Hobbit 3D Related discussion

[Alatar]

Its also interesting to note that there is a multi-parallax barrier effect being developed by one of the major manufacturers. Unlike standard parallax viewing this technique will allow several users in a fairly wide viewing angle to perceive the effect.

http://gizmodo.com/5620310/three-glasse ... -years-end

[axordil]

I'm still not sure how impressive 3D TV would be at that intermediate scale. The glasses might provide real immersion, a theater-sized screen can provide the illusion of significant depth...proportionately even a big TV screen would seem as if shallower. If things can only "pop" out a foot or so, is that going to be sufficiently engaging?

Gaming of course is a separate issue. 3D games on a TV screen could be engineered for that size from the get-go.

[Alatar]

Well, firstly, I've always found that the "pop out" effect is the least impressive and least immersive. It's the added depth that creates a sustainable illusion.

Secondly, the size of the screen in ratio to your proximity is not that different. Sitting 10 to 12 feet from a 40" screen isn't much different to watching an iPod from 12 inches away, or a Cinema screen from the back of the theatre. Having watched demos of Shutter based 3D I can certainly confirm that the depth effect works very will with the active glasses, regardless of the size of image.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Well, firstly, I've always found that the "pop out" effect is the least impressive and least immersive. It's the added depth that creates a sustainable illusion.

I agree. And the pop out effect is also the most distracting, and the most likely to take you out of the story. It was definitely the added depth that I found so impressive about Avatar. It just made what I had already found so impressive in 2D that much more impressive.

[Elentári]

I take it nobody wants Smaug to pop out of the screen at us, then...?

So what, if anything in The Hobbit, would benefit from this added depth?

Maybe the gloom of Mirkwood? 3D spiderwebs, perhaps?

[Primula Baggins]

I was about to post to say the same thing. It was the sense of depth (or height) that was literally awesome. Things popping out of the screen mostly seemed distracting, although I thought it was lovely when leaves or petals or shining insects were floating in the air; that added beauty and a sense of reality and was not distracting.

I recently watched it again for the first time, on Blu-Ray, and have to say that it's just as beautiful, visually, as in 3-D; it's one of the most beautiful-looking movies I've ever seen. It balanced out the plot problems and the (to me) political stridency very well.

[axordil]

Well, depth is the inverse of pop out, the intaglio to the bas-relief. For both the limits of apparent depth (which starts in front of the screen and ends behind it) would seem to me to be a function of the size of the screen and the distance to it: the obvious example is the apparent distance to the farthest image, the back-most plane in the 3D field, which is the limit of perceived depth. You can't push that back as far on a small screen if the image depth was designed around a much larger screen.

[River]

So I'm not sure the technology will ever really be feasible for a iPod or iPhone or something similar.

Then again, they have these now...

Then they're there. They just need cards that can do it and fit in the iPod or iPhone and it's over.

As for the rest, now I'm really wondering what y'all are seeing. To me, what's on a standard screen is not different from reality.

[Primula Baggins]

I forget, River, have you been told there's nothing to be done? Some optometrists offer vision therapy, mostly for kids, but some adults can benefit as well. I'm not saying it would be worth it just to see Avatar, but I would think there'd be a safety benefit for driving and bike-riding.

[Elentári]

Still no official confirmation from Jackson, but everyone else seems to think it's a dead cert...

The Hobbit Is Going 3D Yep, it's official

The Hobbit and The Hobbit Sequel, prequels to the massively successful LotR flicks, will be in full 3D.

And, surprise, surprise...SW jumps on the 3D bandwagon too

George Lucas has just given the official green light to something that will no doubt make some Star Wars fans super stoked and others disappointed - ALL six Star Wars movies will be getting a 3D overhaul.
Episode I: The Phantom Menace is going to be the first. It'll be re-released in theaters in 3D in 2012. All five others will get similar treatments, assumedly in chronological order.

[River]

I forget, River, have you been told there's nothing to be done? Some optometrists offer vision therapy, mostly for kids, but some adults can benefit as well. I'm not saying it would be worth it just to see Avatar, but I would think there'd be a safety benefit for driving and bike-riding.

For a long time I was told that, but then my parents found an Oliver Saks write-up in the New Yorker about a case like mine that was repaired/reverse/fixed (I don't know which of those terms I hate more) in adulthood. You need a diligent patient (I could be) and a doctor who knows what to do and how to do it (not so sure about that).

I get by pretty well, really. And I'll be saving money at the movies.

[N.E. Brigand]

Making movies, especially those which cost hundreds of millions of dollars, are a business in which the primary goal is to make even more money then they cost to make and distribute.

I would say: while movies are a business, that shouldn't be the audience's concern. No doubt you're right about the reasons the filmmakers are probably going to film The Hobbit in 3-D, but surely you're not going to base your opinion of the finished film on how much money it makes.

Alatar has a very solid point -- as long as there is a 2D version so please the customers who do not like 3D, then everybody should be happy.

Only if they film each scene twice, and at least slightly differently. Just as you can't simply tint a film shot in black-and-white and have it turn out as a great color film, no great 3-D or 2-D film can simply be converted into a great film in the other format.

