get a headache from watching 3D movies but it does cause extra strain. It's more tiring than watching a normal movie. I have no intention of buying a 3D TV at any point in the future, and though I'll go to a 3D cinema for the different experience, if the movie is the right kind for 3D (e.g. Avatar), I certainly don't see it as a revolutionary new technology.
Another argument I heard against 3D movies is that apparently our brains use all sorts of cues (about 20, I think) other than differences between what the eyes see, in order to make us see things as 3D (which is why, among other things, the world doesn't suddenly look 2-dimensional if you cover one eye). 3D movies provide only one of those cues, and so naturally causes a strange feeling because the other 19 cues are missing.
Another nail in the coffin of 3DTV: It's been out for years and I don't know a single person who has bought one.
>Another argument I heard against 3D movies is that apparently our brains use all sorts of cues (about 20, I think) other than differences between what the eyes see, in order to make us see things as 3D... 3D movies provide only one of those cues, and so naturally causes a strange feeling because the other 19 cues are missing.
Many of the cues you're referring to are already present in 3d and 2d movies. They're things like focus, texture, "what's covering what", how quickly something moves relative to the viewer, etc.
I find it odd that you should name Avatar as a movie appropriate to see in 3D. I find that Avatar had a ton of the problems that Walter Murch was talking about. It gave me a massive headache because often times the focus wasn't where I wanted it to be.
Tron on the other hand, generally didn't have this problem, there was huge depth of field throughout, and generally nothing too straining.
I have a degenerative eye condition (keratoconus) which affects one eye more severely than the other, this makes me hesitant to pay extra to watch a film in 3D. I've actually not watched any under the fear that I'd have to walk out of a film that my friends are enjoying.
I might head down to an electronics store and give on the 3D televisions a try, that way I'll know if my condition will negatively affect the experience as much as I expect.
I have keratoconus as well and haven’t had any problems, but then I’m guessing mine isn’t as bad as your: my glasses correct my sight well enough that it’s fine to just wear the cinema-supplied glasses over the top.
I've been going back and forth trying different types of contact lenses for about a year now. The best I've had so far can only be described as a minor improvement.
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 Clarke's First Law. When someone says something is impossible and is wrong, we can tell because, lo, someone else does it. But when someone says something is impossible and is right, we'll never really know for sure; the most we can say is that no one has done it yet. So: time travel? teleportation? faster than light travel? Plenty of eminent (and in some cases elderly) scientists have said, and doubtless will continue to say, that these things are impossible; for all we know they really are; but even if they are we'll never know for sure that Clarke's First Law is wrong for them.)
[EDITED in response to two comments: If the claim is "3D done just like it is now will never work" then I agree that CFL isn't very relevant. If it's "3D movies will never work", which is what I think "3D doesn't work and never will" ought to mean, then I think CFL applies. So maybe I'm really only criticizing Ebert and not Murch, who does embed into his comments the sentence 'Nothing will fix it short of producing true "holographic" images.'. I do wonder whether the quotes around "holographic" are trying to define it to mean "anything that fixes this problem" rather than strictly "something close to full-wavefront reconstruction using coherent light", in which case I guess he's right by definition and therefore vacuously. I would certainly not want to bet that actual literal holograms are the only way to solve the problem.]
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.
But the title states it will never work. But I think over time the software will enhance. So editing 3D movies will be just as easy as 2D movies.
The part about focus of the eye is much more difficult to overcome. I think it has to do with resolution. And maybe a movie with a resolution of let's say 16.000 x 9.000 will give a better result because your eye can focus on details just like in real life.
Except that Clarke was referring to technology problems. I agree that with enough time, will, research, money etc many technical problems can be solved that were thought impossible.
But constraints of human beings don't change much. If our brains are not wired to really get the current 3D format, then I think that is a pretty good indictment of the technology. The post isn't saying 3D movies won't exist someday, it is saying the current 3D can't work well because of a limitation in the human mind.
It's not just the viewers mind, it's the film editor's as well. Murch says, "Consequently, the editing of 3D films cannot be as rapid as for 2D films, because of this shifting of convergence." OK, so 3d films have to be edited differently - since when have constraints been an issue in art?
But more importantly, the 600 million years of evolution argument doesn't hold the water he is putting in it. 600 million years of evolution did not prepare humans for traveling at 60 mph (much less controlling two tons of steel and insuring the safety of their children, while doing so), nor did it prepare humans for sitting in front of a bright light pecking at keyboards for hours and hours on end.
Focusing on one point while converging on another may require practice, but so does operating an RC car. But the fact that a broad swath of the population can readily do it the very first time, speaks against it.
Essentially, the case against 3d movies is an appeal to authority, and the article is really a rejection of the art form (3d is the rap music which is replacing their beloved rock and roll). That's not to say that there isn't a lot of schlock 3d - who really expected Green Hornet to be great cinema? - only that there is nothing inherently wrong with the medium.
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 the end of the movie for her. Was that worth an extra 10 bucks a ticket?
Like any new tech, makers want to convince us this tech is the way to go. So study more, and give us the old school alternatives.
neither tv nor quick travel require eyes to focus on one point and converge on a completely different one.
IOW, 3D movies induce eyesore and headaches, and there are plenty of people who experience that, myself included. could that hurt developing eyesight? no idea, but i can imagine why it could.
I would be more concerned about the long term effects of the social coding portrayed in Tangled (e.g. verbal interactions, body image and gender stereotypes) than theoretical physiological effects.
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.
Would it work to take two pairs home and create a personal set of glasses for people who can't stand the 3d effect?
Where I watched Green Hornet (very funny movie if you don't expect to see a Coen brothers film, I think) the glasses were cheap plastic and you could take them home. I actually have two sets, maybe I'll give it a try :D
This is a great point. Theaters are pushing 3D because it means more money for them. Apparently Avatar was amazing in 3D, and theaters used that fact to make a lot of money off of underwhelming 3D experiences.
I saw Tron in 3D and suffered very mild side effects -- facial tension and a headache that went away after a few glasses of wine. The 3D effects weren't enough to make even those mild side effects worth it. I'm not even sure the 3D effects were a net plus for the experience without considering the side effects. Add a 40% premium on the ticket price, and it was a great deal for the theater and a lousy deal for me.
Until the technology changes fundamentally, I'm starting to think 3D movies are like heroin: we'll see a periodic resurgence and decline as the lessons fade away with one generation and are relearned by the next.
For me, 3D in Tron was either very subtle, or when noticeable was a little jarring. Not sure it was worth the hassle of wearing glasses over the tops of my glasses, to be honest. By contrast, the 3D in Avatar was noticeable and well executed.
