Analyst Sees Drop in 3D Attendance
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Ray Faiola
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I much prefer three-dimensional characters to 3-D movies.
Classic Film Scores on CD
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You forgot one Jack, the genuine film IMAX 3-D system! I'm fortunate enough to have four of the film-based systems within a reasonable driving distance from me. AFAIK, IMAX isn't selling any more of the film-based 3D systems, but they do continue to support them with films. (Pirates IV is currently showing at my local IMAX in 3D.)Jack Theakston wrote:From the numbers I've seen, Technicolor (who is the only 3D film system out there right now) has a little over 500 installations vs. about 22,000 D-3D screens.
Derek
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Jack Theakston
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Hillary H.
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There is also Lenny Lipton's Oculus3D film-based system, but I guess that's not gaining any traction...
http://www.oculus3d.com/This%20is%20Ocu ... ation.html
http://www.oculus3d.com/This%20is%20Ocu ... ation.html
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silentfilm
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http://www.wired.com/underwire/2011/07/4-d-movies/
Movies that shake, rattle and roll viewers, or assault their senses of smell, might become the next big thing if a new wave of so-called 4-D technologies grabs filmgoers’ imaginations.
As the 3-D revolution spawned by 2009’s sci-fi stunner Avatar starts to lose some of its luster, the next logical step in immersive cinema could come from turning movies into a full-body experience.
“Let’s say you’ve got Harry Potter on his broomstick playing Quidditch,” said Guy Marcoux, vice president of marketing at D-Box Technologies, a Canadian firm that has motion-synchronized seats installed in 98 venues worldwide. “We will make you feel as if you are on that broomstick. If he banks left or right, you’ll feel that, or if he drops, we create that free-floating effect. And if wind is coming, you’ll feel vibration in your chair.”
D-Box’s hyperactive theater seats are one of several new technologies designed, like 3-D, to make movies more immersive for audiences and more profitable for studios. As cinema owners struggle to compete with personal home theaters decked out with massive screens, sphincter-rattling subwoofers and, increasingly, 3-D screens, 4-D gimmicks point toward a way to bring the “only in theaters” experience to the next level.
Working out of production offices in Burbank, California, D-Box’s motion designers spent about 350 hours writing code that will trigger bumps, jolts and jiggles for special screenings of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 when the franchise finale opens Friday.
“We have a database with more than 5,000 separate motion ‘waves,’” Marcoux told Wired.com by phone. The company’s “motion track” software responds frame by frame to on-screen action with “pitch, roll and heave” options.
Once studio post-production executives sign off on the motion work — directors don’t get involved — motion programming is encoded onto hard drives that are sent to specially equipped theaters to control chairs embedded with electromechanical pistons. D-Box splits revenues from the $8 premium charge with exhibitors and the studio.
Rival firm CJ CGV is working on pushing the 4-D experience even further. The company operates 13 4DPlex screens in South Korea, where moviegoers sit in vibrating chairs rigged with mist, “breeze” and fragrance effects synced to on-screen action. The Asian outfit will soon launch a demonstration laboratory in Los Angeles to showcase its theater technologies to Hollywood studios.
Confidentiality agreements prohibit the company from discussing details, CJ CGV’s regional director Martin Kim told Wired.com. “All I can tell you at this point is that we are opening a CJ 4DPlex showroom office (not a commercial theater) in Hollywood in September,” Kim said. “Our goal is to simply enhance the movie — not change it.”
Ride the Wild Movie
The types of 4-D thrills delivered by D-Box and 4DPlex resemble the movie-oriented rides at some theme parks, where the carnival-style variant on shake-rattle-and-spray cinema lures millions each year. Given that Hollywood producers routinely hype popcorn movies as being a “great ride,” it’s not surprising that attractions like Disneyland’s Star Wars-themed Star Tours and Universal Studios Hollywood’s King Kong 360 3-D take the concept one step further. The jungle ride, developed with input from King Kong director Peter Jackson and opened last summer, flashes 3-D images of raptors and gorillas inside a darkened soundstage where visitors hurtle around in trams.
In these popular film-ride hybrids, dialog, story and character arcs take a back seat — way back — to visceral sensation, but the theme-park model points toward a day when moviegoers may need to strap themselves into seatbelts as the opening credits roll.
