The Movie Studios' Big 3D Scam 532
An anonymous reader writes "There's a lot of things wrong with 3D movies. Avatar's 3D was well executed, but Alice's 3D was really bad, like all 2D-to-3D conversions. And yet, studios are reconverting 2D movies—including classics—into 3D to milk this fad. On top of that, the theaters are not prepared for 3D, with bad eyeglass optics and dark projections. In this article, a top CG supervisor in a prominent visual effects studio in Los Angeles calls it as it is: it's all a big scam by the movie studios."
The glasses suck terribly (Score:3, Interesting)
I think next time I'll save the $3 and see the movies in 2D instead. The theaters should be able to provide us with more comfortable glasses by now...
Mostly hype, but can be done effectively (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah, Avatar was made made in 3D and it shows, it was very watchable even with the glasses (dunno what the article's author Alexander Murphy was going on about, his eyesight must be ruined already). Didn't notice any problems but it didn't redefine my life.
Converting 2D films into 3D is just not going to be the same. Even if you can extract objects from scenes into an accurate 3D space, you're going to have to generate content that is obscured in the 2D original, and this is surely going to be noticeable?! The article suggests it would look layered, like an old 80s arcade game with parallax scrolling.
Maybe 3D scenes could be re-rendered, an option for Titanic 3D surely, but you're not going to get any better 3D depth when Kate Winslet is posing for the painting, only the CG parts (and reworking them is probably a good idea anyway).
At least the 3D sports broadcasts are being done with proper 3D cameras.
Re:Avatar pains (Score:5, Interesting)
I got headaches only with the Imax version because of the linear polarization which meant if my head was tilted even slightly to the side, there would be ghosting. The cheapo cinema used circular polarization, which was more comfortable and caused me no eye strain at all. Perhaps something similar happened to you?
The hidden perk of 3D... (Score:4, Interesting)
People might think 3D sucks or isn't ready, but if anything gets movies to be shot with two cameras then I hugely support it. While I agree that today, right now, we lack the technology to display 3D well, we might have that technology soon and if we haven't shot our stuff correctly we won't be able to enjoy it that way.
Plus we might get digital media that allows us to "look around" during a live movie. Can you imagine watching Lord of The Rings about being able to turn your head to get an entirely new perspective of what is going on? Plus the cameras can be stitched together to get EVEN HIGHER resolution than HD.
Bad summary. (Score:2, Interesting)
The author is not arguing that 3D is a scam. The author is arguing that people are jumping on the 3D bandwagon because they smell money while not always delivering a good product. Specifically:
* Retrofitting 2D movies for 3D does not work. You can fake it, but the result is crappy if you didn't actually shoot it for 3D.
* There's no point to using 3D if you're not going to use it creatively. The result will be worse than if you just kept your mediocre movie in 2D.
* The quality of the result is strongly affected by the quality of the 3D implementation.
And that's all, folks. It's a good article to read if you're not familiar with the issues.
Where 3D works (Score:5, Interesting)
3D works for computer graphic animation, given twice the rendering capacity you would otherwise have. It's pretty simple to move the "camera" point and render again. There will be some tuning of textures, etc., to look right when viewed simultaneously from two camera points. So, given sufficient computer capacity you can get a 3D movie without significant additional labor, and it's the labor that is really expensive.
3D works for new live action, given proper cinematography.
Conversion of existing 2D film to 3D is garbage, and should rightly be called a scam. Remember colorization? It was mostly done because the tax write-offs on "new" film were more lucrative to the film company than on legacy film. It wasn't that the audience experience would be enhanced by fake color. When the tax law changed, colorization mostly went away.
It's not an experience you can't have in your home. Samsung has a "3D ready" 55 inch TV on the market now, for $2300. The price will fall quickly enough.
Re:Well, duh (Score:3, Interesting)
I'll pay more to see a movie in true IMAX (and there are a few theaters in my area that do that), but the regular movie theater charges extra for the 3D glasses but doesn't list what the surcharge is. Last I asked, the surcharge was $5, or an increase of almost 50%. Not worth it for a pair of glasses.
but 3D home theater is next. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Well, Yes (Score:2, Interesting)
And neither did adding sound, then stereo sound, then 4 channel sound, then 6+ channel sound, adding color, changing the aspect ratio from 1.33:1 to 1.85:1 and wider, going from 16fps to 24fps nor having bigger screens. According to this logic we should just go back to the silent film era with 1:33:1 aspect ratios, no color, 16 fps frame rates, and tiny screens because all the previously listed enhancements clearly don't make the movies better.