> 600 million years of evolution did not prepare humans for traveling at 60 mph (much less controlling two tons of steel and insuring the safety of their children, while doing so), nor did it prepare humans for sitting in front of a bright light pecking at keyboards for hours and hours on end.
That last bit could be used to support Murch's argument, if the articles I've seen on HN about ergonomic chairs and sitting versus standing are any indication.
The point is that we easily can sit in chairs staring at bright lights for hours on end. In so far as Murch's argument goes, arguing that we shouldn't for health reasons throws the baby out with the bathwater. Getting people to sit for hours staring at bright lights is his business and life's work.
"> 600 million years of evolution did not prepare humans for traveling at 60 mph (much less controlling two tons of steel and insuring the safety of their children, while doing so), nor did it prepare humans for sitting in front of a bright light pecking at keyboards for hours and hours on end."
This argument is missing the point. True, evolution didn't prepare us to drive cars, however it did prepare us to spend long periods of time focusing on objects at fixed distances and then changing our focus on the ~hundreds of milliseconds timescale. It also evolved us to allow independent movement of limbs during this process, essentially what driving a car is. This same argument could be applied to typing at a computer (without the need to change focus very quickly).
I think the point is that cinema in 3D forces us to change the location of our focus very rapidly (much faster than hundreds of milliseconds) for long periods of time, something that we are not equipped to do. For a physical activity like sitting our muscles are malleable enough to adjust to a sedate lifestyle, but to increase the speed and duration of rapid eye focusing would most likely require rewiring the brain. Perhaps if we were raised in this pseudo-3D realm our brain could adjust, but adults brains aren't wired to change like our muscles are.
>600 million years of evolution did not prepare humans for traveling at 60 mph (much less controlling two tons of steel and insuring the safety of their children, while doing so),
This is irrelevant. It didn't provide any limitation on them doing so either, whereas in the 3D case, it did.
> nor did it prepare humans for sitting in front of a bright light pecking at keyboards for hours and hours on end.
Hence obesity, bone problems, cardiac problems et al. Are you seriously putting this argument forward? Every doctor in the country warns AGAINST "sitting in front of a bright light pecking at keyboards for hours and hours on end" for health reasons.
Tracking relative motion at 60 mph isn't really an exotic skill. A good Little League pitcher can throw a baseball 60 mph, and dodging rocks thrown by children seems like a low bar for survival. I imagine spears can travel that fast. The tip of a club could reach that speed, and arrows travel much faster. A cheetah can travel faster than 60 mph, and while cheetahs are a special case, there are many animals that can run faster than 40 mph, and it isn't necessarily fundamentally different for faculties that evolved for 45 mph to work at 60 mph. As for reaction times, the quickness required to dodge a punch, or the hooves of an elk kicking while it is being taken down, is more than adequate to drive at 60 mph. Even so, we find it unsafe to drive 60 mph except in an environment that has been engineered to be especially undemanding on our reaction times.
Human beings are technology too, albeit very complicated technology. Another quote from Douglas Adams[1] sums up humans as machines quite well: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"
Altering and improving human beings is not undoable, it's simply a hard engineering problem. The technological improvement of human eyes started out with glasses, then contact lenses, then laser operations and eye surgery. There's no reason to believe we won't eventually overcome the problems stated in the article by clever engineering of the eyes and brain.
[1]As Bellaire pointed out below, the quote is from Arthur C. Clarke and not Douglas Adams.
Surely 3d only makes any sense if you can move around the environment - a holo-deck.
3d movies, where we're all sat down in a fixed chair makes absolutely no sense. It's a gimmick that adds nothing - apart from headaches, crappy dark image and occasional crude "THIS IS 3D" in your face 'effects'. Sitting in a chair looking at a screen we already see 3D. We have all the cues necessary for our brains to reconstruct the scene.
Didn't work in the 50s, didn't work in the 80s, didn't work in 2010s. I guess every generation has some people who think it's a great idea to try it again.
Hah! You wish. For example, Avatar made more than $2,000,000,000. That's $2 billion. And a huge part of the Avatar revenue comes from its 3D sales. Maybe it didn't work for you, but it sure worked for most people who went to see it.
But given a choice, would moviegoers pick the 2D version over the 3D version?
In a universe where Avatar 3D never existed, would the 2D version alone have sold as much? Remember, they would have also been able to deliver the movie earlier (I don't know how much, but making a 3D movie can't be free - at least not yet).
I'm reasonably certain that there are only a very small number of people who saw Avatar for the sole reason of it being 3D (in other words, if the 2D version was the only option, they would have skipped it).
I don't know anybody who went to see Avatar because they thought it would be a good movie. I also don't know anybody who went to see the 2D version, despite it playing at the same time and a few bucks cheaper. Everybody went because they wanted to see what could be done with the cutting edge in CGI technology plus insane amounts of money and to see what this 3D cinema thing was all about. I have as little evidence as you do, but I imagine that skipping the 3D version wouldn't have gotten the film anywhere near as much hype (and thus money).
This is certainly the reason I went to see it. However, not only was I underwhelmed by the regurgitation of the Pocahontas story, I was extremely underwhelmed by the 3D. The only effect that made me think the film was "realistic" was the flies that kept flying around when they were in the forrest.
Avatar did exactly the opposite of what intended to do and that is, it turned me off of 3D movies not on to them. Sure, it made the money it did, but at least for me, it didn't do anything to advance the technology nor promote it.
Yea, that was the exact same effect Avatar had on me. I'm really glad I saw it 3D and now feel no desire to see another movie in 3D for at least a couple years (when hopefully some new neat tech has come along which I'll feel compelled to check out).
Go to a real IMAX theater and watch a real IMAX movie. They tend to be science documentaries, like Hubble 3D. Compared to that, Avatar just seemed fuzzy and out of focus to me.
I chose the 2D version. My girlfriend and I will pick the 2D version of any movie over the 3D, and won't go to see movies that are only showing in 3D at all. Even if they were the same price, the illusion does not work well for us and makes the experience less enjoyable.
After having seen Avatar in 3D, I felt no need to see it in 3D again and I totally agree that I'm not going to any more 3D movies until the next significant tech improvement occurs. The same is true for most people I know. However we had to go see Avatar in 3D to come to that conclusion.
I will always try and see the 2D version of any film, but here in the UK at the moment the 2D versions don't show at as many screens or times as the 3D one.
I definitely saw Avatar a second time only because of the 3D. Additionally, last weekend I wanted to see a movie in the theaters and picked Tron: Resurrection or whatever it's called solely because of the 3D.
It wasn't the kind of "great movie" that critics and peers will recommend years down the line as essential viewing or thought provoking, but it was the kind of "great movie" that people would recommend to their friends for an entertaining "going to the movies with popcorn and friends" experience. The plot was thin, but the visuals and action were great entertainment, as shown by the revenue.
