The Coming Problems For Rolling Out 3D TV 232
holy_calamity writes "Now that Sony has announced it will sell 3D-capable televisions in 2010, people are thinking more seriously about the rocky road leading to mainstream 3D TV adoption. New Scientist says that not only do program makers lack the technology to make shows in 3D, but that little is known about the creative problems posed by shooting shows that make use of a whole new dimension, and what works for audiences. Engadget's own pundit focuses on the more predictable problems of format wars between competing 3D display technologies. Suddenly 2010 seems a little too soon."
Don't do 3D crossfades. (Score:4, Interesting)
vertigo (Score:4, Interesting)
If I have to wear any sort of headgear, even paper glasses, it's a no deal. I like to multitask when I watch TV.
You do bring up an interesting point indirectly. Will 3D perception even without headgear cause vertigo or other disorienting effects to people moving in a room? As the 3D gets better and better you will genuinely perceive the TV as a hole in the wall to another room but the attachment of that room to yours will be constantly shifting relative to your floor. Your brain may choose to perceive it as your floor is tilting.
Additionally the may be problems with filming in 3D that are hard for actors to accomodate. Certain kinds of motions in stereo vision systems can cause the image to become momentarily fuzzy. You can see this in many 3D animated movies where combinations of fast charater motions or doors moving while the camera pans result in anomolously fuzzy images in the otherwise infocus foreground. Someone once tried to explain to me why this is: I think it was somthing about the object sheering rates exceeding the framing rate. Supposedly this is why disney equiped theaters use a faster framing rate and show each frame four times to each eye interleaved.
We have binocular vision which means that our sense of 3D for left and right comes from our eyes directly but our sense of 3d for up and down is less direct by the eyes and aided by head motion which stereo 3d systems don't provide (actually get wrong).
hence it does make sense that how a scene is staged, how pans and zooms are done, and how moving objects traverse the screen will matter to filming good 3D products. and bad results can look worse than 2D, even seeimg less dimensional when they suddenly become fuzzy. and then there may be vertigo effects as well if you are moving around.
Production challenges (Score:3, Interesting)
I know that in the LOTR trilogy, they did a lot of clever work with perspectives, using split furniture/scenery and having actors closer/further away from the camera to make Gandalf appear significantly bigger than the hobbits, for example. I imagine this kind of trick is done quite a lot in TV production as well.
Stereoscopic cameras will mean that this trick just can't work - certain types of production just couldn't be done using camera tricks alone. It might be possible to add these effects using CGI or something - but would be a lot more expensive.
Re:Don't do 3D crossfades. (Score:4, Interesting)
Say... what would the 3D equivalent of a star-wipe be?
You could do a z-axis wipe from far to near (probably after cross-fading the background plane). That would avoid most of the issues with shifting focal planes. It wouldn't be too dissimilar from the 2D effect where you cross-fade the background and then a bit later cross-fade the foreground. OTOH, in real 3D it might look really freaky --- only way to know is to try it...
Re:But...but... they need new technology! (Score:4, Interesting)
Speak for yourself, to me 480p vs 1080p is the difference between a movie and a moving picture. All the little details that that aren't important but somehow my brain notices aren't there are there in 1080p. Of course it doesn't make a good movie anu more than CDs make good music, but it's definately improvement if you ask me. Now if only we could get 1080p60 for smooth pans under all circumstances, I'd be happy. If you desperately want the p24 feel, you can put a filter on it.
Re:Coming Problems (Score:3, Interesting)
Try dodging dumb shows or plot lines revolving around constantly over doing the 3D effects.
All we need is a "Michal Bay of 3D" and the whole 3D hype will die in an instant.
Imagine actors continuously throwing things or lunging towards you. Nobody does this in real-life.
3D movies big topic at SIGGRAPH in recent years (Score:3, Interesting)
From an artistic point of view the director has control on the "amount of 3D" in a scene. Elements of interest can be highlighted or even exaggerated in 3D, while backgrounds or less important elements may fade to 2D. For example the company that has been "dimensionalizing" Star Wars movies for Lucas ("dimensionalizing" is converting old stock to 3D from stereo clues in film, similar to what "colorizing" does to B&W). The showed a minute-long clip of a Star Wars space battle scene dimenensionalized in around eight different ways. And the results are artisitically different depending on what the director wants to emphasize.
(P.S. Lucas is perfectionist and not completely happy with the current state of dimensionalization, so he hasnt released the 3D versions yet. The parts I saw were amazing and I cant wait for the entire movies.)
Shot length is a real headache. Literally (Score:5, Interesting)
As the article mentions, shot length in film has been declining for decades. The average is now around five seconds. In 3D, more adaptation time is required at shot changes. The article says 10-15 seconds is required. If you do too many fast focal length changes, viewers get eyestrain.
There's a database of film shot lengths. [cinemetrics.lv] "Batman Begins" clocks at 2.8 seconds for the entire film. (Don't take the values in that database as definitive. Click on an entry to check it. Some entries are from clips or trailers, not the entire film.) The Bourne films are even shorter. This is going to be a real problem for action films.
Re:But...but... they need new technology! (Score:3, Interesting)
However one drawback to Bluray is watching old shows that were never meant to be HD. Like Star Trek. When a hairy caveman throws a spear at Spock, it looks like a spear on the old analog sets, but on the new HD sets the spear looks like a piece of foam.
Yeah, this was the BBC's official reason for not broadcasting the new Doctor Who in HD. Apparently, they were still using an old prop for the police box and it only looked convincing at standard definition.