It's early in the industry, consistency will come. (Score:4, Interesting)
A former vfx animator here and cinema fan. I watched the three hour spectacle that is avatar in RealD with the circular polarized glasses and came away with no ill effects. The brightness was adequate, the new glasses let through more light than the old horizontally polarized glasses, if I remember the older IMAX experience correctly. I also thought the 3D in alice was fine, they did not go with the temptation to put the Cheshire Cat in the forward plane, which they could have because he is a floating entity that can be shown off without touching the sides of the screen, like the bird critter from Captain EO that made you cross-eyed. (with the re-release coming up you can do go to Disneyland and see what I am talking about)
I do agree that 2D -> 3D conversions of older films are the equivalent of colorizing a black and white film ted turner style, it shouldn't be done out of respect for the original film. But the industry will always exploit their properties as much as they can. If you don't like it, don't watch it. And I also agree that movies intended for stereo showings should be shot with two lenses, not converted later. Both processes bring up multiple difficulties in post production, in different ways. With true stereo shooting you can't fake nearly as much stuff, you have to map it in 3D space rather than faking comps in 2D post. With fake 3D you can do more VFX compositing in 2D, but then a thousand monkeys will spend a thousand hours rotoing into 3D.
Last year at NAB I saw some incredible demos of 30" - 50" polarized plasma sets. Every other horizontal line was polarized opposite, and with 1080 lines there was not an appreciable degradation of resolution per eye and it looked amazing. The brightness was there too since LCDs and plasmas can put out a lot of light. The first models were selling for $10,000 etc. but the price will come way down as they figure out how to manufacture it more inexpensively. As a long time fan of stereo imaging, I am looking forward to the new stereo blu ray format. It uses the same RealD circularly polarized glasses. In fact I used the RealD glasses I got from the RealD demo theater earlier in the day. The RealD theaters are powered by the Sony CineAlta 4K projectors...really nice stuff and affordable compared to what digital projection used to cost.
What? (Score:2, Interesting)
I thought Avatar's 3D was a stupid gimmick. The parts I remember being in 3D were the ashes and the credits. Did I miss something?
John Carter of Mars (Score:1, Interesting)
Apparently Disney/Pixar are shooting this in 3D...who knows??
Avatar was teh sh@t (Score:2, Interesting)
im anti patent, anti copyright, anti big media, and all it goes with it. im pro unbounded filesharing, free copying too, thanks to the route the media cartels and their government puppets taken in the last few years.
i dont see the point of seeing movies in a movie theater. my home is cozier, more convenient, and it doesnt matter much if i see most movies in cinema screen or a big screen tv.
but still, if movies made for big screen are made like avatar, i wont hesitate from shelling $20 a pop to see them. it was worth every single cent i spent on it, and in my country exchange rate is 1.5 to 1. so basically in usa standards i spent $30 or so on it. i dont regret it.
i dont see the point in pirating it either. i also plan on seeing it again.
Do what I did for my daughter (Score:2, Interesting)
You should do what I did for my 3yo daughter. After the second 3D movie in which we received the cheap plastic one-size-fits-a-few glasses, we opted not to recycle them in the drop box. When we got home, I popped out the lenses of the 3D glasses and the lenses out of some old sunglasses my daughter didn't wear anymore. I trimmed up the polarized film using the lenses from the sunglasses as a mask. then popped the new polarized lenses into the old sunglasses. Now, until she outgrows her old sunglasses, she has a custom pair of 3D glasses. compatible with all RealD-3D projectors.
I imagine you could do something similar, possibly even attaching the filters to your existing prescription glasses.
IMAX is useless for most movies. (Score:3, Interesting)
I find IMAX to be useless for non-landscape footage.
Yes, IMAX is great when you are looking out over an ocean, or a moonscape, or a desert, or whatever, when you are simply "taking in a scene".
But IMAX is terrible for movies where there are characters on either end of the screen talking to each other.
For example, we went to see one of the Harry Potter movies in IMAX. It is like watching tennis - you constantly have to drive your attention, and turn your head, from the left to the right, in order to follow the dialog. And while you are looking at the person speaking on one side of the screen, you are missing the facial and other reaction by the characters on the OTHER side of the screen.
Unless a film was shot for IMAX, just blowing up the image size does not make it better.
Not necessarily polarized lenses (Score:3, Interesting)
Geek that I am, I tried to observe the polarization in the glasses while waiting for Avatar to start. Not noticing anything I used my phone and looked up Dolby 3D ( which was used in this theater ) and found it doesn't use polarized lenses, but different color filters.
Unlike the old cereal box red/blue glasses though, they block part of what we see as a particular color, so we're still seeing some of each of the blocked colors in each eye, just not the full frequency range. Dichroic filters are incorporated into the lenses to pass/reflect the appropriate frequencies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_3D [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infitec [wikipedia.org]
Re:Of course it's all a bit scam... (Score:3, Interesting)
$10 for (about $1.00 worth cost-wise) soda and popcorn
A large bag of potatos cost a dollar or two, depending on potato, store,m etc. A single potato will make two $1.00 bags of McDonald's or Burger King fries, or a whole $4 bag of potato chips. Of course, you have to make the fries and chips yourself.
Soda? It's just carbonated sugar water and costs almost nothing to manufacture. A large fountain coke costs the restaraunt or theater a penny or two; the cup costs them more than the contents.
People will pay a dollar or more for sixteen ounces of water, while my water bill for the whole month, including bathing and washing dishes and clothes, is about twenty bucks.
In short, people are stupid and wasteful. What gets me is the guy walking down the street drinking bottled water who won't give a buck to a homeless guy. He'll gladly give a rich man a dollar for nothing at all, but refuse to help the destitute.