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.
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.
I don't think so -- I saw it only because I was curious how the 3D effects were. I would not have seen it if it were only available in 2D. Same goes for the people I was with and many I've talked to.
You can't show the 3D in marketing, but you can (and they did) highlight the concept of it. It's like all those ads on TV about fancy TV screens with superior image quality -- they obviously don't show you the screen itself.
I've had this discussion with many people. I enjoyed the movie for it's technical merits, not the plot.
I saw both versions.
I don't get hte "3d headache" - but I definitely enjoyed the 2d version more. THere was more detail to focus on, and in tha tmovie, detail was everything. With the 3d version, I found myself trying to look at things in the foreground/background, and I just couldn't - not becuuse of any defect in my ability to manipulate my eyes, but because (I think...) they actually used differnet depth of field settings when rendering the 2 versions.. there were things in the 3d version you literally COULDNT focus on - they wanted your eyes on the action only. That buged me.
- I remember playing 3d Quake (the original) on my crappy home monitor, with LCD shutter glasses - and it was AWESOME FUN. SCARY.
So I think all the points in the article are valid, 3d is hard, for more reasons than joe average might know, I certainly learned some stuff - but it's definitely a aprt of the future, if only because our current equipment makes it technically easy to play back.
Which is more likely, that 3D makes no sense to most people, or that you're one of the few which has problems watching 3D movies? I do know a few friends which thought Avatar 3D was "nothing special", but most of us thought it was great in 3D, easily worth the reduced light.
I agree that a lot of bad 3D movies are put out there now, and I think the current hype will fade. But I have no doubt that the technology has advanced far enough that 3D is here to stay this time.
Here's one way to solve it: include in the glasses dynamic focusing. We're already wearing glasses.
I'm not sure how it would work, but the idea is to change the dioptry to the inverse of the distance of what's supposedly on the screen, so that our eyes need to focus at the same distance as the converging, effectively nullifying the inverse focus.
It is not. The eyes need to focus on the cinema screen, this has nothing to do with the camera. The problem is that the eyes need to keep the focus at the same distance, while the converging changes distance.
You can see how James Cameron paid careful attention to depth of field in Avatar. If the foreground or background are blurry in a 3D film it seems to cause confusion as you can't focus on these things even though, given it's 3D, you might think you should be able to.
It's theoretically possible to produce some kind of hologram-like 3D that would side-step this problem.
Why not respond to those comments in child comments rather than in the parent? Surely that makes the most sense? It's very difficult to read a discussion where I have to read responses to comments I haven't read yet.
Because those comments made me realise that what I originally wrote was (1) not quite right and (2) not perfectly clear. The extra paragraph I added, so far as I can tell, makes just as much sense if you haven't read those comments; I just wanted to acknowledge that it was other people's comments that led me to add it.
Given the choice between a discussion where some bits have been clarified in the light of later comments, and a discussion where some bits are needlessly confusing or wrong, I choose the former.
(I might take a different view if there had been lots of replies, which might have been invalidated as as result of the edit. But there weren't; just those two.)
Ebert's a bit of a crotchety Luddite clinging to the old ways. This rant, coupled with his diatribe last year about how "video games can never be art"...
As much as I hate the recent spate of 3D movies, I don't think it has anything to do with the technology, but more about how poorly it is applied. I say this because Avatar, at least for me, was simply mind-blowing; it was easily the most immersive film I've ever watched, but mainly because the 3D was done tastefully, subtly, and with care. You can give me as much hand-waving sudo-science to try to convince me I'm not supposed to have liked it, but it won't change my mind; Avatar in 3D literally brought tears to my eyes.
What is generally known as 3D gaming is completely different from 3D movies. 3D games are still projected onto the 2D plane of your monitor or TV (though a couple of "3D" 3D games have been released recently, and the 3DS is coming out soon) -- 3D movies aim to provide your brain a 3D illusion.
True, but I'm referring to "3D" 3D. Wearing glasses. I only played a couple at CES last year (2010) and was blown away. There's also the Vuzix which are a little bulky, but again pretty amazing w/ games.
Well, you were referring to games from the early '00s, which didn't have "3D" 3D. (God, that's awful. Anyone know of a better way to express that?) In any case, it remains to be seen how accepted "3D" 3D gaming is by the public.
Ahh no, all I was stating about the early 2000s is that I think it was around then (2004 or earlier) when video games surpassed hollywood in revenue. Since new technology like 3D applies to both of these markets, why does everyone seem so focused on the smaller of the two (movies) instead of where the real money is (games). Declaring a technology dead because it doesn't work for movies (I'm not convinced of that) is silly because it ignores the larger relevant market of video games. The technology is certainly not dead even if we never saw another 3D movie.
Wait, how are they different? All the 3D effects I know of are still the same thing as movies, in that your eyes must always focus on the same distance. With the 3DS, for instance, while the underlying technology is different still consists of your eyes focusing on the same flat surface in your hands, and tricking your eyes with two separate views. Same focus vs. convergence issues as mentioned in the article.
Yes, 3DS and "3D" 3D games have the same problems as 3D movies. What I was saying was that what is generally meant by 3D gaming (3D games projected on a 2D plane, with no intention to create an illusion) doesn't.
Immersion, entertainment value, coolness factor and marketability aren't really the criteria Ebert was taking into account in his article on video games as art, nor in his criticisms of 3D cinema. He's also not denigrating games as being lousy just because they're not art.
When I finish my tab-completion script for the science command we're gonna have green energy, space elevators and jetpacks by the end of the week dude.
Yeah, because people who spend their careers thinking about waveform dispersion, destructive/constructive interference patterns and the effect of microsecond-level sensory input timing on human spatial perception would never have anything relevant to say about 3D.
The only fundamental difference is one of wavelength.
I just want to point out that immersion is not really a good criteria of good cinema. It can be used effectively, but many of the greatest films take strides to be as non-immersive as possible, using things like distancing techniques. Many films want you to be aware that you're watching a film. Immersion is not obviously or inherently a good thing.
when the first steam powered trains were introduced in the late 19th century, many passengers became sick as well - because they nor any generation before has ever travelled so fast before. nowadays everybody rides the trains.
if your brain is frequently exposed to 3d films, couldnt it get used to processing that kind of imagery? so as time passes by more and more people go to the movies without a headache?
Our bodies and brains have a remarkable ability to adapt to particular contexts. This effect is so strong, heroin users can accidentally overdose because their bodies' tolerance can be stronger in a particular location.
I think people will be able to adapt to 3D. Whether they will want to has to do with artistry and not a new technology as a gimmick.