3-D evangelist Jeffrey Katzenberg, who runs DreamWorks Animation, tested the 4-D movie-as-carnival-ride concept eight years ago when he produced Shrek 4D. To see the 13-minute featurette, audience members sat in chairs rigged with tubes that simulated breeze and mist as the characters sailed over the sea.
Katzenberg told the Los Angeles Times that once the story outline was agreed upon, “We said, ‘How can we embellish it, how do we ‘ride’ this movie?” Universal Parks & Resorts vice president and designer Scott Trowbridge added: “3-D can bring the action off the screen, but then we came up with this idea of adding lots of special effects to create a fourth ‘D,’ so the movie basically lands in your lap.”
Sight and Smell
Hollywood Takes a Sniff
The fourth dimension of smell enjoyed a brief if cheesy heyday half a century ago. Here’s a sampling.
Smell-O-Rama (1953) General Electric tests a scent generator that accompanies 3-D images of a rose.
AromaRama (1959) Scents are transmitted through theaters’ air-conditioning systems to accompany travel documentary Behind the Great Wall.
Smell-O-Vision (1960) Originally called Scentovision, this attempt used pipes connected to individual theater seats to transmit odors controlled by projectionists. The movie Scent of Mystery telegraphed plot points through odor when, for example, one character is identified by the smell of pipe tobacco.
Then there’s the Up Your Nose school of 4-D, celebrated by director Robert Rodriguez in his upcoming Spy Kids: All the Time in the World. Taking a playful approach to the fourth dimension, the Austin, Texas-based filmmaker revives the scratch-and-sniff concept introduced by John Waters in his 1981 Odorama movie, Polyester.
Rodriguez calls his version Aroma Vision in the grandiose spirit of 1950s gimmick king William Castle, creator of Percepto, Illusion-O and the Fright Break, ostensibly designed to give frightened viewers of 1961 horror flick Homicidal a chance to exit the theater before their nerves went haywire.
“I was inspired by this throwback to a kind of showmanship where you’re just trying to entertain an audience with anything you can think of that will enhance the experience,” Rodriguez told Wired.com by phone.
University of California at San Diego researcher Sungho Jin takes a more high-tech approach to scent-driven storytelling with a home entertainment prototype that could one day overpower the fake buttery smell of microwave popcorn whipped up by pajama-clad movie watchers.
In partnership with Samsung’s home entertainment division, Jin and his team devised an aroma-release prototype that relies on electrical filaments to vaporize up to 10,000 scented fluids contained in tiny rubber tubes. In a phone interview, Jin, who spent two years developing the matrix-based control technology, offered an example of how his device might work.
“If you’ve got a scene coming up where the character eats pizza, maybe five seconds earlier — because it takes time for the odor to travel to the viewer –the computer program essentially says, ‘OK, hit it!’ and that particular odor will be released,” Jin said.
Gimmickry vs. Vision
During the 20th century, 4-D concepts like Smell-O-Vision and Castle’s creations proved to be an evolutionary dead end, never advancing beyond the novelty stage (see gallery for examples).
While the new breed of tactile technologies are far more sophisticated, it remains to be seen if moviegoers really crave a side helping of body-quaking, nose-tweaking stimulation to go with their traditional serving of cinematic eye candy.
If filmmakers focus creatively on making explosions and aerial flight feel as powerful as they look, a more literal kind of “motion picture” could take flight. But lacking auteur input, extra “dimensions” that get tacked on as a marketing afterthought could mean that 4-D Version 2.0 joins Percepto in the graveyard of movie-exhibition gimmicks.
Thumbs up or thumbs down? Would you be eager to see a 4-D movie complete with motion and scent effects? Or do you have your own wild ideas for how technology could make movies even more immersive? Weigh in below.
Movies that shake, rattle and roll viewers, or assault their senses of smell, might become the next big thing if a new wave of so-called 4-D technologies grabs filmgoers’ imaginations.
As the 3-D revolution spawned by 2009’s sci-fi stunner Avatar starts to lose some of its luster, the next logical step in immersive cinema could come from turning movies into a full-body experience.