[Holbytla]

Interesting article. Not that I agree with all of it, but some good points are made. Rebecca gets credit/blame for showing me this article.

From NPR: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... =fp&ref=nf

The Sideshow: Would a movie like Avatar be as good -- or as bad -- if wasn't in 3D?

Twentieth Century Fox
The Sideshow: Would a movie like Avatar be as good -- or as bad -- if wasn't in 3D?
Technology, as a general rule, is the friend of movie making, as it is, I think, the friend of all the arts. Engineers design tools that afford new ways of telling stories and film, let’s say for the sake of argument, is in the business of storytelling.

The movies have always been technology driven. This was true in the olden days. Think of what happened when sound was introduced. And it’s is true now. For a fascinating example, consider the case of Pixar, which started life as a hardware company; they made animations to demonstrate what could be accomplished using their products. Now, they make great movies.

The question I want to consider is this: Why are 3-D movies so bad?

The problem isn’t merely technical. It’s not the fact that 3-D darkens the screen, or the fact that 3-D effects present spatial depth as visibly layered, as in a pop-up book, that accounts for what’s wrong.

No, the problem with 3-D is conceptual. The whole motivation for 3-D movies is confused. Despite the wild success of Avatar, 3-D movies remain, I think, somewhat like pop-up books themselves, a childish novelty.

The question is, why?

The short answer is that 3-D makes no contribution to cinematic storytelling. It remains at the special effect level, something like the way pop-up book technology stands to the telling of Hansel and Gretel. 3-D doesn’t enable a different kind of story to be told, and critically, 3-D doesn’t let you to see anything you couldn’t see before.


The aim of the storyteller’s industry is to show you something, to exhibit a world and present you with meaningful events. Your job, as a member of the audience, is to take a look at what is given. You bring what you know and what you care about to the task of making sense of what you are shown. Both parties make a contribution. The creator gives you something to consider. You have to do the considering yourself.

Suppose you want an apple. I can make your craving disappear either by giving you an apple, or by punching you in the stomach. In the former case, I give you what you want and I leave it to you to put the apple to its proper use (that is, to eat it). In the latter case, I eradicate your craving, but by manipulating you in a manner that has nothing really to do with apples, hunger or desire.

3-D special effects have about as much to do with storytelling as a punch in the stomach has to do with giving you what you want.

That is to say, nothing.

The storyteller’s job is to give you a world that is worth taking an interest in. And if you take an interest in it, you’ll pay attention, and you’ll think, and feel, and identify, and yes, enjoy all manner of emotional and sensory effects. In general, art is an opportunity to explore thoughts, emotions and sensations in just this way. But the storyteller is not in the business of generating the thoughts and feelings directly.

That’s your job.

Sure, one of the things storytellers of all sorts have to do is compete for your interest and capture your attention. Bright lights, loud bangs and, in the case of film, subtle, and maybe unnoticed, play with depth and focus can be put to artistic work by the storyteller. But it would be a grave mistake to take this to suggest that movies are a mere expedient for triggering events in your nervous system, or that storytelling is a kind of psychological manipulation.

I fear, however, that that’s the best that can be said of 3-D special effects. 3-D tricks bypass story building and micromanage your sensory response. Because the value is in the story, not the response, 3-D is an abdication of value.

My children and I loved How to Train Your Dragon, which we saw in 3-D. So I don’t mean to imply that application of 3-D in and of itself necessarily ruins a movie.

My point rather is that when a movie in 3-D is good, it’s good despite the 3-D and not because of it. 3-D is a distraction from the story; at best it is a pleasurable side effect; it has nothing more to do with the film’s basic content, ideas or meaning than, say, the quality of the popcorn or the chairs in the theater.

There is more to what is wrongheaded about our fascination with 3-D movies:

For one thing, conventional movies were always already in 3-D! Roger Ebert makes this very point:

When you look at a 2D movie, it’s already in 3-D as far as your mind is concerned. When you see Lawrence of Arabia growing from a speck as he rides toward you across the desert, are you thinking, 'Look how slowly he grows against the horizon?'
The answer to Ebert’s rhetorical question is a resounding, no. We see Lawrence of Arabia move toward us along the third dimension. We don’t need 3-D effects to experience the three-dimensionality of depicted space.

There’s a subtle conceptual issue underlying this point. In general, representations don’t need to resemble (share properties with, look like) what they represent. I can describe a tomato as big, red, and spherical and I can do so using typescript none of which is big, or red, or spherical. Or to use an example from the writings of philosopher Daniel Dennett: I can represent the fact that John got to the party after Mary by mentioning John in a sentence before I mention Mary. Time in the representation (the sentence) needn’t match time in the represented domain in order for the sentence to do a perfectly adequate job representing.

Sometimes it is useful to deploy a representational device that is, in relevant respects, like what it is used to represent.

For example: Imagine that in a court of law a lawyer presents his theory of how the traffic accident occurred by setting out toy cars on a table top before judge and jury. In this kind of table-top model, the actual spatial relations among the toy cars is meant to mirror and so exhibit the spatial relations among the cars allegedly involved in the accident. This is a genuinely 3-D representation and it can be an effective way of demonstrating what might or might not have happened.