Many people still get motion sick in cars, on boats, and on airplanes. We just don't hear about it as much anymore. That doesn't mean the problem has gone away.
What's the practicality of switching back to horses? It's prohibitively expensive to do so because using horses as a form of transportation is just not supported by the modern market.
I say this as someone who suffers from motion sickness, yet who rides in planes and buses. There simply aren't any reasonably easy alternatives.
Actually it has improved because people acclimatize. If you're prone to motion sickness in a car, but are regularly in cars, you become less prone to motion sickness. Spend a long time not in motorized transport, and you're prone again.
I discovered this the hard way. I'm prone to motion sickness, and after I'd lived in NYC for a number of years it was unpleasant for me to transition back to being in a car. But now driving doesn't bother me any more.
Nintendo, along with their imminent release of the 3ds, has issued warning to not let kids use their product too often because it could interfere with the development of their brains. So yes, you probably can get used to this sort of imagery, but do you want to? I doubt it.
This article could have done without all the pumping up of the authority that Roger was appealing to. Just make your case, big guy.
Having said that, I agree, with one catch. Here's the thing: we currently don't have 3-D movies.
We have this fake 2-plane deal put on with funky glasses. That's why the cineamtographers can screw around with your eyes so much like the letter writer explains.
I want 3-D. True 3-D. Not some hacked up fake 3-D. True 3-D would consist of a large, rotating drum in the middle of my living room, approximately 6 or 7 feet tall, and several feet wide. Images would display as three-dimensional objects, viewable from all angles.
Big? Cumbersome? Impractical? Probably. But at least it's a true 3-D experience. When a couple of actors appeared and started talking, it would literally appear as if they were in the same room as you. Directors couldn't have arrows poke out at your eyes or any of that other silly nonsense that they seem to not be able to refrain from doing with the current tech.
The current hacky stuff that passes for 3-D is broken and won't be fixed, this much is true. It remains to be seen whether or not this tech finds a niche in games or specialty cinema, though. It's also an open question as to the future of real 3-D. I'm not so crazy about having the terms all mixed up, because the really cool stuff is coming later.
games and porn, not movies, will drive real 3d.
i also think it's much more likely to be in the style of augmented reality (glasses or contacts) than a stationary projector.
> True 3-D would consist of a large, rotating drum in the middle of my living room, approximately 6 or 7 feet tall, and several feet wide. Images would display as three-dimensional objects, viewable from all angles.
I think you could take an existing OLED display and do this right now... you'd just have to write the software. In fact, you could probably do a neat small scale proof of concept by disassembling an Android phone and mounting it on a record player. :)
> I want 3-D. True 3-D. Not some hacked up fake 3-D. True 3-D would consist of a large, rotating drum in the middle of my living room, approximately 6 or 7 feet tall, and several feet wide. Images would display as three-dimensional objects, viewable from all angles.
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."
To be fair, they of course were right. There are unique aesthetic values in silent film, and adding dialogue does do away with them (otherwise they wouldn't be unique values). They simply discovered that people consider it a worthwhile tradeoff.
Absolutely -- and the same applies to color photography. There are still good reasons for shooting in black & white. Color film may be more easily engaging as the images are more familiar, but it is not inherently better aesthetically.
Most films don't use the 3d well though. It's like if sound was added, but instead of using it give viewers dialogue with inflection, directors mostly used it to add in wacky sound effects for slapstick comedy. However, the fact that it's generally abused now doesn't mean it won't be used well later.
You're conflating a lot of issues here. This "If you can notice it, it distracts…" is a lot like the objections to talkie cinema. 3D you can notice isn't inherently any more distracting than any other element of the feature, including sound, color and texture. But equating "noticeable 3D effects" with "crappy pseudo-3D" is not valid.
Sure it is - it can enhance immersion. Imagine being able to control scent in a movie, so that you get the smell of the scene. If done badly, yes, it can overpower the experience of the film, but done well, it would significantly enhance the immersion of a film, despite "not noticing it"/not specifically drawing your attention.
I watched Toy Story in 3D (with the kids! :) ) and I kept forgetting it was in 3D... I just kinda tuned it out to it, I don't know how to explain it. The 3D aspect was a complete waste after about 5/10 minutes of novelty. Like Murch says, make the atmosphere involving and don't worry about adding frills - if it's good enough, and we'll immerse ourselves without any tech help.
Don't know, everybody seems to bash 3D these days. When I watched Avatar I thought it was pretty awesome and didn't get any headaches either. Maybe it's no good having a 3D TV at home and expose ourselves constantly to fake 3D every day, but watching a movie every now and then in the cinema can't be that bad.
Edit: Also, all these people are just speculating, there's no science backing up any pro or anti 3D claims. I would be careful giving Nintendo 3DS's to small children, that are still developing vision, but as I said I don't think watching a 3D movie every now and then is a bad thing if you enjoy doing so.
Did you even read the article? He's not speculating, he's talking about how human vision works, and how the current 3D technology is more difficult for us humans to process, and he's talking about how the current 3D technology places limitations on the cinematography that 2D movies don't suffer from. Those are big obstacles that make current 3D movies a worse experience. Whether the 3D itself makes up for it is subjective though.
No offense to sound engineers, but Murch is not the foremost authority on the brain, the eyes, and whatever else goes into our processing of 3D. Further he hasn't offered any sort of proof, merely conjecture about why he thinks 3D should get off his lawn.
Sure, the current technology has some weaknesses, but as others have said, many found it awfully compelling in Avatar (many good reviews, and $2B in revenue).
I kept thinking this while reading the article, and I'm not sure why nobody else has posted this yet. I am not a fan of "3D" as it exists in it's most recent film form, but this is not a particularly well argued and supported indictment of 3D.
I think your comment should be directly in response to the article.
Yes, and while he's right that the 3D effect is not synchronized with the focus distance, saying that's bad for your vision, causes the brain to work more or even causes headaches is pure speculation.
My problem with 3D is simply that I find I can't disappear into the movie. I'm steadily aware of myself sitting and watching the 3D effects, which ruins the experience.
I didn't get this feeling at all with How to Train your Dragon - I thought the 3D was really pretty charming in that movie (just like, you know, everything else about it).
to add my two cents into this. This is my issue with 3D movies. I find it very distracting.
A good for instance is that I recently saw Green Hornet in 3D -- not by choice entirely, since they weren't showing a 2D version. As an example, in one scene, they were panning to a person talking who was sitting behind a desk. The pencil holder was in 3D of course. I was very aware of the pencil holder as a result. But the pencil holder was irrelevant to the scene, but that's all I was looking at.
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 tickets are story and talent.
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.
Good cinema shouldn't be reduced to merely storytelling. The aesthetics are an enormous part of it, and there is plenty of content in form itself. In fact the story itself can be largely irrelevant in a great film -- see Bela Tarr, for one -- although some amount of it is usually necessary as a base.