“Let’s say you’ve got Harry Potter on his broomstick playing Quidditch,” said Guy Marcoux, vice president of marketing at D-Box Technologies, a Canadian firm that has motion-synchronized seats installed in 98 venues worldwide. “We will make you feel as if you are on that broomstick. If he banks left or right, you’ll feel that, or if he drops, we create that free-floating effect. And if wind is coming, you’ll feel vibration in your chair.”
D-Box’s hyperactive theater seats are one of several new technologies designed, like 3-D, to make movies more immersive for audiences and more profitable for studios. As cinema owners struggle to compete with personal home theaters decked out with massive screens, sphincter-rattling subwoofers and, increasingly, 3-D screens, 4-D gimmicks point toward a way to bring the “only in theaters” experience to the next level.
Working out of production offices in Burbank, California, D-Box’s motion designers spent about 350 hours writing code that will trigger bumps, jolts and jiggles for special screenings of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 when the franchise finale opens Friday.
“We have a database with more than 5,000 separate motion ‘waves,’” Marcoux told Wired.com by phone. The company’s “motion track” software responds frame by frame to on-screen action with “pitch, roll and heave” options.
Once studio post-production executives sign off on the motion work — directors don’t get involved — motion programming is encoded onto hard drives that are sent to specially equipped theaters to control chairs embedded with electromechanical pistons. D-Box splits revenues from the $8 premium charge with exhibitors and the studio.
Rival firm CJ CGV is working on pushing the 4-D experience even further. The company operates 13 4DPlex screens in South Korea, where moviegoers sit in vibrating chairs rigged with mist, “breeze” and fragrance effects synced to on-screen action. The Asian outfit will soon launch a demonstration laboratory in Los Angeles to showcase its theater technologies to Hollywood studios.
Confidentiality agreements prohibit the company from discussing details, CJ CGV’s regional director Martin Kim told Wired.com. “All I can tell you at this point is that we are opening a CJ 4DPlex showroom office (not a commercial theater) in Hollywood in September,” Kim said. “Our goal is to simply enhance the movie — not change it.”
Ride the Wild Movie
The types of 4-D thrills delivered by D-Box and 4DPlex resemble the movie-oriented rides at some theme parks, where the carnival-style variant on shake-rattle-and-spray cinema lures millions each year. Given that Hollywood producers routinely hype popcorn movies as being a “great ride,” it’s not surprising that attractions like Disneyland’s Star Wars-themed Star Tours and Universal Studios Hollywood’s King Kong 360 3-D take the concept one step further. The jungle ride, developed with input from King Kong director Peter Jackson and opened last summer, flashes 3-D images of raptors and gorillas inside a darkened soundstage where visitors hurtle around in trams.
In these popular film-ride hybrids, dialog, story and character arcs take a back seat — way back — to visceral sensation, but the theme-park model points toward a day when moviegoers may need to strap themselves into seatbelts as the opening credits roll.
3-D evangelist Jeffrey Katzenberg, who runs DreamWorks Animation, tested the 4-D movie-as-carnival-ride concept eight years ago when he produced Shrek 4D. To see the 13-minute featurette, audience members sat in chairs rigged with tubes that simulated breeze and mist as the characters sailed over the sea.
Katzenberg told the Los Angeles Times that once the story outline was agreed upon, “We said, ‘How can we embellish it, how do we ‘ride’ this movie?” Universal Parks & Resorts vice president and designer Scott Trowbridge added: “3-D can bring the action off the screen, but then we came up with this idea of adding lots of special effects to create a fourth ‘D,’ so the movie basically lands in your lap.”
Sight and Smell
Hollywood Takes a Sniff
The fourth dimension of smell enjoyed a brief if cheesy heyday half a century ago. Here’s a sampling.
Smell-O-Rama (1953) General Electric tests a scent generator that accompanies 3-D images of a rose.
AromaRama (1959) Scents are transmitted through theaters’ air-conditioning systems to accompany travel documentary Behind the Great Wall.
Smell-O-Vision (1960) Originally called Scentovision, this attempt used pipes connected to individual theater seats to transmit odors controlled by projectionists. The movie Scent of Mystery telegraphed plot points through odor when, for example, one character is identified by the smell of pipe tobacco.
