Life of Pi 3D Movie Review

Just so you know going into this review, there's no question that Life of Pi is a fantastic example of 3D cinema. It won 4 academy awards, including best direction and best cinematography. No small part of that was how the film used 3D. It was even impressive enough that the late Roger Ebert, a long time critic of 3D cinema, praised its use of 3D in his review of Life of Pi.

"What astonishes me is how much I love the use of 3-D in 'Life of Pi.' I've never seen the medium better employed, not even in 'Avatar,' and although I continue to have doubts about it in general, Lee never uses it for surprises or sensations, but only to deepen the film's sense of places and events.

Let me try to describe one point of view. The camera is placed in the sea, looking up at the lifeboat and beyond it. The surface of the sea is like the enchanted membrane upon which it floats. There is nothing in particular to define it; it is just … there. This is not a shot of a boat floating in the ocean. It is a shot of ocean, boat and sky as one glorious place."

One of the impressive things I find about the 3D in Life of Pi is that Ebert is wrong when he says that the film never uses it for surprises or sensations. There's a surprising scene where a tiger leaps out from under a tarp that uses it to provide a jump-scare. There are several scenes where Pi is shoving a stick in your face. There's one within the first minute of the film where a humming bird floats in front of the screen, ludicrously far into the audience, as if to shout, "See this movie here? The art film you're watching? Yeah, this is a 3D movie, too! Surprise!"

Yet despite how often and thoroughly this film can be enjoyed as a gimmicky 3D movie, that's neither the primary draw, nor is it employed in such a way that it's distracting. The tiger jump-scares you because it's appropriate for the tiger to feel threatening. The hummingbird flies in front of the screen because it's using nature to enchant you. The sticks protrude from the screen because they're threatening a tiger, and by sticking uncomfortably into the screen their threat is believable, and therefore the stick is ironically calming. This is why Ebert didn't notice the surprises and sensations. There are ways to use them to enhance a film or story, and Life of Pi hits every single one of them.

This picture is a red-cyan anaglyph.

Another reason the 3D work in this film is how the 3D transforms the images presented on screen. Look back at the first image in this blog post. In the 2D version of that image, the water is still clearly visible (like Ebert said, like a membrane upon which the boat is floating. In the 2D version, he appears to float directly on top of the sky. It's a subtle difference, but it transforms the scene from one where Pi is in heaven (when he's clearly in a dangerous hell) to a scene where Pi is being supported, as the heavens lift him up above the water. They have another scene early in the film where Pi is learning to understand his role in a divinely appointed universe by reading a comic book about Vishnu with the universe in his mouth. In the 3D version, this comic book page transforms from a flat page in the book to a cartoony representation of the universe, separating and filling with actual space. It really drives home the cosmic religious experience this comic book is giving him.

And yet this film still isn't done making 3D beneficial to it! Oddly enough, though, the next scene I like to point to as to how it works is a very empty scene, toward the end when Pi is sitting in a hospital bed. It's a very empty scene, with color composed so that Pi's face is the first thing to draw your attention. With the scene so empty, it may seem like there's nothing there for the 3D to shine through.
Then the scene also slowly zooms in on Pi's face. Toward the end of the scene, it's not noticeably sticking out, but it's just far enough forward that your eyes are incapable of being drawn away from it. It forces you to be captivated with his story. In addition, any time an object protrudes from a scene, the audience will subconsciously believe it is tactile (this is why so many people try to touch objects protruding from a screen when they first see 3D films). This creates pity for the character, by supplanting the idea that, if your hands weren't covered with butter from your popcorn, perhaps you could reach out and physically console poor Pi as his emotions overcome it. It's raw and powerful, and alleviates the moral judgement that you could hypothetically feel when you listen to what he is actually describing.

I've still only scratched the surface on reasons that Life of Pi works so well in 3D. I could go on forever about the 3D in this movie, because Life of Pi is an emotional (and intentionally contradictory) story about man's relationship with God in the face of tragedy, that uses 3D to drive its points home in ways 2D couldn't adequately express. It's a fantastic triumph in how it captures such a complex and previously believed to be unfilmable story. This film is a must see, especially the 3D version.

Dial M For Murder 3D Movie Review

It's common knowledge that there was a 3D Boom during the 50s. It's not as common knowledge that Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M For Murder was among the movies considered part of that boom. And to be honest, I don't blame people for not knowing that. As a thriller that deals more with the tension between scheming people, it flies in the face of popular Hollywood consensus that you need action to make a good 3D movie, as exemplified in quotes like this one by Carl Mazzocone:

"A lot of producers have exploited 3D unnecessarily to capture that extra little [sur]charge at the box office. Certain movies clearly should not be 3D. ... But, in a horror movie where there's action and you're trying to make it as frightening as possible, and of course you're wielding a three foot chainsaw, you have a situation where you can actually enhance the situation by making a 3D movie."

Now, I probably don't need to say more than "directed by Alfred Hitchcock" for you to know that this is a good film by Hollywood standards (or almost anyone's for that matter). He's one of the directors whose work was used as evidence to form auteur theory, after all. But then how do we account for this gross misstep in use of 3D, as per Hollywood convention? The answer is that Hollywood was wrong and Hitchcock was right. 3D works well (if somewhat unconventionally) in Dial M for Murder.

Before I continue, I should note that this review contains some spoilers. You have been warned.

I've written before about how 3D can be used to draw your attention to certain objects by placing them further in the foreground, thanks to the focus/convergence problem. In the introduction to the film, Hitchcock abuses this power. He uses it to draw your attention away from the people in the scene composition, and toward the plethora of things adorning Tony Wendice's home. It's an odd choice, since those things are not the subject of any of these shots, but mimics Tony's greed addled mindset at the time. Dial M for Murder gains most of its suspense from how unlikely it is for Tony's murder plot to succeed, so by using the 3D composition to throw the audience's attention about, whether it be on his accumulated possessions at the beginning, or the things and people set to unfurl his perfect murder plot as the film progresses, makes the audience absorbed in Tony's hatred (almost feeling he's justified), and then riddled with suspense he feels as the story progresses. It's a perfect and a very creative use of the focus/convergence "problem" that 3D video has, and carries the film well to its intended emotional effect.

