3D in process of going back from whence it came

John Sprung · July 30, 2010

Why is wearing the glasses increasingly a turn-off? Could it be that viewers have realised they can't read their iPhone screens easily with the glasses on? If you can't Twitter it, you haven't done it!

Have a look at this other 3D thread:

http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=45872&st=20

I think that today's 3D may be somewhat analogous to early two color systems, things have to get better before it becomes mainstream.

-- J.S.

Karel Bata · July 31, 2010

I think some of your list good be wrong ! I am sure Thor isnt being shot 3d , just hope it isnt going through a post 3D conversion , a kiss of death .

You're right - they were shot in 2D and are being converted http://techland.com/2010/07/14/confirmed-thor-captain-america-will-be-3d/ but you're wrong in assuming that it will necessarily look bad. Clash of The Titans is now infamous as a bad rushed conversion, but Alice was excellent, and I've seen some very good short form conversions (ads). It's down to money.

Ravi Kiran · July 31, 2010

Karel, I haven't seen Alice in Wonderland, but I wonder if that looked good in 3D because so much of it was shot in front of a green-screen. CG would be a lot easier to render well in 3D, no?

Karel Bata · July 31, 2010

You think they shot Thor on location in Asgard..? :D That and Cpt America will likely have relied a lot on green screen too. 3D and green screen go together very well. Remember Shark Boy and Lava Girl? And wasn't that done on the cheap?

And with a conversion all kinds of tools are available, like mapping a 2D image on to a 3D object so it's not flat, or multi-rigging, where different figures in the foreground or background have different interocular settings, thus improving their perceived 'roundness' (I know this is done routinely in animation, but how much in conversions maybe someone can enlighten us on).

This divide between real 3D and faking it later is misconceived. The ideal in a shoot might be to combine both. For instance, if you have expensive talent it might be cheaper to shoot them 2D to get it done quickly, but use a 3D rig where you have more time.

Early days yet..

Karel Bata · August 1, 2010

There's an article on live-action multi-rigging here http://bit.ly/MultiRigging This is serious stuff! :o No mention of using this technique with conversions, but no reason why it shouldn't be part of the tool kit.

Ravi, did my previous post read as impolite to you? Wasn't meant to be. Sorry.

Karel Bata · August 1, 2010

Gotta say that for the most part I agree with you. And it's why 3D will never take over from 2D. In that multi-rigging page I linked to the author says

"This is a 3D movie, so one needs to establish the “3D geography” of the scene for a more immersive experience, before directing the viewers attention to the on-screen talent or subjects. This will satisfy the audiences quest for 3D eye-candy and not make them want to look at the background during the ensuing action."

A long establishing shot at the beginning of each scene? That is a huge artistic limitation! "the audiences quest for 3D eye-candy"? Oh dear.

And then, as you say, the lighting. And it's not just soft lighting that's a problem. A shot like this

wouldn't work either because those areas of black have no l/r detail, so would just move to the screen plane. A film-noir in 3D would be fascinating, but it wouldn't work. You notice how every frame of Avatar was full of well-lit detail that give depth cues?

I was watching The Wire the other day. The lighting, camera-work, and editing are perfect for that series, but would never work for 3D. Long lenses? Things moving across the foreground? Large areas of shadow? Forget it.

Personally I find 3D really exciting (for appropriate projects) but it won't take over.

Edited August 1, 2010 by Karel Bata

Karel Bata · August 1, 2010

Hmm... Clearly filmsnoir.net aren't too keen on bandwidth theft. Undertsandable. Let's try that pic again:

Edited August 1, 2010 by Karel Bata

Ravi Kiran · August 2, 2010

Ravi, did my previous post read as impolite to you? Wasn't meant to be. Sorry.

You'll get the bill from my therapist :)

No worries, man!