Then there’s the Up Your Nose school of 4-D, celebrated by director Robert Rodriguez in his upcoming Spy Kids: All the Time in the World. Taking a playful approach to the fourth dimension, the Austin, Texas-based filmmaker revives the scratch-and-sniff concept introduced by John Waters in his 1981 Odorama movie, Polyester.
Rodriguez calls his version Aroma Vision in the grandiose spirit of 1950s gimmick king William Castle, creator of Percepto, Illusion-O and the Fright Break, ostensibly designed to give frightened viewers of 1961 horror flick Homicidal a chance to exit the theater before their nerves went haywire.
“I was inspired by this throwback to a kind of showmanship where you’re just trying to entertain an audience with anything you can think of that will enhance the experience,” Rodriguez told Wired.com by phone.
University of California at San Diego researcher Sungho Jin takes a more high-tech approach to scent-driven storytelling with a home entertainment prototype that could one day overpower the fake buttery smell of microwave popcorn whipped up by pajama-clad movie watchers.
In partnership with Samsung’s home entertainment division, Jin and his team devised an aroma-release prototype that relies on electrical filaments to vaporize up to 10,000 scented fluids contained in tiny rubber tubes. In a phone interview, Jin, who spent two years developing the matrix-based control technology, offered an example of how his device might work.
“If you’ve got a scene coming up where the character eats pizza, maybe five seconds earlier — because it takes time for the odor to travel to the viewer –the computer program essentially says, ‘OK, hit it!’ and that particular odor will be released,” Jin said.
Gimmickry vs. Vision
During the 20th century, 4-D concepts like Smell-O-Vision and Castle’s creations proved to be an evolutionary dead end, never advancing beyond the novelty stage (see gallery for examples).
While the new breed of tactile technologies are far more sophisticated, it remains to be seen if moviegoers really crave a side helping of body-quaking, nose-tweaking stimulation to go with their traditional serving of cinematic eye candy.
If filmmakers focus creatively on making explosions and aerial flight feel as powerful as they look, a more literal kind of “motion picture” could take flight. But lacking auteur input, extra “dimensions” that get tacked on as a marketing afterthought could mean that 4-D Version 2.0 joins Percepto in the graveyard of movie-exhibition gimmicks.
Thumbs up or thumbs down? Would you be eager to see a 4-D movie complete with motion and scent effects? Or do you have your own wild ideas for how technology could make movies even more immersive? Weigh in below.
Bruce Calvert
http://www.silentfilmstillarchive.com
http://www.silentfilmstillarchive.com
Oh for God's Sake. This is just insane!
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Christopher Jacobs
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The D-Box moving movie seat technology actually seems to have been around for awhile, but I've never seen much of any promotion about it anywhere. I wouldn't be surprised if it can be found in more home theatres than commercial theatres (I don't have it, by the way), as quite a few Blu-rays mention that they are D-Box encoded and rabid video gamers tend to go for that sort of immersion in their games, so may look for one other way to make movies more like video games. The DTS timecode that synchronizes 35mm prints with the digital audio files on a CD-ROM can also be used to synchronize other things to the film, but I'm not sure how often that feature has been used.
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Brooksie
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Re: Analyst Sees Drop in 3D Attendance
I just came across the following, quoted from Rene Clair's `Reflections on the Cinema (1954):
"Why look forward to the three dimensional film, when all it will show us will be the flat cut-out silhouettes we see in a stereoscope? The real three-dimensional film rises before our eyes when we watch the work of an artist who is in love with living shapes and knows how to make them move before us, and how to make us move around them, by means of his sensitive, inquisitive camera."
That about says it all, and so beautifully too.
"Why look forward to the three dimensional film, when all it will show us will be the flat cut-out silhouettes we see in a stereoscope? The real three-dimensional film rises before our eyes when we watch the work of an artist who is in love with living shapes and knows how to make them move before us, and how to make us move around them, by means of his sensitive, inquisitive camera."
That about says it all, and so beautifully too.
Brooksie At The Movies
http://brooksieatthemovies.weebly.com
http://brooksieatthemovies.weebly.com
Re: Analyst Sees Drop in 3D Attendance
Saw the new Harry Potter in 3-D this past weekend and I loved it. Great effects!