The film defies 50's 3D film stereotypes in that it makes most of its use of 3D in positive space (going into the screen) rather than negative space (popping out of the screen). There are 3 exceptions to this rule, two of which carry an impactful emotional effect themselves. The one that doesn't is that all of the titles significantly protruded from the screen.

The second is depicted in the murder scene itself. Tony's wife, the victim, lies down on a desk, her neck constricted by her attacker. The camera is positioned such that her hand protrudes out toward the audience very deeply. To many audiences, the impulse here would be to grab her hand, which is an action akin to attempting to save her. It enhances the disgust the audience members feel with the murder's action. The third is when the police officer presents Tony with a key to his apartment. This key later becomes the means to unravelling his murder plot. Again, as this film is shot from Tony Wendice's point of view, this is insightful and emotionally compelling. At the time, it's obvious his story is being called into question, but the pop out again makes the audience feel compelled to reach out and grab the key. They feel the fear of abandoning logic, while knowing their raw emotion at that point forces them to defy it. Both scenes are beautiful depictions of Tony's conflicting emotions, each of which are lessened in the 2D version of the film.

I can wholeheartedly recommend this film in its 3D version. Hitchcock employs the format masterfully, in ways that greatly improve the film over its 2D release. The 3D Bluray has one scene missing the right frames, so it briefly displays in 2D, but other than that is a fantastic restoration of the original film as well (I wonder, though, why they didn't do a 3D conversion on that scene). If you have access to a 3D TV, and haven't already picked this up, you should definitely add it to your collection. I'm glad I did.

Man of Steel 3D Movie Review

I have a hard time thinking of things to post to this blog. It was originally conceived as a way to collect ideas about 3D film in general that I'd previously been posting to Facebook, which one of my Facebook friends suggested this might be better as a blog. There's only so much I can say about 3D generally though, and that's been starting to show with my utter lack of updates (and when I do update, although honest and not paid posts, sound like they are ads). Recently, though, I had the idea of posting reviews of 3D movies I've watched, but that seemed unnecessary as most of the 3D movies I've seen have been out a while already, and most people should know by now what they think of them. I recently managed to find time to see Man of Steel, however, and that's new enough that I figured I'd try and review how good it was as a 3D movie.

The movie itself doesn't depart dramatically from the normal Superman mythos. The narrative structure actually reminds me a lot of Batman Begins, in that the film constantly jumps back and forth between Superman's youth to provide context for how his origin as an Kryptonian alien shapes the hero he is in this grand battle in which he partakes. Exploring Superman in this light, as a Kryptonian sent to Earth, is an aspect of Superman's character that I've never really seen before. It's an impressive look that I suspect some people will find fascinating, especially those interested in the super hero myths as just that: myths.

They really sell Superman as a mythological, even god-like hero. From his origins on Krypton, where Jor-El is given a visual aesthetic that calls to mind the Roman culture (and the casting Russel Crowe as Jor-El brought to mind images of Maximus from Gladiator as well). Jor-El's confrontation with General Zod feels heavily Roman in style as well, lending a rugged and even god-like military masculinity to all of the Kryptonian interactions (in case the close up on Henry Cavill's abs during heavy lifting didn't do that well enough). Even the cinematography, which abandons panic-driven shaky cameras popular in most modern action scenes in favor of jerky, sweeping movements with each hit, causes this movie to bleed masculinity in ways that impressed me. Still, I never really connected that style with versions of the Superman character in previous iterations I've seen of the character, who always seemed more about a cool head giving him control rather than his raw power.

If I had a really major criticism of the film (other than that I didn't believe Lois Lane and Superman's chemistry for a second), it's that Superman is too out of control of the situations he's in. The film treats Superman's birth as the solution to Kryptonian society's obsessive desire to control the destinies of all Kryptonians. Yet Superman's actions always seem directed by his Kryptonian genesis. He even interprets the "S" on his chest under its Kryptonian meaning rather than the earthly interpretation for which it's colloquially known, and which someone raised on earth would be expected to use. My sister, who watched the film with me, also picked up on the inconsistency, and mockingly mimicked Jor-El saying, "You have the right to be who you want to be, now go do what I tell you!"

But of course, this review wouldn't be on this blog if Man of Steel weren't released in 3D, so with that frame in mind, the question is, "How does the 3D lend itself to this movie?" Unfortunately, it doesn't. While I have no technical qualms with the 3D conversion quality, and some of the individual scenes looked magnificent, the film was obviously shot with the intent that it be viewed in its 2D version, and those decisions made some of the stereo work unsalvageable. Handheld cameras used to make the scenes in Kansas, and other smaller towns in which Clark Kent finds himself, are difficult on the eyes, making this movie somewhat likely than others to induce headaches and nausea. Not only that, but there were constant over-the-shoulder shots that lacked any floating windows to ease the eyestrain caused by window violations. These and other extreme closeups resulted in numerous scenes that lacked any notable depth as well, nor did they exploit convergence tricks to do anything special with the stereo conversion for these extreme closeups directly.

I'm going to be honest here, I didn't like this movie. Most of the movie was admittedly very well done, but not to my tastes at all (I prefer my super heroes to be more human, and this one lays the Kryptonian heritage on too strong for me). It also doesn't help me like it that the 3D in this movie was something I can really point to as an example of what 3D looks like when it actually is a superfluous marketing gimmick. It added less to the film than it detracted from it, so I really suggest, unlike what I did, seeing the 2D version of this movie. It's a good movie, if somewhat niche, but only in 2D.

Is The 3D Price Hike Justifiable?

Before I go into this question, I have to get some things out of the way. I am not an economist. All I really know about economics is the basic supply vs demand rule. Hence, you will need to take what I'm saying here with a grain of salt. I'm just reacting to what I hear the market saying, and wondering out loud if there's a way to appease these oftentimes inconsistent potential consumers of 3D content. This isn't a researched marketing advice column.

That said, the loudest and most valid complaint I hear about 3D content is that it's too expensive, and that potential consumers can't justify the extra price for a 3D version of a show. Admittedly, if I wasn't trying to understand every failure and success that the 3D film medium has to offer by consuming every iota of it that I can, I would take the same approach. Most 3D films (e.g. Wreck-It-Ralph, Star Trek: Into Darkness, Hotel Transylvania) are not actually made to be viewed as 3D content. When a filmmaker makes their film with the 3D version intended as the foremost (e.g. Avatar, Hugo, Life of Pi, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey), they can accomplish wonderful things with the format. But if 3D is an afterthought, as it so often is, there is no advantage whatsoever to seeing the film that way, and you're usually wasting your money spending extra on the surcharge.

