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.