Re: Analyst Sees Drop in 3D Attendance
Harry Potter was also a conversion. The earlier conversions in the series were particularly crappy.
The site http://realorfake3d.com/ is generally a good source to check before going to see anything in 3D nowadays. I've yet to see any conversion that's worth the extra four bucks.
The site http://realorfake3d.com/ is generally a good source to check before going to see anything in 3D nowadays. I've yet to see any conversion that's worth the extra four bucks.
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ColemanShedman
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Re: Analyst Sees Drop in 3D Attendance
For the most part, I hate it...although I'd love to see Dial M For Murder in 3D...and will probably check out Scorsese's upcoming film. And don't give me Avatar. Awful movie.
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Michael O'Regan
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Re: Analyst Sees Drop in 3D Attendance
I saw DIAL M.... in 3D in London back in '84.ColemanShedman wrote:For the most part, I hate it...although I'd love to see Dial M For Murder in 3D...and will probably check out Scorsese's upcoming film. And don't give me Avatar. Awful movie.
It was an interesting novelty as I hadn't seen anything in 3D previously, but boy those glasses gave me a headache.
I cannot see any attraction in 3D presentation beyond the initial "wow!" factor.
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Christopher Jacobs
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Re: Analyst Sees Drop in 3D Attendance
I saw DIAL M FOR MURDER in 2-panel 3-D at a revival house back in the late 70s or early 80s in Minneapolis. The most memorable part in 3-D was the opening Warner Brothers shield floating over the row in front of you. I can't really recall much of the 3-D from the rest of the film, except that every so often one or the other of the two interlocked prints had footage missing and black leader spliced in to keep them in synch, making it look like one eye would suddenly go blind for a second or two. Now the companion 3-D short they ran with it, PARDON MY BACKFIRE with the 3 Stooges, I still recall vivdly many of the 3-D effects, especially squirting oil directly into the camera and the deep Viewmaster-like staging of the actors and props. The short took advantage of the technology for its gimmicks. Hitchcock tended to keep the story the main focus with the 3-D being only secondary.
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Mike Gebert
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Re: Analyst Sees Drop in 3D Attendance
I always thought Hitchcock was experimenting with how to make 3-D feel like a kind of enhanced live theater-- that is, the immediacy of 3-D people right in front of you, as in theater, but with the additional benefits of cinema (ability to cut to a closeup, etc.) Doesn't really work all that strongly on that level, but it was worth playing with to find out. As in live theater, where things are rarely thrust into the audience's faces (a certain falling chandelier excepted) even though they could be, there wasn't much of the typical 3-D gotcha involved, though one moment, when Kelly is fighting her attacker and her arm thrusts out, is notable precisely because it's a singular moment.
I don't disagree with that as a principle, but I will say that when I saw Thor (inadvertently) in 3-D, I couldn't tell if it was a conversion or not until I read later that it was. So they're certainly getting good at that sort of thing, whether or not it's worth doing— or paying for.The site http://realorfake3d.com/" target="_blank is generally a good source to check before going to see anything in 3D nowadays. I've yet to see any conversion that's worth the extra four bucks.
Cinema has no voice, but it speaks to us with eyes that mirror the soul. ―Ivan Mosjoukine
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missdupont
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Re: Analyst Sees Drop in 3D Attendance
The trades and LA Times this week have posted stories that the stock prices are down for all the 3D companies, and even Jeffrey Katzenberg said in talks to the press that outcomes this year had been disappointing, particularly because of films rushed into 3D at the last moment. Many of the stock analysts quoted in the articles said it gave them pause about the future of 3D and moviemaking.
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GooseWoman
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Re: Analyst Sees Drop in 3D Attendance
IMHO current 3D is just an initial stab at a form of entertainment consumption that will ultimately prevail. When audiences are able to enjoy films etc without visual aids and via a properly configurated holographic screen 3D will be as dismissive of 2D as sound was of silence and colour was of black and white.
The issue is therefore primarily technological as amplification was in 1928/29. Except in this case the timeframe is probably half a century and maybe more.