Maybe there's some chicken and the egg business going on here. The 2D version gets the most attention because that's how the grand majority of the audience is going to see the movie, and the audience goes to see the 2D version because that's obviously the one getting the most attention. But we're getting into my "why 3D content should be shown exclusively in 3D" argument, which I'm not on topic, so back we go to the original topic.

But while the surcharge pushes audiences away, I also understand how cinemas and executives justify the price hike. If you're not going the conversion route that most filmmakers are using these days, you're looking at buying twice as many cameras as an equivalently scoped 2D movie, buying rigs in which to store both of these cameras together, hiring a team of stereographers to keep the 3D from going wrong, and will require twice as much rendering time when you go to put the movie in post-production. Even if you're post-converting to 3D (which is relatively less expensive), you're still looking at delayed rendering, and hiring a (usually outside) company of hundreds of VFX artists rotoscoping objects and filling in black holes created by having to create stereo parallax where it doesn't actually exist. More effort to make the movie means more people to pay, and a greater risk in making the movie. If 3D won't pull extra people into the theaters, you're going to need to surcharge in order to make that money back.

I think that's the problem with their reasoning, though, and the lesson executives didn't learn from Avatar even though it was plainly obvious. Everyone was talking about the 3D film experience when Avatar came out. It was something unique that you had to experience. And 3D was the primary draw of the film, despite the surcharge. Yet Hollywood seems to believe that it's the Ferngully meets Pocahontas plot and characters that drove that movie to success, and that the 3D was just there to draw a few more dollars out of a standard audience.

My position is that 3D can carry itself, and that therefore they shouldn't charge more for it. It helped draw people in to see Life of Pi and Avatar, two films interesting for how they utilized their 3D techniques. That should be enough to justify the increased cost to production. 3D shouldn't be added to a movie if it's not going to help it tell the story it's trying to tell, but more movies can and should use it in their storytelling. This will draw in audiences, increasing income without increasing the ticket price of a 3D film. 3D ticket prices should be the same as their 2D equivalent to draw more people in.

Again, I'm not an economist, and given the 15-20% increase in 3D movie production costs, and the need for theaters to create 3D compatible screens, train employees in 3D exhibition (though that doesn't always work), and buy extra digital storage, I can really see why they feel they need a 30% increase in price vs. a 2D ticket. But the first theater to do away with the 3D surcharge I think will make that money back by seeing an increase in movie attendance, which is what Hollywood really needs right now. Despite a 30% increase in average movie ticket prices overall over the last decade, they've only seen a 17% increase in income (and that's with the boost 3D gave, according to MPAA statistics). This means Hollywood is making less money because of lesser attendance. They need a way to draw people back into theaters, and they're killing their first good answer to this problem by pricing people out of it!

It might actually be too late. So many people have derided 3D for the marketing gimmick Hollywood wanted it to be that audiences may be unable to accept that 3D can be used for non-manipulative purposes. Hollywood may have killed their chance. But there's so much untapped potential to 3D, I seriously hope not.

ESPN 3D Dying Doesn't Mean 3D is Dead

Check out these headlines:

Was 3-D TV a failure? ESPN to end broadcasts
Is 3D TV dead? ESPN 3D to shut down by end of 2013
3DTV Is Officially Never Going To Happen

I keep a newsfeed about 3D film and 3D movies on Google News, and this story has been popping up repeatedly this morning. ESPN 3D has decided they can't continue broadcasting because there's not enough demand for their channel. To be honest, from what I've seen of ESPN 3D in Best Buy 3D TV demos, it doesn't surprise me at all. Their broadcasts consist largely of sports commentary, and one to five grown men talking to you while sitting in an otherwise empty room hardly makes for compelling stereography. Not to mention, many their advertisers really cheaped out on their ads' 3D conversions, resulting in ad time that's a physically painful experience. Some of the sports footage looked kind of neat in 3D, but on active sets you're also halving the frame-rate of broadcasted content, which is going to be very obvious in the fast paced action of sports. The unpredictability of sports also means you're going to be running into uncorrectable problems with the focus/convergence issue. Basically, anybody with any sense in stereographic broadcasting could have told you long before ESPN 3D went live that live sports with 3D ads was going to be a colossal failure.

The problem is that, apart from a promotional channel that Comcast runs to promote their 3D package, ESPN 3D was the only 3D television channel that exists in the United States. Because that effectively killed 3D broadcast stateside, news commentators have jumped to the conclusion that 3D content is unmarketable, and so 3D TV is going to die on the vine in favor of 4K content. Here's why the doomsayers are wrong about 3D TV dying.

I readily admit ESPN was a terrible fit for 3D, but TV is in a situation where they more or less need 3D to work. TV viewership is down generally, especially among younger generations, which projects poorly for the future of broadcast television vs their primary competitor, Internet content (Netflix, YouTube, etc.). One need only look at things like Google Fiber vs Comcast net speeds to see that ISPs can match broadcasters tit for tat in anything that's simply about the amount of information sent (like the resolution increment to 4K). Instead of pushing through a different quantity of data, making 3D content available changes the type of data they're pushing through to something competitors will require time adjusting to. It's like how Apple made a huge dent into the computer market with the iPhone. There was no way into the traditional computing market, so Apple created their own markets in the mobile space and dominated them. 3D is an unclaimed market, while 4K is just an iteration on the same market cable is losing to the Internet.

Some will argue with that by saying that there's no point in creating a market if there's no demand for that market once created. But we don't have enough evidence to say 3D is a low-demand market. For one, 3D TVs haven't fully matured yet. Glasses free lenticular 3D TVs are set to premiere in the near future, which is a technical achievement that will rejuvenate the 3D market if it debuts at a reasonable price. Another point is that 3D content has been proven to have a sizable market interested in the 3D aspect, as evidenced by Avatar, The Avengers, and Life of Pi (all of which did tremendously well in their 3D exhibitions). The problem is not a lack of demand, rather the immaturity of the market.

