3D Film, What’s the Point?
July 19, 2009
I’ve seen a lot of the Real D 3D digital presentations of films since they launched in 2007 with Beowulf, and since then I’ve been meaning to share my thoughts. Having seen a range of remakes, real life and animated 3D movies now, I’ve come to the conclusion that 3D can compliment a film experience if it’s immersive and worked into the story rather than the shameful pointy gimmickry that many seem to crave from 3D films. The best case in point being My Bloody Valentine 3D, which used a pick axe as the antagonist’s weapon of choice; possibly the pointiest of all weapons used in a horror movie.
Remakes don’t tend to work that well either, as little seems to stand out, other than the initial title graphics and text credits, such as the snow effect used in Nightmare Before Christmas. Sadly, whilst it sort of works in ordinary cinemas, unlike IMAX, the screen isn’t even wide enough to fill your peripheral vision enough to justify the effect. I have no idea how consumer electronics manufacturers believe that they can achieve similar effects in TV services such as Sky 3D.
Ultimately though, I’ll continue to see 3D movies for the digital presentation, particularly movies like Bolt and Ice Age. They’ve been digital throughout production, and I believe deserve to be shown in digital. To me, digital presentation in the cinema highlights detail, which even works in live action movies such as Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (incidentally the first film I saw digitally screened at the cinema).
It’s a shame then that Cineworld recently decided to begin charging to see 3D movies, to justify the costs to them. I believe that they have to pay a license fee to Real D, as well as the glasses, and digital projectors, as well as the cost for the movies themselves. But then, I don’t really care for the 3D, but prefer digital screenings over film. Digital films should also be theoretically cheaper to produce and distribute than film, as essentially it’s a hard drive, and has the added benefit of always looking just as pristine over and over again.
Hopefully as cinemas continue to invest in digital hardware, even non-3D films will be shown digitally.
I was lucky to see Star Trek in a digital presentation, and Ice Age 3 (but not 3D) was also digital – but equally the film didn’t resort to “cheap 3D trickery” (or “waving pointy things at the audience”)
Bolt was superb, and demonstrated how 3D should be done – adding depth to a film that would stand alone perfectly well in 2D to create an immersive experience.
Hopefully that additional charge for 3D will result in more screens being upgraded to digital (although I’d hate to see film die completely, for modern films, especially those which have lots of CG effects, they were made digitally, they need to be shown digitally…
Like you though, I cannot see how “consumer” 3D will work – can you really imagine families sitting around the TV all wearing Real-D glasses?
Digital cinema? I’m almost ashamed to never have even heard of that in a theatre… Im guessing us north-easterners are a little behind…