3D films in their current format are ultimately condemned to "gimmickicity" and the technological leap will almost certainly first occur in the area of computer games graphics.
The issue is therefore primarily technological as amplification was in 1928/29. Except in this case the timeframe is probably half a century and maybe more.
3D films in their current format are ultimately condemned to "gimmickicity" and the technological leap will almost certainly first occur in the area of computer games graphics.
Re: Analyst Sees Drop in 3D Attendance
The earlier Harry Potter 3D's were just fine, IMO. In fact, I thought the depth in 2007's "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" was particularly excellent. 2009's HP was just OK - I thought they picked the wrong segment to convert to 3D.Nick_M wrote:Harry Potter was also a conversion. The earlier conversions in the series were particularly crappy.
The site http://realorfake3d.com/ is generally a good source to check before going to see anything in 3D nowadays. I've yet to see any conversion that's worth the extra four bucks.
As far as conversions go, the conversion done for "The Polar Express 3D" (incorrectly listed as real at realorfake3d.com) was definitely worth the extra money!
Derek
Re: Analyst Sees Drop in 3D Attendance
Where did you hear that Polar was faked? I always thought it was real, though that does explain why so much of it looked surprisingly flat.
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Hillary H.
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Re: Analyst Sees Drop in 3D Attendance
And then there is this from Sergei Eisenstein,
http://books.google.com/books?id=L29Js1 ... ic&f=false
...from his essay on stereoscopic cinema:Today you meet many people who ask, "Do you believe in sterescopic films?
Asking this question, I think, is as senseless as asking me if I believe two comes after one, or that snow melts in the spring, or that trees are green in summer and apples ripen in autumn.
It is as naive to doubt that the stereoscopic film is the tomorrow of cinema as it is to doubt that tomorrow will come.
http://books.google.com/books?id=L29Js1 ... ic&f=false
Re: Analyst Sees Drop in 3D Attendance
To be fair, IMAX has always claimed since day one in their press releases that it was a conversion.Nick_M wrote:Where did you hear that Polar was faked? I always thought it was real, though that does explain why so much of it looked surprisingly flat.
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases ... 99492.html" target="_blank
I first found out about it when viewing a video at the IMAX site, showing the separate IMAX team doing the conversion using their own software & workstations. Apparently, there wasn't enough time for the original team at Sony Imageworks to do the rendering of the second eye. So, the final animation file used for the 35mm release was sent to them, input into a computer, and new eyes (yes, new left & right renders were done) to create the 3D release.
"If you were to look at each eye, neither of them exactly match the theatrical release," Engle says. (from below article)
http://www.cgw.com/Publications/CGW/200 ... sized.aspx" target="_blank
Derek
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missdupont
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Re: Analyst Sees Drop in 3D Attendance
Stereoscopic obviously isn't the future of cinema, since it died once in the fifties, and appears to be on its way to dying again. Sound and color didn't die, they exploded on the scene. 3D just whimpers along.
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Mike Gebert
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Re: Analyst Sees Drop in 3D Attendance
So how does that make Polar Express a conversion, as opposed to merely that they outsourced the 3-D to another company? I don't see how the concept of conversion makes any sense for an animated film-- a live-action film is either shot with two cameras or not, and if it isn't you have to do specific trickery to make it 3-D, but any animated film will involve somebody doing the labor of making separate eye versions.
UPDATE: Okay, I actually read the article and I see some points about how they had to deal with issues (which I don't entirely understand) that came from it being made on the assumption of 2-D. Still, I kind of stick with my point that artificially creating 3-D out of a flat-shot live action movie is one thing, and taking a computer animated film and re-rendering its pieces in a 3-D space is much less of a transformation.
UPDATE: Okay, I actually read the article and I see some points about how they had to deal with issues (which I don't entirely understand) that came from it being made on the assumption of 2-D. Still, I kind of stick with my point that artificially creating 3-D out of a flat-shot live action movie is one thing, and taking a computer animated film and re-rendering its pieces in a 3-D space is much less of a transformation.