Perhaps someone will argue that we've spent too long in the infancy of 3D, that the market has been ruined, and will never come back. These people haven't seen Nintendo's market take technology out of infancy to great market appeal. They'll know about the Wii, but they won't connect that it's an iteration on the technology of the Power Glove. The Power Glove was a failure critically and commercially. The Wii wowed the world at its release. Yet both were motion based controls for video games using infrared sensors to detect the controller in space. The Wii just had improved technology. 3D currently suffers from a lot of incompetency in its production, as Clash of the Titans or ESPN 3D's ads could easily prove. What we're seeing is too often like somebody pretending student films represent a permissible standard for film or television in general. It's simply put an immature market full of people learning the ropes of 3D video.

Will 3D TV make a comeback? Only time will tell for certain. But it's certainly foolhardy to declare it dead just because a single channel couldn't forge a new market with a bad entry to it.

Equipment Plug

This is just a quick little blurb because I've seen way too many anti-3D people complaining about wearing 3D glasses on top of 3D glasses. That's not a problem, and the reason why is these little guys right here:

These things are the CinePro Clip-on 3D Glasses. I don't personally need glasses, but I bought a pair anyway so I could watch 3D movies with family and friends. But once I recieved them, I actually started wishing that I did wear glasses! These are incredibly comfortable and lightweight, yet sturdy, so that they fit on glasses without much issue. That's not what impressed me, though. Out of curiosity, I tested them out on my 3D TV at home, and to my surprise discovered that they let in an impressive amount of light, addressing the sense of dimness and color fade that 3D glasses are infamous for bringing. If you use glasses, these things will probably put you about $6 in the hole one time, and then 3D movies will be instantly better for you bespeckled folks.

The one downside I can say about these glasses is that one time that I used them, the clip on the top of them snapped. It was possible to fix (without tools), but it was an annoyance that probably should have been avoidable. It's a minor nuisance though, and one that you'll likely not even run into it yourself.

So if you for any reason want or need to see a 3D version of a movie and wear glasses, do yourself a favor and buy these. They're cheap, and they'll make life easier for you.

Background

You know, it occurs to me that you can't see the image I use for my background very well when you use the image in the context of a background. So I figured I'd provide the picture in a post itself for people to look at, without content redirecting your eye (since the image was a background, I converged so the entire image falls into the screen rather than anything popping out, which you'll recall from my focus/convergence post means the blog content forcefully draws your eye away from the background when you're wearing 3D glasses).

Here's the picture. I took it myself from a park not far from where I live.

As I'm presenting it for closer inspection than as my background, though, I'm starting to get self-concious about the quality of the shot. The only non-cell phone / tablet camera (meaning the only camera I can mount on a tripod) that I own is a Fujifilm W3 Real 3D camera. It's a consumer camera, which unfortunately means a fixed interocular distance at roughly the same distance apart as the human eyes. Unfortunately, that distance tends to de-emphasize depth in landscape shots over miles of distance like we see in this picture. Consequently, I did not rely on the camera's built in 3D capabilities.

What I did was bring my camera and my tripod, set it up to snap the left frame, and then move it around a foot to the right to snap the right frame. I used the tripod to allow for a fixed height of the images so try and combat mismatching images. The ground isn't completely level, as you can tell looking at especially the pipe or the lamp post. It's not a huge violation, and shouldn't be off enough to hurt your eyes too much, but it is something that embarasses me.

Another thing I failed to consider when taking the photo was the moving objects in the frame, specifically the clouds and the smoke coming from the smokestack off in the difference (look closely, and you'll see that especially the smokestack is a different shape between the red and cyan frames). While this makes the smoke look really weird, it kind of worked with the clouds. This shot is facing west, and the clouds were moving north that day, or to the right of this picture. Consequently, the clouds aren't as far apart from each other than the more static objects in the picture, and therefore in the final 3D picture have their depth accentuated more than anything else in the picture. This is definitely an unintended stereoscopic mistake, but I consider it an improvement on the picture rather than an embarrassment like the smokestack, pipe, or lamppost. In this picture, the clouds having unrealistic depth makes them feel like they're not clouds at all, but rather a blanket covering the sky. It's not something I've ever literally seen in life, but it gives the heavens a sense of magic. The fact that it was an accidental only emphasizes that, (although the smokestack cutting into them highlights the fact that this was an error).

All in all, I'm not proud of this picture thanks to all the errors that I know should have been fixable. But they're small, and I appreciate the accidental majesty of the picture. Even so, I'm thinking it might be time to find another picture and switch them up. We'll see what I can do. I'm not making any promises.

Ranty McRanterson

I was just reading something, and I got absolutely set off in a tizzy of nerd rage. What's worse is that it's an insignificant little blurb in an article nobody has read. It's just so sure of itself, yet so unsupportable. I can't seem to shake it. So, if you'll bare with me a moment, I need to get this off my chest by ranting about it here.

What I'm complaining about is Charlie Gates' rant from here, and specifically the part that says this:

Let's face it, 3D is rubbish and pointless. It makes films gloomy, it's distracting, slightly headache-inducing, doesn't add anything to a film, miniaturises everything and takes you out of the film. Like I said, rubbish.

Now, I've already pointed out several ways on this Red/Cyan Movies that the first sentence is wrong, but I'm going to repeat myself anyway. 3D allows the director to forcefully direct the viewer's eye toward objects he deems important (a great way to suggest something is a coverup, or mandate that "can't look away" feeling, which makes it useful for mysteries or love stories). 3D asserts the reality of the scene before you (valuable in something like Life of Pi where identifying what is real is thematically important to the story). 3D provides a frame for the audience to understand their relation to the film, or to become a character in it so to speak (which Batman: Arkham City used to great effect). Emphasized depth can create a sense of vibrancy to a scene (like in Coraline, where it was used to make the other world feel exciting compared to Coraline's boring real home).

Things like these may not be applicable in every situation (I've always said Inception wouldn't have worked in 3D because of the face that 3D asserts reality, which would make the dream world logic feel artificial and wrong), but a generalized statement like "3D is rubbish and pointless" is not a supportable claim when it has worked so tremendously in as many films (and other media) as it has worked. But that only address his claim that 3D is pointless (a claim which he never supports). Let's dissect his support for the claim that 3D is rubbish.