Nor is acting talent particularly necessary either, if handled right. Some of my favorite directors restrain their actors, even great ones, from acting at all (e.g. any Bresson, or Pasolini's Teorema) or they use non-actors to great effect (e.g. Fellini, and Pasolini again with things like Decameron).
You do have a point about flashy technology though.
Avatar is a counter-example, yes. But I would argue that in this case the main story was technology itself -- in a non-scalable way: the uniqueness of a technology leap.
Incorporating 3D in every single movie just because Avatar was a huge hit would have been like shooting only sinking ships after Titanic.
> 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 ..
Thanks for the opinion about Tron. I missed seeing it early, and now the only places showing it near me are in 3D. I was wondering if it'd be worth it. Now I'll just wait for the DVD.
Actually I thought the story was pretty good, though it had a couple of holes in it (of the "cut scene" type, not the "bad plot hole" type). It stunned me in that it actually grappled with the consequences of the digitization process in some detail, rather than just blindly reveling in it. It was some decent sci-fi. Consequently it flew above just about everyone's head, especially if you went in with the preconception that it would have no story. (I liked it -> the series is doomed. QED.)
It may help to realize that this is a parallel universe to ours and the way their computers appear to work is that they really are an interface to the world of Tron, which is subordinate to the conventional universe but by all appearances is every bit as real. Thus, Clu's plan is not a violation of the conservation of mass, because it's all working differently here. It's much more a 1960s/1970s-style scifi rather than an "ultra-realistic 2010 scifi" (ahem), but within those bounds I was actually pleasantly surprised. Not that it will ever amount to anything but in the back of my head I've actually been working out the physics of Tron, which could be really cool for a 2020-era MMORPG (would take too much processing power to be feasible today), and there's actually enough consistency (perhaps surprisingly) that it's not all in vain; there's different rules, but there are some rules.
Doesn't this assume you don't know the focal plane? If you know what the viewer is focusing on, you can compensate. This means that without any holographic projection techniques, you could fully solve this problem by presenting each viewer with images customized to his detected focus. That might require an expensive headset today, which radically changes the economics of 3D movies, but it doesn't require a breakthrough in science.
In fact, it'd probably be safe to just assume that the user is focused on the primary element in the scene. Unfortunately, in a theater, you probably can't compensate for focus in a way that works for all of the audience, so this doesn't solve much.
Not a bad idea. You could do it with one person in the theater, but you can take it one step further.
Have a camera facing the eye that can tell what the person is focusing on. (High end video cameras already have this.)
Have an adaptive lense in the glasses to vary rapidly change the focal plane from where they eye things it is to the screen. You then build software that blurs the image outside of their focal plane. Granted there are limits on this aproach, but people get used to glasses that have a fixed shift in the focal plain fairly quickly so it should be possible.
Now I don't see how you could extrapilate that to a theater full of people, but you can build a system that works for 1 person.
> Have a camera facing the eye that can tell what the person is focusing on.
Sorry I was a bit terse, but that's what I meant by "detected focus."
> You then build software that blurs the image outside of their focal plane.
That's not it exactly. The problem you're trying to solve is that, when the viewer is focused at one depth but is viewing a flat image at another depth, it will already appear blurry to him. You can't fix that with extra blurring. The fix is to distort the original image, much like corrective lenses.
And BTW, I suspect that you can't perform this correction for even a single viewer in the audience unless you're tracking his location and orientation.
Skip the screen and go with VR glasses? Then the projectors are at a fixed distance from the eyes, and you can (in theory) go wild applying individual corrections for everyone, up to and including correcting for individual focus.
"Have an adaptive lense in the glasses to vary rapidly change the focal plane"
AKA their eyes focus on 50', and the screen is at 100’. But the glasses change that to 100' and the software shows a clear images for 50' with the correct amount of blur for stuff outside of that range. You still need to double the frame rate etc for the 3d effect, but you can alter things so brain is less confused.
The idea is without the bluring the full immage is in focus regardless of what the users eye tryes to focus on 5' or 500' the screen is still in focus. This would work ok, but by bluring part of the immage you get an even closer simulation of the real world.
Not as I understand it. I think you're conflating two issues. What you're talking about deals with the issue of looking at different elements of the scene and bringing each one to clarity as you look at it.
The second, larger issue, is the physiological contraction of muscles each eye individually must do to focus at a given distance. Try this: cover one eye and look at a held up finger with the other eye. Notice the background is blurry. Now make the background clear and you'll notice your finger is blurry.
The eye adjusts its shape to focus on different distances. This is independent of the two eyes working together and seeing different images which the brain later merges into a 3D scene.
The issue with all the current 3D technologies I know about is the image, ultimately, is always on some screen at a fixed distance. You can give each eye separate images, you can track where the eye is looking and modify what image is seen, but in the end, the eye muscles are always contorting the eye to see that plane 80' away clearly.
You're right. It's not just a still image that needs to be corrected - it's the whole volume of light that needs to be distorted (the eye is not a pinhole camera). But I still think it's doable - isn't that what corrective lenses do?
You know, I think a hidden point in all this is that fundamentally, part of what movies do is try and control the audience's attention. It's the entire point behind carefully choosing camera angles and focus in the first place. The movie-maker is trying to inform the audience: "These are the people you should be listening to, this person's reaction is what matters, this object is significant to the plot..."
If you can't control focus, then you are presented with a much larger scene. You (the viewer) would be choosing who and what to pay attention to, removing control from the film maker, and unless this additional degree of freedom is compensated for, the experience would go down. The way you tell the story as a result would change dramatically. You can't just tag on "3D version available!" to a movie and expect it to work, it requires a different way of telling a story.
Interesting that convergence V focus is the problem. That's the same thing that random-dot stereograms have, although it's worth there as you have no cue as to the right convergence depth.
Uh, one of the projects the lab I was in was working on was the True3D display: http://www.hitl.washington.edu/projects/true3d/ which handled both accommodation and vergence. This research is almost 8 years old at this point and I don't know the exact progress on it but there are people who are working on it and it is possible to overcome.
So the claim (which sounds reasonable) is that there is a mismatch between the plane on which each eye is focused and the convergence angle between the eyes and we are unaccustomed to this in real life.
Why doesn't this also cause discomfort in a conventional 2D movie in which the focal plane and the convergence angle stay the same (both at the screen plane) but our brains expect the convergence angle to change as items from different distances in the movie image come into focus in the movie?
I've greatly enjoyed some 3-D movies. My impression is that the current systems do better when the dynamic range in value isn't very strong. "Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs" tried to do all sorts of transmitted light effects that are tempting but don't quite work. Other films, like Avatar, Tangled, Tron, and the 3-d conversions of Toy Story 1+2 and work a lot better.