Cinema has no voice, but it speaks to us with eyes that mirror the soul. ―Ivan Mosjoukine
Re: Analyst Sees Drop in 3D Attendance
I would agree that it's less of a conversion, due to them starting with the original animation files, but the fact that neither of eyes is what the original animation team created certainly qualifies it as a conversion.Mike Gebert wrote:So how does that make Polar Express a conversion, as opposed to merely that they outsourced the 3-D to another company? I don't see how the concept of conversion makes any sense for an animated film-- a live-action film is either shot with two cameras or not, and if it isn't you have to do specific trickery to make it 3-D, but any animated film will involve somebody doing the labor of making separate eye versions.
UPDATE: Okay, I actually read the article and I see some points about how they had to deal with issues (which I don't entirely understand) that came from it being made on the assumption of 2-D. Still, I kind of stick with my point that artificially creating 3-D out of a flat-shot live action movie is one thing, and taking a computer animated film and re-rendering its pieces in a 3-D space is much less of a transformation.
Derek
Re: Analyst Sees Drop in 3D Attendance
it Depends !
If the CGI animated movie producer keept all the 3D "blueprints" (let's call like that to make easy to understand), they just need to render all again to a second "eye" perpective.
Not sure if Polar Express kept the "blueprints", but for Shrek, the 3D conversion company"s CEO was explaining that they had nothing to work, just the finished digital image, so they had to do a carefull 3D converasion basically like it was just a film.
Oh... a detail: When I said "blueprints", it's not just the 3D shape of virtual charecters and virtual sets, but also the animation they are subject to.
TV will be 3D soon or later, so 3D it's the future.
How are you watching the 3D film in theater, by anaglyph glasses or polarized light glasses ?
Anaglyphs looks quite bad, since the image from left eye (red filter) get too dark, and the color sensation, we get from right eye (blue/green filter) get washed out.
The 3D I saw in Alice in Wonderland was too soft, and for close-ups the effect was not much 3D. The soft 3D get more sensationm effect when there are many characters in boreground, middle and background, and the photograph choices are made to get a effect similar to angular lens, that increase the feeling of depth. The always try to show the ground, when there is no much characters from background to foreground.
I'm used to ddep 3D effect, and I sugest to visit Alpes in Stereo to get deep 3D feeling:
http://www.alpes-stereo.com/i_index.html" target="_blank" target="_blank
Get you anaglyph glasses and watch this image:
http://www.alpes-stereo.com/900/GrandParadis.jpg" target="_blank" target="_blank
It's like watching a great scale model somehow, cause the photographer moved each camera several meters aways to get the 3D effect. But this sacrifice the chance to get a object of person near the camera.
The 3D conversion can create such effects, but for living shoot it's near impossible to make such dep stereo for giant objects.
If the CGI animated movie producer keept all the 3D "blueprints" (let's call like that to make easy to understand), they just need to render all again to a second "eye" perpective.
Not sure if Polar Express kept the "blueprints", but for Shrek, the 3D conversion company"s CEO was explaining that they had nothing to work, just the finished digital image, so they had to do a carefull 3D converasion basically like it was just a film.
Oh... a detail: When I said "blueprints", it's not just the 3D shape of virtual charecters and virtual sets, but also the animation they are subject to.
TV will be 3D soon or later, so 3D it's the future.
How are you watching the 3D film in theater, by anaglyph glasses or polarized light glasses ?
Anaglyphs looks quite bad, since the image from left eye (red filter) get too dark, and the color sensation, we get from right eye (blue/green filter) get washed out.
The 3D I saw in Alice in Wonderland was too soft, and for close-ups the effect was not much 3D. The soft 3D get more sensationm effect when there are many characters in boreground, middle and background, and the photograph choices are made to get a effect similar to angular lens, that increase the feeling of depth. The always try to show the ground, when there is no much characters from background to foreground.
I'm used to ddep 3D effect, and I sugest to visit Alpes in Stereo to get deep 3D feeling:
http://www.alpes-stereo.com/i_index.html" target="_blank" target="_blank
Get you anaglyph glasses and watch this image:
http://www.alpes-stereo.com/900/GrandParadis.jpg" target="_blank" target="_blank
It's like watching a great scale model somehow, cause the photographer moved each camera several meters aways to get the 3D effect. But this sacrifice the chance to get a object of person near the camera.