His first complaint is that it "makes films gloomy[.]" First off, he just said 3D was pointless, but gloominess would be a positive in situations like we find in The Corpse Bride, Coraline or James and the Giant Peach... there are a lot of well liked films for which gloominess would be a plus. In that way, he just contradicted himself, because that leads to the conclusion that these films are too muted in gloominess due to their lack of 3D. Of course, I'm nitpicking because I know what he really meant was that there's a color fade and light loss caused by the reflective screens and 3D glasses. Thing is, that's easy to compensate for, and is compensated for in good theaters by the inclusion of brighter projectors and better screens. The argument that 3D films are gloomy is akin to me saying that 2D films click too much because the only 2D films I see are in a second run theater with loud projectors. It's not fair to blame bad exhibition on the film itself!

His next complaint is that 3D is "distracting[.]" I think what he means is that it calls attention to itself, pulling you out of the movie. I want to debunk this two ways. First, by citing Mark Kermode's review of Toy Story 3, where he declared that it did something he didn't think was possible, by making him "forget [he] was watching a 3D movie." This speaks to the idea that it's technique that causes 3D to call attention to itself, not the format itself (which also becomes less naturally novel and self-exerting as audiences get used to it). That said, calling attention to itself is not something bad in all cinematic experiences. Nobody would declare the use of color in The Wizard of Oz to be poor because it calls attention to itself, nor would they do so for the similar use of sound in The Jazz Singer (1927). It's not "distracting," but enhancing in situations where a gimmick intelligently calls attention to itself.

He then complains that 3D movies are "slightly headache inducing[.]" Headaches from 3D film are mitigated entirely in normal people by good stereography. They're not a problem that should delegitimize 3D film any more than motion sickness from shaky cameras should delegitimize film as a whole. There are a portion of people who literally cannot see 3D movies due to stereoscopic vision problems, but killing the 3D film industry for that reason has always seemed similar to nixing film soundtracks on behalf of the deaf, or like closing 5 Guys Burgers to protect people with peanut allergies. It's not necessary to kill an industry just because there's a demographic that can't experience it for medical reasons.

When he says 3D "doesn't add anything to the film," he's just him repeating himself about something I've already addressed, so I'm going to skip to his claim that 3D "miniaturises everything[.]" This one puzzles me the most, especially since the film he's commenting on, Jurassic Park, was a perfect example of how large and threatening big things can be in 3D (especially the first scene with the T-rex). I Googled his claim to see what support I could possibly find for that statement, and instead found that article was the number one result, with a retracted statement by Guillermo Del Toro regarding Pacific Rim as the only statement competing with his own. Aside from the statement being retracted (because it was about why Pacific Rim wouldn't be 3D, when it ultimately was converted to 3D), What Del Toro was talking about wasn't applicable to all situations. His complaint was that when shooting in 3D, your interocular setting is representative of the point of view you're using in the film. But with the size of the monsters in Pacific Rim, you need to switch away from the human view in order for the monsters to have any discernable depth, due to a reduction of parallax on far away objects when using settings that mimic a human point of view. Normal films, not films like Pacific Rim, don't have these stingy viewing requirements (which, again, I point out that Del Toro resolved with the use of 3D conversion as opposed to 3D filming, and hence retracted his statement). 

I'm also going to skip "takes you out of the film" because that seems like it's rehashing what he said about 3D being "distracting[.]" And that pretty much covers this ridiculous statement. All that's left is a smug reaffirmation of that garbage. That smugness is the reason that this post turned as ranty as it did. I would be fine if people would just not like 3D and be done with it. But some cinephiles seem to be on this holy war to destroy stereoscopy, even though nobody's forcing them to attend 3D showings. It's ridiculous that I can't be allowed to enjoy 3D movies just because the mere existence of a format they don't understand and therefore don't like exists! But I digress. I better just stop before this turns into a novel.

The Jurassic Park Lesson on Why 3D is Unpopular

Back when I started this blog, I was well aware that I was writing to a niche market of people who, like me, see 3D as a potential improvement to the film industry. I still stand by that. I want to see 3D flourish into the great cinematic experience it should be. That said, if 3D was the lump sum of its awesome potential, I wouldn't need this blog to defend it, and my recent voyage to the cinema to see Jurassic Park 3D led me to understand why 3D isn't appreciated.

Barring a few conversion errors (transparent objects and between trees being the largest offenders), the 3D conversion in this film was a fantastic technical achievement. When those conversion errors weren't present, I would not have been able to easily identify this as a non-native 3D movie, thanks to the care they obviously took to accurately map people and objects. Given the number of details they got right, I am permissive of the errors that persisted. Regarding the cinematic benefit, 3D didn't always help (some scenes were framed so that the 3D version drew your eye away from the action of the scene due to the convergence/focus technique I described in a previous post), but when it did help it felt like the movie's natural state was in 3D (in particular, I think of that vegetarian hacker kid dangling from the air vents above a hungry velociraptor). They made the best possible 3D conversion for this film, and the studio should be proud of what they created. It was extremely good, but they were contending against external elements outside studio control that fought my attempts to enjoy it.

The first was the critics. Now, admittedly, most critics gave Jurassic Park 3D favorable reviews, even for the 3D. But, as I've seen with critics before, nobody has ever talked qualitatively about why the 3D was good. And unfortunately, the first critic I found to actually give some sort of qualitative assessment claimed that, "like most 3D conversions, it looked like a cardboard cutout." (Forgive the lack of a reference; I don't want them to receive traffic, and therefore ad money for such a ludicrous statement.) So, we have an outright lie declaring the film poorly produced technically, or no information to go on at all about attending this movie. I imagine a number of people were filtered out of wanting to see the film at this stage.

The second problem was the theater itself. What hurt me especially was that I wanted to attend a premium showing of the film. Consequently, I purchased tickets for a showing labeled under Cinemark's XD branding (which is supposed to compete with IMAX as a premium screen size and projector quality). The theater I attended was instead using the XD branding for a film that was clearly being shown in a regular movie theater rather than an XD one. On top of that, I never recieved a pair of 3D glasses (fortunately I had snuck in my own pair of higher quality glasses). I wasn't charged the XD price for the showing, but I am still annoyed that I was unable to attend what I intended to when I arrived, and the staff provided me otherwise poor service.