As we have said already, however, it would be a big mistake to think that a representation must be 3-D in this way to exhibit, demonstrate or in other ways represent spatial relations.

There is further issue lurking here: We are aren’t sufficiently clear about the difference between what is represented and mere special effects.

Consider the case of our lawyer with his toy cars again. The lawyer is a storyteller. He tells you what he thinks happened. He uses the toy cars to do this. The toy cars don’t do the telling. They just sit there for you to consider. They show you something, but only in the context of the lawyer’s presentation.

Now imagine that during his presentation the lawyer releases exhaust fumes into the room. Maybe he wants to give the members of the jury the illusion that they are in the presence of real cars with running engines. He wants to make an impact. It is worth noticing that now the lawyer is doing something entirely different than telling his story. The table-top model displays what happened, at least according to the lawyer, and it affords the jurors the opportunity to think about what happened, or might have happened, by inspecting the construction itself. Crucially, the model does not produce in spectators the illusion that they are actually at the scene of the accident or in the presence of real cars! It doesn’t aim at that! It aims at showing them what happened.

The fumes, however, are a special effect, and, in contrast with the toy cars on the table, the fumes have literally nothing to do with the accident, or with what the lawyer is arguing. At best, you smell them and undergo the corresponding olfactory experience. The smell is nothing but a sideshow!

3-D effects are just this kind of sideshow.

[axordil]

All I hear is "we didn't need none of that fool stuff when I was growin' up. And get off my lawn!"

It took the movies forty years to figure out how to use a camera as a story telling device properly. I'll give 3D a few more before I dismiss it out of hand.

[yovargas]

The short answer is that 3-D makes no contribution to cinematic storytelling.

I felt that Up used 3D in a way that added substantially to the artistic value of that film. It is so far the only 3D film I've seen which I could say that for, but I have no reason that, in the right hands, many won't do so in the future. And you could use most of those arguments for countless of the artistic techniques used in film, from color to lighting to angles to focus.

[Primula Baggins]

The writer also forgot that it isn't Lawrence, but Omar Sharif as Sherif Ali, who rides halfway from the horizon in the course of one extremely famous long shot. (Yes, I had to look up the name of the character. But I'll never forget that entrance, or Omar Sharif.)

At least, I hope that was the article writer and not Roger Ebert!

And I dispute that any new cinematic tool is inherently a "sideshow" because it's new. If it works, it will and should be adopted by anyone who wants to use it for the story they plan to tell. Certainly the toys can take over the story in some cases; CGI sometimes does that. But that doesn't mean CGI has no value and is not a legitimate tool, or that a film is better for not having it. I'm willing to see what people do with 3D.

ETA: In fact, exactly the same argument could be used against film itself. After all, we should be able to imagine the events of a story perfectly clearly if it's competently told. Why should the person experiencing the story need to have everything depicted for her on a huge screen?

Why, in other words, ever create anything more technological than a book?

[Elentári]

Well, official confirmation at last...

Jackson, who directed all three “Lord of the Rings” films, will helm the two films back-to-back, telling the story of “The Hobbit” in two parts. Jackson will utilize groundbreaking visual effects and his incomparable story-telling to bring J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel to the big screen. Both Hobbit movies will be filmed in Digital 3-D, using the latest camera and stereo technology to create a high quality, comfortable viewing experience.

[N.E. Brigand]

It took the movies forty years to figure out how to use a camera as a storytelling device properly.

Actually cinematic storytelling at about 35 years old (c. 1927) had long since matured --that happened in the 1910s with the work of D.W. Griffith, Evgenii Bauer, Georg af Klerker, Victor Sjoström, Louis Feuillade and some others-- but came to a screeching halt with the introduction of sound, which made camera movement and cutting very difficult for a few years.

[axordil]

It took the movies forty years to figure out how to use a camera as a storytelling device properly.

Actually cinematic storytelling at about 35 years old (c. 1927) had long since matured --that happened in the 1910s with the work of D.W. Griffith, Evgenii Bauer, Georg af Klerker, Victor Sjoström, Louis Feuillade and some others-- but came to a screeching halt with the introduction of sound, which made camera movement and cutting very difficult for a few years.

I hadn't really considered the silent/sound issue--but that underlines rather than undercuts the argument. Integrating sound into storytelling took a good decade--which is why the 30s are full of filmed stage plays that look like, well, filmed stage plays. Great scripts in some cases, but not very movie-ish by modern standards.

As you get to the late 30s things improve, and then you get Citizen Kane, which I would argue is the first major movie as we currently understand movies. There are others from that time period you could point to instead if inclined, but certainly by the WWII years sound and camera were working together again, and telling stories in ways not possible ten or twenty years previous.

[vison]

The writer also forgot that it isn't Lawrence, but Omar Sharif as Sherif Ali, who rides halfway from the horizon in the course of one extremely famous long shot. (Yes, I had to look up the name of the character. But I'll never forget that entrance, or Omar Sharif.)

Except that it wasn't Omar Sharif but a stunt double. Sharif has said that he has regretted not being on that camel ever since.

But that doesn't change your point, and I agree with you.