Last weekend I was playing with some 3-D glasses, black paper and colored pencils, trying to draw stereoscopic images by hand. The first thing I realized is that you've really got to get conventional perspective right... It has to tell a consistent story or your brain is going to really rebel.
I have a problem with 3d in that my eyes never converge, period. I have keratoconus and have had surgery in my left eye, the end result of which is that my eyes have different vision levels, the left being much better than the right. My right eye drifts off a bit (lazy eye) and I focus with my left (better) eye.
Great read. I agree with less immersion in 3D films.
I saw Pixar's "Up" in 3D. Such a touching story.
But at the sad scenes, when my eyes started to water up, I became super conscious of the fact that I had silly oversized glasses on my face, and it ruined the moment.
Watching the Blu-ray, in the comfort of my own home, I'm bawling like a baby.
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[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 290 ms ] threadAlso, regarding: "Nothing will fix it short of producing true "holographic" images." See: http://www.holografika.com/
I don't buy any of these articles. Yes some people won't respond well to 3D, but the vast majority does and has in every implementation. This is as absurd as saying when the Model T was released, that because of a minority of the population having motion sickness that the automobile is destined to fail.
I don't know a single person who has a problem with 3D. Well technically that's a lie, I know someone who's blind in one eye, so with the glasses they're just watching an over expensive 2D movie and without they're just watching a very fuzzy movie.
Whether that amounts to "not working" is perhaps up for discussion, but I think they have a point that the problems with 3D extend far beyond the fact that some people have adverse physiological reactions while watching.
It's not out of the question. When I was very young my eyesight was good enough to develop depth perception, but since then my eyes have gone a bit nearsighted. It's not so bad I wear glasses, but it's bad enough that I don't have reliable parallax-based depth perception. I recently went to see the Tron movie in 3D as an experiment, but I wasn't sure I'd even get depth perception in it.
In fact I did, and I also can't say that it bothered me any more than a normal movie. I think that's because I didn't have the conflict the other people are talking about because my brain stopped rigidly expecting depth perception a while ago. But you can't build the 3D market on people like me.
http://www.myoutbox.net/posass.htm
I'd hate to be introduced like that.
That said, his points make sense. I don't get a headache from watching 3D movies but it does cause extra strain. It's more tiring than watching a normal movie. I have no intention of buying a 3D TV at any point in the future, and though I'll go to a 3D cinema for the different experience, if the movie is the right kind for 3D (e.g. Avatar), I certainly don't see it as a revolutionary new technology.
Another argument I heard against 3D movies is that apparently our brains use all sorts of cues (about 20, I think) other than differences between what the eyes see, in order to make us see things as 3D (which is why, among other things, the world doesn't suddenly look 2-dimensional if you cover one eye). 3D movies provide only one of those cues, and so naturally causes a strange feeling because the other 19 cues are missing.
Another nail in the coffin of 3DTV: It's been out for years and I don't know a single person who has bought one.
A big one is atmospheric haze, which is easy to reproduce to be fair. It is also the reason for a lot of the perceived inconsistencies in apollo moon photography: http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html#background...
Tron on the other hand, generally didn't have this problem, there was huge depth of field throughout, and generally nothing too straining.
I might head down to an electronics store and give on the 3D televisions a try, that way I'll know if my condition will negatively affect the experience as much as I expect.
(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 Clarke's First Law. When someone says something is impossible and is wrong, we can tell because, lo, someone else does it. But when someone says something is impossible and is right, we'll never really know for sure; the most we can say is that no one has done it yet. So: time travel? teleportation? faster than light travel? Plenty of eminent (and in some cases elderly) scientists have said, and doubtless will continue to say, that these things are impossible; for all we know they really are; but even if they are we'll never know for sure that Clarke's First Law is wrong for them.)
[EDITED in response to two comments: If the claim is "3D done just like it is now will never work" then I agree that CFL isn't very relevant. If it's "3D movies will never work", which is what I think "3D doesn't work and never will" ought to mean, then I think CFL applies. So maybe I'm really only criticizing Ebert and not Murch, who does embed into his comments the sentence 'Nothing will fix it short of producing true "holographic" images.'. I do wonder whether the quotes around "holographic" are trying to define it to mean "anything that fixes this problem" rather than strictly "something close to full-wavefront reconstruction using coherent light", in which case I guess he's right by definition and therefore vacuously. I would certainly not want to bet that actual literal holograms are the only way to solve the problem.]
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.
The part about focus of the eye is much more difficult to overcome. I think it has to do with resolution. And maybe a movie with a resolution of let's say 16.000 x 9.000 will give a better result because your eye can focus on details just like in real life.
But constraints of human beings don't change much. If our brains are not wired to really get the current 3D format, then I think that is a pretty good indictment of the technology. The post isn't saying 3D movies won't exist someday, it is saying the current 3D can't work well because of a limitation in the human mind.
But more importantly, the 600 million years of evolution argument doesn't hold the water he is putting in it. 600 million years of evolution did not prepare humans for traveling at 60 mph (much less controlling two tons of steel and insuring the safety of their children, while doing so), nor did it prepare humans for sitting in front of a bright light pecking at keyboards for hours and hours on end.
Focusing on one point while converging on another may require practice, but so does operating an RC car. But the fact that a broad swath of the population can readily do it the very first time, speaks against it.
Essentially, the case against 3d movies is an appeal to authority, and the article is really a rejection of the art form (3d is the rap music which is replacing their beloved rock and roll). That's not to say that there isn't a lot of schlock 3d - who really expected Green Hornet to be great cinema? - only that there is nothing inherently wrong with the medium.
Like any new tech, makers want to convince us this tech is the way to go. So study more, and give us the old school alternatives.
I'm sure the same was said about television, or travelling more than 30 miles per hour.
IOW, 3D movies induce eyesore and headaches, and there are plenty of people who experience that, myself included. could that hurt developing eyesight? no idea, but i can imagine why it could.
Where I watched Green Hornet (very funny movie if you don't expect to see a Coen brothers film, I think) the glasses were cheap plastic and you could take them home. I actually have two sets, maybe I'll give it a try :D
I saw Tron in 3D and suffered very mild side effects -- facial tension and a headache that went away after a few glasses of wine. The 3D effects weren't enough to make even those mild side effects worth it. I'm not even sure the 3D effects were a net plus for the experience without considering the side effects. Add a 40% premium on the ticket price, and it was a great deal for the theater and a lousy deal for me.
Until the technology changes fundamentally, I'm starting to think 3D movies are like heroin: we'll see a periodic resurgence and decline as the lessons fade away with one generation and are relearned by the next.