Speaking of which, the third problem was also the theater's fault. Jurassic Park 3D makes heavy use of floating windows to keep the 2D film decisions of the movie from hurting you eyes in the 3D version. But there's a problem common enough that Disney created a tutorial video for theater employees specifically telling them not to do what they did in the theater I attended. Basically, in 2D theaters, employees will sometimes cut off the edges of the movie because it's difficult to set up the movie precisely and there's rarely critical information there in 2D movies. But floating windows exist entirely in the edges. Consequently, I had the worst of both worlds: frame violations and black bars on the edge of the screen.

Now, this isn't meant to be a post about how bad that theater is. Typically when I've attended this theater, my experience has been great (I would still recommend it to any of my friends as my preferred theater). But it highlights 3D film's biggest weakness: its complexity. There are so many layers to a successful 3D exhibition that if any portion of it is inadequate at all, 3D becomes a painful experience. Everything has to be just right, or audiences will find it unacceptable (especially since it's billed as a premium service), so there's no room for laziness or incompetence in the 3D business.

I think that may also help to explain why 3D TV is failing to gain traction as well. While it fixes the problems I had in the cinema by being completely in control of exhibition, there are few channels available to those interested in 3D (Comcast, for example, has a 3D demo channel and ESPN 3D). Those that do air commercials from whoever's brave enough to advertise on such a slim market. The people who advertise resort to the cheapest possible conversion for their commercials (I saw one where the actors in the ad looked like anorexic zombies because their necks had no depth whatsoever).

That said, this doesn't mean 3D is bad, or that it will ultimately fail. Jurassic Park 3D is doing very well at the box office, and 3D TV purchases are way up this year. This market will survive, but only if it insists on some quality control.

Could a simple protective film be the future of glasses-free 3D viewing?

I didn't come up with that title. I stole it from one of those ad-in-disguise news articles that's been going around Malaysian news sources. There's an example here, but I'll give you the gist of what they're saying, and then answer the question from the headline.

Developed in Singapore by Temasek Polytechnic (TP) and A*STAR's Institute of Materials Research and Engineering over the course of two years, the film, called EyeFly 3D and set to go on sale globally in May, contains 500,000 microscopic lenses that can render static and moving images in stereoscopic 3D, yet it is only 0.1mm thick, making it the same size and thickness as traditional screen protectors.
It won't take a user's existing 2D images and films and convert them magically in front of their eyes, but it can take any content shot in 3D and display it as such, without the need for 3D glasses.

They use a lot of numbers and buzzwords to make what EyeFly is doing sound impressive and science-y. And while what they're doing is cool, they are over-hyping their product just a tad by pretending it's a revolution. This is not "the future of glasses free 3D viewing," but a re-application of old technology we've seen in a number of other products (The Nintendo 3DS is the first to come to mind, but less famous examples include the HTC EVO 3D, the LG Optimus 3D, The Fujifilm W3 Finepix 3D Camera, or the sticker covers on the sleeve of 3D Blu-rays).

This technology is what's known as a parallax barrier, in which precisely cut slits in a screen (or ridges in the case of those 3D stickers that 3D Blu-rays use) are used to direct images individually to your eyes. In the case of EyeFly, they've created a film that you can put over your existing smartphone to allow this kind of image separation. They've also created software for the iPhone that will allow you to transform normal stereoscopic video into an interleaved video format that will allow video to play on your phone after you put this film on it (although they're planning an Android version for the Galaxy S2 as well).

It's a technology that works, and a good way to cheaply upgrade from a 2D to a 3D smartphone. It will present the same problems I've previously highlighted with autostereoscopic displays, including the narrow viewing angle, and halving your phone's resolution. Halving your phone's resolution could also affect the text displayed on it, by the way. I'd have to actually see the product in action to know by how much, but difficulty reading is something to look for in reviews and to take into consideration before buying.

But I digress. The conclusion here is that this isn't revolutionary technology. It's economy class technology that will get the job done if you're looking for a cheap 3D smartphone. It is something I'd look into myself (assuming their software ever supports Nexus line Android smartphones and tablets, or some 3rd party makes universal android software for them), but not something I'd recommend without first seeing it in action. EyeFly looks like an interesting product, but that company is really misinforming the public about why their product is so interesting. That makes me suspicious about their ethics as a company, so my advice is to wait for reviews to know if that product is worth buying. Hopefully they just hired a marketing department that doesn't know what they're marketing.

Why The Focus Convergence Problem Is Actually a Good Thing

I'm referencing an article written by Roger Ebert that heavily references Walter Murch. In that article, the two argue that 3D cannot be a viable format due to the way it changes how your eyes work. It's not something that should be impossible for your eyes to do (it requires using your exterior and interior eye-muscles separately), but it's understandable how that can be stressful to your eye muscles. It's similar work to trying to lift your ring finger when the rest of your fingers are clenched.

Modern stereographers seem to try and solve this dilemma by spending the majority of a movie converging on the object at which you're meant to be looking. Inf films that do this, you're mostly converging and focusing on the same object, so your eye muscles are once again in unison. Frequent 3D cinema goers will therefore naturally look at the focal object, since it's the one that provides the least resistance for their eyes. Once you understand this, and once audiences have been trained to accept this, this makes it one of the most powerful tools that 3D cinema gives a filmmaker.

I noticed this recently when I was watching Hotel Transylvania in 3D. I didn't expect much from the 3D because the director of the film has gone on record saying he only made it 3D because the producers of it forced him to make it 3D. But there was one scene that (probably unintentionally) really stood out.

In the film, Dracula is attempting to plan his daughter's 1,018th birthday, but is being shown up by a human hiker that randomly wandered in and quickly became the life of the party. The scene shows all of the hotel's monster guests crowded around the human hiker, while Dracula is screaming in the background and vying for their attention. When this shot was composed in 3D, the crowd and the human were converged, standing right where the screen was, and Dracula was placed firmly into the positive space.

What interested me about this scene was that Dracula was moving, making noise, and by all means should have been drawing attention to himself. In fact, I tried to pay attention to him, but I found myself experiencing resistance. Because he wasn't converged and the other characters were, I felt like I actually couldn't look at him.

At that point it dawned on me. I can use 3D to hide things in plain sight. While art has typically involved the use of line and color to draw a viewer's eye to a desirable object, 3D has the ability to draw a viewer's eye away from an unintended object. This, of course, works the opposite way for objects coming into the negative space (which may explain why people are under the impression that negative space is the only part that actually makes something 3D), with negative space objects drawing attention away from where the viewer's eye naturally wants to rest.