I saw a couple of 3D TVs at Best Buy. I had to get very close to the TVs (not sure what size, but they were smaller than my 52" LCD) for a good 3D effect. Basketball and football footage looked like little cardboard cutouts inside a diorama. Parts of an underwater video were quite impressive. Alice in Wonderland footage was hit-or-miss. The best footage was gameplay from a PS3 racing game. IMO video games are really where home 3D will shine. Gamers are used to using paraphernalia (controllers, Rock Band instruments, etc.), so what's a pair of glasses on top of that?

Leo Anthony Vale · August 2, 2010

I thought the period bookends especially in Alice really exposed the limitations of 3D and the way it's used in today's cinema. In my opinion, 3D historically never seems to work unless the images are front, hard lit, saturated or have very strongly defined rim lighting to create distinct separation of background and foreground. Any kind of "realist", low key, high contrast softlighting and dark art direction (which those Alice period scenes had) and I just think the inherently stylised 3D effect mushes apart, because I think it's not a low key, it relies on distinct separation of the foreground and background elements, much like a pop-up book. I think there's such an obsession right now with naturalistic, invisible, soft lighting in cinematography, and to me it clashes heavily with a process that is inherently about the vivid and being in your face.

ItheJ.3D.jpg

Mike Hammer (Biff Elliott) grapples with an assailant in I, the Jury

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_C6kND_Ezjv4/Sk5Dnyzb0ZI/AAAAAAAAAOM/zD9rKWewkdo/s400/JURY_1.

I,theJury 1953 John Alton,DP

The anaglyph picture seems to be a production still lit with a flash bulb, the other pictures seem to be screen grabs.

The following exerpt is from the 'Deep black and white page' on ray3Dzone.com

http://www.ray3dzone.com/3-D%20Noir.html

"I, the Jury, released by United Artists July 24, 1953, fits neatly into the film noir canon. It was based on the hard-boiled novel by Mickey Spillane which, in its Signet paperback edition (with a sexy cover), sold something like 20 million copies. Spillane's hard-hitting private investigator Mike Hammer, portrayed in the film by Biff Elliott, was a loose cannon in a trench coat, and a somewhat caricatural throwback to the protagonists of the original hard-boiled writers of Black Mask magazine which included Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, and Cornell Woolrich, all of whose works formed the basis for the original films noir.

What really makes I, the Jury a significant work of film noir is its 3- D cinematography by John Alton, the undisputed master of light and shadow who, with films such as T-Men (1948) and The Big Combo (1955), forever defined the chiaroscuro look of film noir. In his pioneering 1949 book Painting with Light, a poetic textbook on motion picture lighting, Alton wrote about creating photographic depth using light.

"The illusion of three dimensions--photographic depth--is created by a geometric design of placing people and props, breaking up the set into several planes, and the proper distribution of lights and shadows," wrote Alton. Later in the book, with a chapter titled "Visual Music," Alton again addresses the third dimension. "In real life, the pleasure of visual music is enhanced by the third dimension. Fortunes have been and still are being spent to put third dimension in professional motion picture photography: but to my knowledge, the closest we have come to it is an illusion of depth accomplished by the proper distribution of densities."

Four years later, with I, the Jury, Alton had an opportunity to render space stereoscopically and with light and shadow at the same time. From the opening scenes, in which we see a killing take place in the shadows from the point of view of the murderer, to the final scene, in which we witness Hammer's revenge slaying of one of the most complicated femmes fatale in all of film noir, Alton made the most of it. Pitch black on the screen is latent with the malign. A two-fisted assailant may suddenly leap out of it. Throughout the film, Hammer moves through a stereoscopic visual space that is dynamically joined to light and shadow, a mirror of moral progression or decay.

I, the Jury was filmed with a side-by-side dual-camera unit built by Producer's Service of Burbank which used variable interaxial from 1.9 inches to a maximum of 4.5 inches. Built by Jack Kiel and Gordon Pollock, 3-D consultant on I, the Jury, the twin camera unit allowed for convergence settings and featured interlocked f-stops and focus so that follow focus shots during filming were very precise.

