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.
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.
Some 3D theaters are great, the IMAX ones tend to be the best because the projection equipment is top-notch, but others are really awful. The picture's dim.
Some 3D movies are great, like Avatar that actually shot things using 3D cameras. In other movies, like Captain America, they add the 3D in post and it looks like garbage. I appreciate a 3D movie done well, but too many are half-assed.
The real problem for me is if I can't see it in IMAX I'd rather see a film in not-3D but because the theaters have a hefty 3D surcharge, they're not interested in running the 2D version. I'm paying a ridiculous tax for something I don't even want, and I have no options other than going way out of my way to avoid it.
Maybe you like everything in 3D. That's fine. There are a lot of people that don't care for it and yet are forced into paying for it for lack of options.
3D has come and gone many times over the history of cinema, from the red/cyan glasses, the (Pulfrich) glasses with a single shaded lens, shuttered glasses and polarized screens.
While the image quality and frame rate have improved, there are still fundamental limitations on the technology. One common pushback is that some people will get headaches due to scanning the scene, trying to focus on objects at their false depths.
3D film is a pain, way more than double the work. So most 3D content actually was made 3D in post rather than filming with multiple cameras.
Still, the way you would frame a scene to be 'interesting' in 3D is different from how you would do so in 2D. This usually results in being able to 'tell' whether a movie you are watching was primarily made for one market or another.
VR adds something other than image quality - it adds the ability to be immersed in the content. However you still have the same issues:
- So far, we don't have consumer headsets that enable you to actually focus on the objects in the scene. For example, you can't hold a piece of paper up to your face to read the fine print.
- Trying to capture certain kinds of media is infeasibly expensive in VR, both from a post-production cost perspective and a data size expectation. Live action basically is too difficult.
The latest incarnation of 3D movies were in a sense a clever business maneuver - it created a premium tier of movie experience and got many theaters to start upgrading their older projection equipment and screens to newer digital alternatives.
For home use, 3D movies were weird because they didn't follow the traditional hype curve. A lot of early adoption was by families, where unfortunately the shutter glasses still tended to be too expensive for young hands. But that market has the same thing - manufacturers will eventually take technology and reduce it down to cost, so how can you compel people to buy the newest fancy screen where you still have a good margin?
Note several television manufacturers are now trying to proceed advertising and sales revenue, which is why smart TVs have now taken over - a 15-30% cut on a HBO Max subscription adds up to real money quickly over their typically poor margins on the sale of the set.
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.
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.
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 saw Avatar. Criticisms of the plot aside, I loved the 3D. I wanted to see it with my partner. But when I talked to her about it, she said that 3D films make her nauseous.
So now, it seems like every movie coming out that is possibly even worth seeing is in 3D. I can adjust to the experience, but my partner can't, and this is a problem because going to the movies is one of the few options we have for a quick date away from the house and baby.
Like Ebert, I'm fine with 3D as an option. But I hope it doesn't become the dominant form for decent movies. I'm hoping that the studios continue offering the alternate non-3D option for each movie they release.
I have yet to go to a 3D movie where I felt 3D really added to the experience. Avatar came close, and there were times when it was really cool, but there were also times when I turned my head or something didn't line up right and 3D took me out of the movie. Maybe a part of that is that right now the tech is immature, but I know that every time I've paid for 3D it's felt like a ripoff.
Ebert's point on focus really hits home for me. When you are watching a movie in 3D it feels like I should be able to focus my eyes anywhere I like, instead of accepting the focus the director has chosen in traditional movies. When I want to look at something in the background in a 3D movie, I expect to be able to focus on it. So either all 3D movies need to be filmed with really high depth of field, or 3D will always feel broken.
The funny thing about this round of 3D is that it isn't a bold new venture for cinemas. It's a sign of stress. Cinema ticket sales have been in decline for over a decade now [1]. Just as TV stole away the everyday crowds from golden-age cinemas', ever-improving home theater quality and video gaming are steadily chipping away at what remains.
When TV started stealing business from cinema's, Hollywood's response was to use new technologies to give cinema patrons something TV's of the time couldn't. Hence, widescreen aspect ratios became widely adopted and, later on, the first wave of 3D, stereo, surround sound, etc.. TV technology stagnated and an equilibrium was formed that stood until home video came along and started disrupting things.
Today, the second wave of 3D is an attempt to tear people away from their hi-definition, audiophile-grade, surround-sound home-theaters and drag them back into cinemas (at double the normal ticket price). It will work, for at least a little while, until 3D becomes ubiquitous even amongst relatively cheap home video displays. At that point, 3D may very well die another death because Hollywood might not be willing to tolerate higher production costs (and limitations of the technology) for a gimmick that doesn't bring in enough extra cash. What will likely determine the longevity of 3D is if those costs will come down faster or slower than the sales-boost tapers off!
The next obvious step for viewer immersion is virtual reality. If VR headsets such as the Oculus Rift or what Valve has been secretly working on take off in the next few years and develop a large enough user-base, there's a remote chance that we might see some movies developed for them. Cinema's might also introduce VR rooms, making Hollywood investment in VR films more likely. These might be entirely on-the-fly rendered machinema that allow users to walk around freely inside the film, or pre-rendered films that place the viewer on a rail with only the ability to move their head to look around. Gimicky, yes. Highly unlikely to replace traditional film, yes. It could happen though, as one more way to boost sales.
Do you mind if I side-track a little and ask people's opinion of 3D in general?
I've seen two movies in 3D in the past year - Avatar and Toy Story 3. While Avatar was fun, and Toy Story 3 exception, I didn't feel that the 3D really added much to the experience. In particular, the colour for Toy Story 3 seemed dimmer than normal. I also where glasses, so I sometimes had reflections obscuring the picture.
I understand that 3D is being hyped as the next big thing to get after a big flatscreen TV, so I'd be interested to hear what people here think of it.
This was pushed more by the theatres (extra fees on the ticket price) then pulled by the customers who wanted it. I personally really dislike the 3D experience and always seek out 2D showings - and fortunately that's easier and easier to do. The 3D sequences were often randomly tacked on and not critical to the story, and the rest of the time you had to watch the movie through tinted shades. No thanks.
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.
Current 3D technology results in a dramatic loss of picture quality. In theory they're supposed to compensate for the brightness reduction by cranking up the projector, but I've yet to see a 3D film that wasn't dramatically murkier than the 2D version. You also get terrible judder. And, for people like myself that wear glasses, the fact that no movie theatre distributes polarized glasses designed to fit around a pair of glasses means that I usually have difficulty focusing and get awful eyestrain.
I don't have a problem with the idea of 3D, per se, but its implementation has made watching films in a theatre very frustrating and uncomfortable.
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 agree. Three-dimensional movies just are not very good. Ticket sales are falling and 3D televisions have disappeared (I have one; the effect is just as good, and nausea-inducing, as the theater's, but like most people who own one I've used the feature for about 15 minutes).
I think a major problem with 3D right now is that you don't really know what you're paying for. Are you getting a movie where some real effort was put into the 3D, or are you getting a half-assed version? The (increased) price is the same.
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.
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