Admittedly, this isn't a brand new discovery. Alfred Hitchcock already knew about and applied this concept to 3D film in his movie, Dial 'M' for Murder, and I know of at least one other person I've personally met who has noticed this before. Still, it's an interesting concept that is not commonly understood by those inside or outside of the film industry. By creating areas that are actually uncomfortable for your eye, the filmmaker is given complete control to hide or emphasize subjects of a scene. And this can be used to effect some powerful emotions.

For example, let's say you're hypothetically creating a movie about a ninja, and he needs to sneak into his target's abode unseen. You could converge on objects other than him with him in positive space, and he'll feel like a superb expert of his art, since the audience feels compelled not to see him. Conversely, if you want to make him appear vulnerable, you can converge on him with guards in the positive space of the shot, or even shoot with him protruding into the negative space. Suddenly, he's calling attention to himself and not seeing his enemies coming. You worry for him, because you feel him slipping in his stealth.

Or assume you've been tasked with remaking Cipher in the Snow, or some other movie with a protagonist that doesn't draw attention to himself. Telling his story with him in the positive space of the picture will immediately communicate how withdrawn and lonely he is, before a line is even uttered or a gesture made to make him into an emotionally withdrawn character. He's withdrawn emotionally because he appears withdrawn physically.

All this would not be possible if we managed to somehow solve the focus and convergence issue, because objects would no longer cause discomfort in these kinds of shots. You'd be able to stare at Dracula too easily, making him lose his desperation. 2D film is therefore too distracting for certain messages, while 3D makes distraction a non-issue. And to me, that's an amazing quality, not a problem challenging its existence.

So with all due respect to Mr. Ebert and Murch, I disagree with your assessment.

3D Realism

There's an idea that I've been meaning to test (but have never got around to). It has come from a few thing. First, nearly everyone I've interviewed seems to believe that 3D makes an image appear more realistic. Technically speaking, that's not true (there are so many ways that 3D film differs from the way we see 3D objects in real life that I intend to exploit in anything I make), but the fact that people have this sensation is why 3D is generally perceived to only be good for action and horror films (which is ludicrous when you consider the success of films like Hugo and Life of Pi, but I digress).


Second, I realized at one point in my life that my favorite film, Inception, would only work in 2D. This is in no small part because of the Penrose Steps sequences in that film. The Penrose Steps are an impossible staircase that can be drawn in a 2D space to look like they're infinitely descending, because they use inconsistent depth cues to create the illusion of descending. It's impossible to recreate in a 3D space without actually altering the depth. That's the reason it wouldn't work in Inception. Inception was based around existing in a dream world where the logical rules of existence are suspended and replaced with dream logic. The Penrose Steps can exist in this kind of warped logic world because they are impossible but appear possible, which gives the feel that even the impossible is possible that the Inception dream world needs. If converted to 3D, the warping depth needed to create them would both stand out like a sore thumb and call attention to the impossible dream logic, so that it is no longer immersing you in the dream world. 2D doesn't have these limitations, since the Penrose steps can safely exist in a 2D world.

Third, I noticed simply from writing this blog how difficult it is to think about objects in 3D. I don't entirely understand it. I know I watched Finding Nemo in 3D. But every time I think about it, images from a 2D version of that film pop into my mind. It makes thinking about, dissecting, and analyzing stereography require accessing a memory about how I felt about what I was seeing rather than actually recalling the scene composition itself (which is really hard to do, by the way). Eventually I came to the conclusion that this means that while I see things in 3D, I think about things in 2D. I also regularly browse YouTube videos for criticism of 3D to debate, and one of the most mystifying claims people make is that, when they think about it, they don't really remember being wowed by the 3D after the initial wow factor wore off. I take them at their word, but I place more emphasis on the remember factor. I do know from watching 3D that the 3D images never disappear, so I'm led to conclude that people lose the concept of how wonderful a 3D image is because it's only possible to experience 3D, not recall it from memory.

The broader conclusion from all 3 observations is that people react to 3D films in a different way than they do with 2D films. Perhaps this is what people refer to as immersion, but I would describe it differently. In my mind, 3D films make you feel like you're watching something that actually happened, while 2D films make you feel like you're recalling something somebody told you. Put another way, 3D films make you feel like you're actually there for something, while 2D films feel like a memory. This means that 2D films are wholly capable of immersing you in their world, story, etc. But they embed themselves in you like an out of body experience. 3D films don't do this. Rather than feeling displaced in time, 3D makes everything feel current, real, and impactful in a more direct sense than the general human approach that 2D film provides.

To test this, I want to make a 3D film that incorporates both 2D and 3D footage. I wouldn't be the first to do this, but I've never seen anybody else do it this way. I once saw a low budget 3D film from the CMF3D film festival that combined 2D and 3D footage, but I felt like they did it backwards. In their film, called "Collapse," a man takes a drug that causes him to start hallucinating, with the hallucinated world presented as 3D footage (with no other differences). It felt wrong, because the 3D footage felt more real, and his insistence that he was damaged for seeing things this way seemed counter-intuitive and made the less realistic feeling 2D images stick out more than the hallucinations (which were supposed to be the weird part). Instead, I want to make a film that uses 2D to directly convey the idea that some scenes are thoughts, or visions and imaginings. If I'm right, the 2D images will not stick out the way they did in Collapse, but instead flow and create the sensation that you're thinking about things when the 2D hits, and experiencing things when the 3D hits.

Right now, though, this is only a theory. I need people willing to work with me on this experiment, but so many people have been turned off of 3D lately that nobody else seems interested in making this thing. However, if I can find a group to work with me on this, and it turns out I'm right, it could be a very helpful step toward creating a definitive 3D film grammar. Imagine all the questions this could answer about why 3D works or doesn't work in a given title! Imagine how much more useful this would make 3D as a tool for a filmmaker!

If you've ever asked me, I've always said that 3D movies should be shown exclusively in 3D, and 2D movies exclusively in 2D. The reason why is that I have thoughts like this one about 3D and realism vs 2D and imagination that make it seem that certain techniques just don't work in both mediums, and that both 2D and 3D film are both being held back from their full potential by being forcefully shown in both formats. But that's a topic for another day. For now, I'm just thinking about techniques, and wondering if this one I've never seen before would be valuable.

