Threee Dee Glasses

  Okay I’ve come to a point where I feel a need to say something. 3D is not a gimmick. I’ve heard so many people either saying they have never seen a 3D film or they saw one and didn’t see the point. The first problem for 3D to overcome is to get people to stop thinking of red and blue glasses which I think the last couple of years of cinema has managed to achieve. So maybe it wasn’t worth mentioning really.

  Another problem I think stems from this need that so many people have to simplify things. With technology things have to be labelled and I think people struggle with 3D because it’s not easy to simplify. It is not the step beyond HD for the simple reason that for a lot of people the 3D effect doesn’t work. Plus so many people get hung up on the idea of the glasses, something which I personally don’t think is a huge sacrifice. So if it’s not a technological advancement then it’s a gimmick. A one-time show. A magician with a fake tan shouting “hey, hey I learnt a new trick!”

  But life is complex and so is 3D. It could be there to create a spectacle. This is what James Cameron was trying to do with Avatar, he wanted to bring the spectacle back to cinema. Despicable Me used it in a really fun way, putting you on a rollercoaster with the characters. It was brilliant. Coraline used 3D in a really clever way, purposely adding more depth to the fantasy world Coraline visited to make it seem more wondrous than the dull flat looking reality.

  Toy Story 3 used 3D and a lot of people struggled to think why. Nothing jumped out or did anything to break the fourth (or third) wall. Here 3D wasn’t a spectacle. And it wasn’t meant to be. The 3D was merely part of the fabric of the film. Like sound design, editing and cinematography 3D is there to help build the believability of the world we’re viewing. 3D made me feel like I could reach in to the film and pick up Woody for myself but for most of the time my mind failed to acknowledge that the 3D was there. My mind was focused on what it’s supposed to be focused on when watching a movie, the story.

  Another problem 3D has to overcome is the current trend of 3D conversions. For those who don’t know, the difference is that in a normal 3D movie it is filmed with a stereoscopic 3D camera (pretty much 2 cameras stuck together) whereas a conversion takes an ordinary 2D film and artificially creates a 3D effect (like Alice in Wonderland and The Last Airbender). For someone who knows what they’re looking for the difference is obvious. I’ve seen a show reel by a company that helps production companies make good looking stereoscopic films. On the show reel were a mix of dramas, sci-fi and documentaries. All of them benefited from the beauty that was the 3D effect. So take it from someone who’s seen the future of 3D, when done well 3D is a joy to behold.

Next on the 3D rant list, why the Nintendo 3DS manages to simultaneously be and not be the future of 3D