That last bit could be used to support Murch's argument, if the articles I've seen on HN about ergonomic chairs and sitting versus standing are any indication.
This argument is missing the point. True, evolution didn't prepare us to drive cars, however it did prepare us to spend long periods of time focusing on objects at fixed distances and then changing our focus on the ~hundreds of milliseconds timescale. It also evolved us to allow independent movement of limbs during this process, essentially what driving a car is. This same argument could be applied to typing at a computer (without the need to change focus very quickly).
I think the point is that cinema in 3D forces us to change the location of our focus very rapidly (much faster than hundreds of milliseconds) for long periods of time, something that we are not equipped to do. For a physical activity like sitting our muscles are malleable enough to adjust to a sedate lifestyle, but to increase the speed and duration of rapid eye focusing would most likely require rewiring the brain. Perhaps if we were raised in this pseudo-3D realm our brain could adjust, but adults brains aren't wired to change like our muscles are.
This is irrelevant. It didn't provide any limitation on them doing so either, whereas in the 3D case, it did.
> nor did it prepare humans for sitting in front of a bright light pecking at keyboards for hours and hours on end.
Hence obesity, bone problems, cardiac problems et al. Are you seriously putting this argument forward? Every doctor in the country warns AGAINST "sitting in front of a bright light pecking at keyboards for hours and hours on end" for health reasons.
Altering and improving human beings is not undoable, it's simply a hard engineering problem. The technological improvement of human eyes started out with glasses, then contact lenses, then laser operations and eye surgery. There's no reason to believe we won't eventually overcome the problems stated in the article by clever engineering of the eyes and brain.
[1]As Bellaire pointed out below, the quote is from Arthur C. Clarke and not Douglas Adams.
3d movies, where we're all sat down in a fixed chair makes absolutely no sense. It's a gimmick that adds nothing - apart from headaches, crappy dark image and occasional crude "THIS IS 3D" in your face 'effects'. Sitting in a chair looking at a screen we already see 3D. We have all the cues necessary for our brains to reconstruct the scene.
Didn't work in the 50s, didn't work in the 80s, didn't work in 2010s. I guess every generation has some people who think it's a great idea to try it again.
Hah! You wish. For example, Avatar made more than $2,000,000,000. That's $2 billion. And a huge part of the Avatar revenue comes from its 3D sales. Maybe it didn't work for you, but it sure worked for most people who went to see it.
In a universe where Avatar 3D never existed, would the 2D version alone have sold as much? Remember, they would have also been able to deliver the movie earlier (I don't know how much, but making a 3D movie can't be free - at least not yet).
I'm reasonably certain that there are only a very small number of people who saw Avatar for the sole reason of it being 3D (in other words, if the 2D version was the only option, they would have skipped it).
Avatar did exactly the opposite of what intended to do and that is, it turned me off of 3D movies not on to them. Sure, it made the money it did, but at least for me, it didn't do anything to advance the technology nor promote it.
Go to a real IMAX theater and watch a real IMAX movie. They tend to be science documentaries, like Hubble 3D. Compared to that, Avatar just seemed fuzzy and out of focus to me.
A good friend can't enjoy 3D movies because for that reason.
FWIW, I saw it in 2D first, loved it, then later saw it in 3D and hated every minute watching it. It was dark and gave me a HUGE headache.
I also think it wasn't a great movie itself. It was a really safe storyline 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.
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.
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.
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.
You can't show the 3D in marketing, but you can (and they did) highlight the concept of it. It's like all those ads on TV about fancy TV screens with superior image quality -- they obviously don't show you the screen itself.
I saw both versions.
I don't get hte "3d headache" - but I definitely enjoyed the 2d version more. THere was more detail to focus on, and in tha tmovie, detail was everything. With the 3d version, I found myself trying to look at things in the foreground/background, and I just couldn't - not becuuse of any defect in my ability to manipulate my eyes, but because (I think...) they actually used differnet depth of field settings when rendering the 2 versions.. there were things in the 3d version you literally COULDNT focus on - they wanted your eyes on the action only. That buged me.
- I remember playing 3d Quake (the original) on my crappy home monitor, with LCD shutter glasses - and it was AWESOME FUN. SCARY.
So I think all the points in the article are valid, 3d is hard, for more reasons than joe average might know, I certainly learned some stuff - but it's definitely a aprt of the future, if only because our current equipment makes it technically easy to play back.
I agree that a lot of bad 3D movies are put out there now, and I think the current hype will fade. But I have no doubt that the technology has advanced far enough that 3D is here to stay this time.
About the "small" thing, I sat at the 4th row (?) and the image was fine.
I'm not sure how it would work, but the idea is to change the dioptry to the inverse of the distance of what's supposedly on the screen, so that our eyes need to focus at the same distance as the converging, effectively nullifying the inverse focus.
It's theoretically possible to produce some kind of hologram-like 3D that would side-step this problem.
Why not respond to those comments in child comments rather than in the parent? Surely that makes the most sense? It's very difficult to read a discussion where I have to read responses to comments I haven't read yet.
Given the choice between a discussion where some bits have been clarified in the light of later comments, and a discussion where some bits are needlessly confusing or wrong, I choose the former.
(I might take a different view if there had been lots of replies, which might have been invalidated as as result of the edit. But there weren't; just those two.)
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/04/video_games_can_neve...
...should be interpreted with a grain of salt.
Hasn't the video game industry grossed more per year since the early 2000s? Why would anyone declare 3d dead based on a smaller industry like Movies?
$> sudo science
"I believe you now."
The only fundamental difference is one of wavelength.
How much of the $3.50 "3D upcharge" is this guy seeing? My initial guess is "none."
if your brain is frequently exposed to 3d films, couldnt it get used to processing that kind of imagery? so as time passes by more and more people go to the movies without a headache?
I think people will be able to adapt to 3D. Whether they will want to has to do with artistry and not a new technology as a gimmick.
I say this as someone who suffers from motion sickness, yet who rides in planes and buses. There simply aren't any reasonably easy alternatives.
I discovered this the hard way. I'm prone to motion sickness, and after I'd lived in NYC for a number of years it was unpleasant for me to transition back to being in a car. But now driving doesn't bother me any more.
Having said that, I agree, with one catch. Here's the thing: we currently don't have 3-D movies.
We have this fake 2-plane deal put on with funky glasses. That's why the cineamtographers can screw around with your eyes so much like the letter writer explains.
I want 3-D. True 3-D. Not some hacked up fake 3-D. True 3-D would consist of a large, rotating drum in the middle of my living room, approximately 6 or 7 feet tall, and several feet wide. Images would display as three-dimensional objects, viewable from all angles.