3-D fans could take special delight with one scene in I, the Jury where Hammer is made to look through a hand-held stereo viewer by a winsome blonde. The audience then views the pastoral scene in stereo at the same time as the private investigator.

In another scene Hammer walks past a newsstand where copies of Spillane's Signet paperback, Kiss Me Deadly, is prominently displayed. Director Robert Aldrich subsequently adapted this book into one of the greatest of all black-and-white films noir in 1955 with Ralph Meeker as the tough detective. Mickey Spillane himself was never happy with the casting of his hero so he essayed the role himself in 1963 in The Girl Hunters.

As John Alton has shown us, film noir can be eminently suitable for stereoscopic storytelling. Shadow recedes. Light projects. And there is a gray scale universe of moral ambiguity in between."

**********************************************************************************************

I've never seen 'I, the Jury', let alone in 3D. Though I'd really like to.

I have seen 'the Maze', directed by Wm.Cameron Menzies, which is very noirish.

But I've only seen it in 2D.

Old books on stereo photography frequently mention the need to keep all of the planes in focus. So sharpness is important. & 2D depth clues help.

Long lenses and out of focus backgrounds will tend to flatten the image, cardboarding it.

I think shadowy lighting can work. But it needs to be crisp and define planes. Simple version would be alternating planes of brightness and shadow.

Things that come out of the screen ought to be dark, even be silhouettes.

Bright objects that come out of the screen with older polaroid and anaglyph projection usually bleed through, ruining the effect.

Clocks running out more later.

Karel Bata · August 3, 2010

deleted. Sorry :(

Edited August 3, 2010 by Karel Bata

Rob Vogt · August 3, 2010

also the fact that I have to wear those glasses over my rx glasses is annoying and uncomfortable... not to mention my friend with a glass eye who cant even come to the movies anymore...

Karel Bata · August 3, 2010

Well, clip-on 3D glasses are now available for $20

In theory, because you're already used to specs, you should be more comfortable than the rest of us.

Got interrupted earlier, but meant to say what a really interesting site that 3D film-noir one is! I'd love to be proved wrong on this business of not being able to light a 3D movie in full-on film-noir style (was that your intention Leo?) but...

1) That pic above is very small - you wouldn't expect to see the blacks migrate to screen level on that scale

2) the black areas aren't huge - the ones in the example I posted are larger, like you see in a lot of noir movies

3) projected on a big screen they'd be huge!

4) on the left in the I, Jury pic are a couple of spots of light that break up the dark area and push it back

5) that looks like an action scene, which makes a BIG difference (motion, focus of attention, time on screen)

6) times have changed and audiences are more demanding

I just found this http://www.nasa.gov/mov/174597main_Active171.mov Nothing to do with film-noir, but totally awesome. Worth downloading first (only 26MB) so you can play it double size. That's taken by two solar observatories orbiting the sun. What must the interocular be? Notice the flattening of the image to the right. Because of long lenses?

And here's an nice example of bad 2D->3D on King Kong

Kind of quaint. With enough money they could fix that. But can you imagine the amount of work?

And do keep it coming Leo! :D

JD Hartman · August 6, 2010

Before 3D goes back to where it belongs, we'll have to endure blockbusters like: Pirannah in 3D; Jackass in 3D.

Mark McCann · August 6, 2010

Thank god for this, im sick of 3D, it doesnt make me wanna see a bad film anymore than i would want to see it in 2d.

Ravi Kiran · August 7, 2010

I don't think that graph means that 3D is going away. Since Avatar there have usually been at least 2-3 movies competing for the limited number of 3D screens. That, combined with the fact that the post-Avatar films so far weren't "event 3D" films, would probably explain the graph. So I don't think its fair to say that 3D is already dying. The upcoming Tron film will be a good gauge of the state of 3D at the time.

Edited August 7, 2010 by Ravi Kiran