The 3D conversion can create such effects, but for living shoot it's near impossible to make such dep stereo for giant objects.
Derek Gee wrote:I would agree that it's less of a conversion, due to them starting with the original animation files, but the fact that neither of eyes is what the original animation team created certainly qualifies it as a conversion.Mike Gebert wrote:So how does that make Polar Express a conversion, as opposed to merely that they outsourced the 3-D to another company? I don't see how the concept of conversion makes any sense for an animated film-- a live-action film is either shot with two cameras or not, and if it isn't you have to do specific trickery to make it 3-D, but any animated film will involve somebody doing the labor of making separate eye versions.
UPDATE: Okay, I actually read the article and I see some points about how they had to deal with issues (which I don't entirely understand) that came from it being made on the assumption of 2-D. Still, I kind of stick with my point that artificially creating 3-D out of a flat-shot live action movie is one thing, and taking a computer animated film and re-rendering its pieces in a 3-D space is much less of a transformation.
Derek
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Michael O'Regan
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Re: Analyst Sees Drop in 3D Attendance
Really?TV will be 3D soon or later, so 3D it's the future.
I doubt it.
Re: Analyst Sees Drop in 3D Attendance
I think we are still a long way off getting a satisfactory 3D image on to a 2D surface if it will ever happen. Perhaps one day someone will invent a genuine 3D screen with real depth.
Re: Analyst Sees Drop in 3D Attendance
Sorry, but I'm afraid you are imagining something close to a hologram. That will take a long looonnngg timeee to appear.
A good stereoscopic imagine it's fine if you do not presume to move your head waiting to see some detail behind something.
Stereoscopy have true depth, and that's true and it's used for calculations of distance. Stereo images took by planes are used to help trace the 3D of a geographic place, like a hill, a large valley etc.
I believe the best software for 3D conversion analyze each object, and took the few difference angle of the objects, in a frame sequence, to calculate the depth.
Indeed there are algorithms that can give you a good 3D graphic of your head if you have a frontal shot and a right and a left shot of you head .
The problem with stereoscopy is the view devices, that sometimes are crap like red/ blue anaglyph glasses, that distort everything. I watched Alice in Wonderland with anaglyph glasses and I got headache, cause it was distorted in color and the left eyes got dark images. I didn't even watched until the end... But if it was watching in liquid crista 3D glasses, I bet it would be fine.
Another problem is the view limitation of some people, like people who need glasses and find problem to remove it to use 3D glasses.
And people with dificult to focus close things and went to crap medicine procedures, like the crap garbage eye surgery that kills stereo view by creating a degree to focus close images in the left eye and a degree to focus distant images with the right eye. The brain ignore the out focus eyes and process mostly the eye that have image in focus, and you can say bye bye to the stereo view capability.
A good stereoscopic imagine it's fine if you do not presume to move your head waiting to see some detail behind something.
Stereoscopy have true depth, and that's true and it's used for calculations of distance. Stereo images took by planes are used to help trace the 3D of a geographic place, like a hill, a large valley etc.
I believe the best software for 3D conversion analyze each object, and took the few difference angle of the objects, in a frame sequence, to calculate the depth.
Indeed there are algorithms that can give you a good 3D graphic of your head if you have a frontal shot and a right and a left shot of you head .
The problem with stereoscopy is the view devices, that sometimes are crap like red/ blue anaglyph glasses, that distort everything. I watched Alice in Wonderland with anaglyph glasses and I got headache, cause it was distorted in color and the left eyes got dark images. I didn't even watched until the end... But if it was watching in liquid crista 3D glasses, I bet it would be fine.
Another problem is the view limitation of some people, like people who need glasses and find problem to remove it to use 3D glasses.
And people with dificult to focus close things and went to crap medicine procedures, like the crap garbage eye surgery that kills stereo view by creating a degree to focus close images in the left eye and a degree to focus distant images with the right eye. The brain ignore the out focus eyes and process mostly the eye that have image in focus, and you can say bye bye to the stereo view capability.
Changsham wrote:I think we are still a long way off getting a satisfactory 3D image on to a 2D surface if it will ever happen. Perhaps one day someone will invent a genuine 3D screen with real depth.
Keep thinking...