Big? Cumbersome? Impractical? Probably. But at least it's a true 3-D experience. When a couple of actors appeared and started talking, it would literally appear as if they were in the same room as you. Directors couldn't have arrows poke out at your eyes or any of that other silly nonsense that they seem to not be able to refrain from doing with the current tech.
The current hacky stuff that passes for 3-D is broken and won't be fixed, this much is true. It remains to be seen whether or not this tech finds a niche in games or specialty cinema, though. It's also an open question as to the future of real 3-D. I'm not so crazy about having the terms all mixed up, because the really cool stuff is coming later.
That's what idea #65 is all about:
http://jacquesmattheij.com/Idea+dump+January+2011+edition
Minus the drum, but when it's spinning it might as well be a drum.
Do you mean something like this?
http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/28/sonys-360-degree-raymodel...
"....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."
Of course it's a win-win situation for the studios selling people 3d.
3D is like smell-o-vision would be - a gimmick, distracting, and adding nothing to the story.
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.
Edit: Also, all these people are just speculating, there's no science backing up any pro or anti 3D claims. I would be careful giving Nintendo 3DS's to small children, that are still developing vision, but as I said I don't think watching a 3D movie every now and then is a bad thing if you enjoy doing so.
Sure, the current technology has some weaknesses, but as others have said, many found it awfully compelling in Avatar (many good reviews, and $2B in revenue).
I think your comment should be directly in response to the article.
A good for instance is that I recently saw Green Hornet in 3D -- not by choice entirely, since they weren't showing a 2D version. As an example, in one scene, they were panning to a person talking who was sitting behind a desk. The pencil holder was in 3D of course. I was very aware of the pencil holder as a result. But the pencil holder was irrelevant to the scene, but that's all I was looking at.
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 tickets are story and talent.
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.
Nor is acting talent particularly necessary either, if handled right. Some of my favorite directors restrain their actors, even great ones, from acting at all (e.g. any Bresson, or Pasolini's Teorema) or they use non-actors to great effect (e.g. Fellini, and Pasolini again with things like Decameron).
You do have a point about flashy technology though.
Incorporating 3D in every single movie just because Avatar was a huge hit would have been like shooting only sinking ships after Titanic.
Your relentless drumming of this point -- i've seen you post similar comments to this at least once before in this discussion --lacks merit I think.
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 ..
P.S. Tron 2 was much better in 2D than 3D. The darker screen was annoying and the 3D was far from immersive.
sequel to a classic: yes
3D: no
storyline: no
acting: no
VFX: yes
Daft Punk: yes
actual Unix on the big screen: yes
hot chicks attracted to nerds: yes
Disney 'family policy' WRT said hot chicks: no
It may help to realize that this is a parallel universe to ours and the way their computers appear to work is that they really are an interface to the world of Tron, which is subordinate to the conventional universe but by all appearances is every bit as real. Thus, Clu's plan is not a violation of the conservation of mass, because it's all working differently here. It's much more a 1960s/1970s-style scifi rather than an "ultra-realistic 2010 scifi" (ahem), but within those bounds I was actually pleasantly surprised. Not that it will ever amount to anything but in the back of my head I've actually been working out the physics of Tron, which could be really cool for a 2020-era MMORPG (would take too much processing power to be feasible today), and there's actually enough consistency (perhaps surprisingly) that it's not all in vain; there's different rules, but there are some rules.
In fact, it'd probably be safe to just assume that the user is focused on the primary element in the scene. Unfortunately, in a theater, you probably can't compensate for focus in a way that works for all of the audience, so this doesn't solve much.
Have a camera facing the eye that can tell what the person is focusing on. (High end video cameras already have this.)
Have an adaptive lense in the glasses to vary rapidly change the focal plane from where they eye things it is to the screen. You then build software that blurs the image outside of their focal plane. Granted there are limits on this aproach, but people get used to glasses that have a fixed shift in the focal plain fairly quickly so it should be possible.
Now I don't see how you could extrapilate that to a theater full of people, but you can build a system that works for 1 person.
Sorry I was a bit terse, but that's what I meant by "detected focus."
> You then build software that blurs the image outside of their focal plane.
That's not it exactly. The problem you're trying to solve is that, when the viewer is focused at one depth but is viewing a flat image at another depth, it will already appear blurry to him. You can't fix that with extra blurring. The fix is to distort the original image, much like corrective lenses.
And BTW, I suspect that you can't perform this correction for even a single viewer in the audience unless you're tracking his location and orientation.
"Have an adaptive lense in the glasses to vary rapidly change the focal plane"
AKA their eyes focus on 50', and the screen is at 100’. But the glasses change that to 100' and the software shows a clear images for 50' with the correct amount of blur for stuff outside of that range. You still need to double the frame rate etc for the 3d effect, but you can alter things so brain is less confused.
The idea is without the bluring the full immage is in focus regardless of what the users eye tryes to focus on 5' or 500' the screen is still in focus. This would work ok, but by bluring part of the immage you get an even closer simulation of the real world.
Edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjustable-focus_eyeglasses
The second, larger issue, is the physiological contraction of muscles each eye individually must do to focus at a given distance. Try this: cover one eye and look at a held up finger with the other eye. Notice the background is blurry. Now make the background clear and you'll notice your finger is blurry.
The eye adjusts its shape to focus on different distances. This is independent of the two eyes working together and seeing different images which the brain later merges into a 3D scene.
The issue with all the current 3D technologies I know about is the image, ultimately, is always on some screen at a fixed distance. You can give each eye separate images, you can track where the eye is looking and modify what image is seen, but in the end, the eye muscles are always contorting the eye to see that plane 80' away clearly.
If you can't control focus, then you are presented with a much larger scene. You (the viewer) would be choosing who and what to pay attention to, removing control from the film maker, and unless this additional degree of freedom is compensated for, the experience would go down. The way you tell the story as a result would change dramatically. You can't just tag on "3D version available!" to a movie and expect it to work, it requires a different way of telling a story.
Why doesn't this also cause discomfort in a conventional 2D movie in which the focal plane and the convergence angle stay the same (both at the screen plane) but our brains expect the convergence angle to change as items from different distances in the movie image come into focus in the movie?
Last weekend I was playing with some 3-D glasses, black paper and colored pencils, trying to draw stereoscopic images by hand. The first thing I realized is that you've really got to get conventional perspective right... It has to tell a consistent story or your brain is going to really rebel.
The entire premise of 3d basically excludes me.
I saw Pixar's "Up" in 3D. Such a touching story.
But at the sad scenes, when my eyes started to water up, I became super conscious of the fact that I had silly oversized glasses on my face, and it ruined the moment.
Watching the Blu-ray, in the comfort of my own home, I'm bawling like a baby.