The Value of Negative Space

It's been a while since my last update. I have been working on this blog; I've just scrapped everything I've posted because none of it has been good enough yet. Hopefully this won't be another post like that, because whether it is or not I'm posting it anyway.

First, a little context for what I'm talking about. In 3D film, you have the ability to render objects in front or behind the screen. In order to be able to describe the things in front and behind the screen, stereographers needed a way to address 3D space. They decided to name the space behind the screen, "positive space," because it increases the amount of space between the audience and the object. Conversely, everything that gets closer to the audience, or "pops out" of the screen, is said to be in the "negative space." I bring this up because there's been this trend lately to deem any use of negative space as "gimmicky." But such a blanket statement is too closed-minded. There are so many reasons that negative space can and should be utilized in 3D movies!

Now, I'm not talking about the lowbrow reasons, meant just for the fun of seeing things protrude from the screen that you can then touch. I should clarify. When I say lowbrow, I mean appeal entirely for the novelty. Things like the scene early in Journey to the Center of the Earth where the lead character spits into a sink, just so the water can splatter well in front of the screen. With time, the novelty of this effect fades. The thing is that these shots aren't always inherently meant for the purpose of novelty, and should not be resisted just because they exist.

Not All Popout Was Meant to Be Gimmicky

The first reason I say this is because of the 3D version of Finding Nemo (which not enough people have seen). If you've seen either version, you'll recall that early in the film, there's a scene where Marlin is exhibiting some comical cowardice by over-cautiously exiting and entering the sea anemone where he lives. The shot is framed so that, in the 3D version, Marlin and Nemo swim from out of the anemone and into the negative space. Conventional wisdom of 3D films would suggest that this scene must have then been shot to exploit the novelty of the 3D effect. While it does exploit it (very amusingly, I might add), the idea that it was framed specifically to exploit it is absurd. Finding Nemo was originally created as a 2D film, and then was later re-rendered in 3D as an afterthought to capitalize on the new 3D boom. They never originally intended that scene to be experienced in 3D. Hence, it couldn't have been composed specifically for 3D. It's just the most logical way to frame that scene, whether in 2D or 3D.

3D Framing Effects an Emotion

But more than just negative space occasionally making the most sense, negative space can be used to positive effect (if you'll pardon the pun). First, because negative space literally brings an object closer to the viewer. This enables filmmakers to have a tool in their tool belt that typically has been only available to theatrical productions; position away from or close to the audience. That may seem unimportant at first glance, but how close a person or thing is to you affects your emotions toward them. If they are further away than it seems they should be, they feel emotionally unattached, withdrawn from your world (to use a word that applies both literally and emotionally, they appear distant).  But if they're too close to you, they feel invasive, and you feel uncomfortable.

Let's take, for example, Hugo (a rightly celebrated champion of 3D cinema). There is a scene in which the titular character, Hugo, is confronting a grumpy toy maker to retrieve a journal that the toy maker had taken away. He instead finds that the toy maker has burned his journal. To compose the emotion of this scene in 3D, Martin Scorsese decided it would be useful to show a scene where Hugo is holding his ashen journal out into the screen, the camera facing upward, and the ashes floating into the negative space. The ashes come extremely close to the viewer (uncomfortably so). This sense of discomfort is then subconsciously transferred back onto Hugo, with whom we empathize at the loss of his journal. It's a beautifully composed scene, which doesn't work as well in 2D, and most certainly wouldn't be possible if 3D were forbidden to utilize negative space, as so many critics are calling for in their haste to declare 3D a useless gimmick.

Involving the Audience

Another valuable use of negative space is the mere fact that negative space is the area that the audience inhabits. Hence, unless a floating frame is negating that effect, using the negative space is a way to invite the audience to explore their own role in the events unfolding on screen. I discovered this when playing the video game, Batman: Arkham City. There's a scene in which Batman confronts Mr. Freeze about creating an antidote to a poison that the Joker used to poison Batman. Mr. Freeze decided to use antidote as leverage to force Batman into serving his own goals. Mr. Freeze crescendos his power over Batman by dramatically holding the antidote in front of him while he crushes it. The 3D version frames this so that Mr. Feeze's hand and the antidote reach in front of the screen. The first time I played, I subconsciously decided to try and reach for the antidote, as taking the role of Batman in this scene made me feel desperate. But I wasn't quick enough. Mr. Freeze crushed the antidote between my fingers. I played again at a later date and was a little quicker that time. Even then, however, my fingers passed right through the vial. Either way the message was clear. Despite my best efforts, that vial was unobtainable. I was weaker than Freeze, and that makes me desperate.

Not every situation is identical to the one in Arkham City, but there are plenty of situations in which a filmmaker may want to include the audience in their film world by utilizing negative space. Perhaps they want to create a similar helplessness by showing failure to grab an outstretched hand in negative space. Perhaps they want to invite you into the magic of a birthday cake's candles by holding it close enough for you to blow them out yourself. It all depends on the script. But the point is filmmakers and critics do film a disservice by immediately declaring all use of objects protruding into negative space to be gimmicky. Negative space is potent when applied judiciously. And, to be honest, I'd like to see more of it.

Glasses No Longer Needed

This is just a quick update. You remember how in a previous post I said glasses free 3D TVs hadn't caught on because you could only view them from one angle? Well, I neglected to mention Lenticular displays. See, there's this type of display that can do glasses free 3D from any angle, but it requires a lot more information that two video images, and is not compatible with current dual video films. However, it is now more accurate to say that it was incompatible.

You see, at CES 2013, Dolby demoed a brand new 4k resolution (higher resolution than most theaters currently show movies) lenticular 3D TV that uses internal software to convert stereoscopic inputs into lenticular outputs. In case you haven't been following along with my geek speak, that means there now exists a theater quality 3D TV that you don't need glasses to watch.

It'll probably still feel weird to people with binocular vision problems, but this is really exciting. Dolby have just solved two of the three problems I hear most often when people criticize 3D: The need to wear glasses, and the dimming of the image. Headaches for people with binocular vision deficiencies could still be a problem, but all-in-all, this may be the exact thing 3D needs to make it mainstream (assuming it's reasonably priced).

Go Read This Other Post

I just did a guest post on another blog. This is it. Go read that, please. It might as well be posted here.