Yeah!!!!!!!! 3D is beginning to tank.

Is this a 3D thing ? Cause I'm not paying attention. But if a film had 'In 3D' on it, I wouldn't watch it. I might take a peak, but in the end you know, I want more of a serious film.
If it's tagged as 3D you know it's going to be a gimmic. Which is fine as long as you know that. But you know it's not going to be good. Right? hehe.
 
I agree. I've always been on the pro 3D side... with hesitation...

I think it has potential, just needs to stop being a gimmick- like Justine Beiber in 3D.
 
Regular ticket price is 14 USD to 17 USD depending on what film it is (usually determined by the length of it)

3D is 4.60 0USD extra.


I'd much rather buy a blu-ray than go to the theater.
 
i was paying same price as 2D + price of glasses (optional if you already get them) so, price is about $15-18.
unfortunately i got 2 kids ( 3D movies are mainly for kids) so the total price ( 1 adult + 2 children) is over what i can pay for the 3D BD.
so i purchased a 55" samsung 3d screen ($2000) + BD player ($150) + movies (most of them , included avatar, about $500) + glasses (about $500).
so for about 20 movies and 4 people , i spend $3200. then the movie seat at home cost me $40 if all family watch each movie once.
if i buy 10 movies more, it will decrease to $30 a seat.

So far there is hardly more than 40 titles (including documentaries) so you can not make the "home seat" cheaper than this.
But you you can lower the initial cost (a 42" screen is cheaper),
you can spare on the player by purchasing kits (screen+player or player +glasses +movies).
Samsung is going from IR glasses to bluetooth glasses with the current 2011 serie, so you can expect a massive reduction
on price for old series (serie 7,8,9) and glasses.
and the big bonus is if you got some 3D TV channel at home yo can watch it .
 
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nosys70 said:
i was paying same price as 2D + price of glasses (optional if you already get them) so, price is about $15-18.
unfortunately i got 2 kids ( 3D movies are mainly for kids) so the total price ( 1 adult + 2 children) is over what i can pay for the 3D BD.
so i purchased a 55" samsung 3d screen ($2000) + BD player ($150) + movies (most of them included avatar, about $500) + glasses (about $500).
so for about 20 movies and 4 people , i spend $3200. then the movie seat at home cost me $40 if i watch each movie once.
if i buy 10 movies more, it will decrease to $30 a seat.
Click to expand...
Add popcorn and soda to that and you'll probaly save A LOT more.
 
No matter what some people think about 3D, I think it's the future. Technology continues to move forward, so we can't expect to simply have 2D movies for the next 100 years. All movies have been about is making the movie experience better and better. We have come a long way when you think of sound, color, digital, bigger screens (imax) and it's all in an attempt to sort of put the viewer right there, up-close and personal with the action. There's no better way to do that (right now) than with 3D. Yeah, the glasses kind of suck and all that, but there's no comparison I think between a movie shot in 3D and one shot in 2D. Yeah, ticket prices are more expensive and the TVs and all that right now are more expensive, but can you remember not too long ago just how expensive anything HD was? Movie ticket prices in general are out of control though.
 
Marlon Ladd said:
Technology continues to move forward, so we can't expect to simply have 2D movies for the next 100 years. All movies have been about is making the movie experience better and better. We have come a long way when you think of sound, color, digital, bigger screens (imax) and it's all in an attempt to sort of put the viewer right there, up-close and personal with the action. There's no better way to do that (right now) than with 3D.
Click to expand...
No, see that right there is the thing.

The essence of filmmaking is storytelling, and 3D works AGAINST the storytelling, not FOR it. It's a distraction from the storytelling at its very core. That's why it will never work in the long run, and will always be a gimmick.

Ok look, picture this:

INT. GLASS ELEVATOR - DAY

John McClane is standing inside a glass elevator talking on his cell phone with his wife. The entire elevator, including the floor, is see through glass.
On the top of the elevator where the cables are attatched, there is a small time bomb connected to a digital watch with red LED numbers counting down.

As the numbers hit Zero, there's a small explosion and the cable detaches from the elevator, which starts to plummet.

McClane loses his balance for half a second and drops his cell phone which falls in slow motion to the glass floor of the elevator.




Right?

Ok, now if this was shot in 2D, you'd see a shot from the elevator ceiling straight down, John McClane in the foreground looking down as the cell phone drops in slow motion as he experiences vertigo (remember, he's afraid of flying, and looking down through a glass elevator floor as his cell phone drops would cause vertigo).
The reason we have McClane in the foreground and shoot above his head is so that we can see his reaction. That's the key to this scene.
McClane, as the main character that we associate with, is the link to the audience's emotional state. What he feels, the audience feels, but only if and when they see his reactions.

If this was shot in 3D, the same shot would look like this:
McClane's hand would be in the foreground, and we would see the cell phone drop in slow motion creating a 3D vertigo effect for the viewer.
It would LOOK cool, but it would not be nearly as effective, because there is no character there to associate with so there's no link to the vertigo. It would be an optical illusion placing the audience in first person narrative when film is ALWAYS in third person narrative: We experience emotion by sympathy and empathy with the main character. It's not a rollercoaster, it's drama.

See the difference?
 
that is because you are still thinking the old way. Just because it is 3D, you changed the camera behavior, that's old school 3d. The "gimmick" 3D found in the B.A era (B.A. stands for Before Avatar).
even when watching old "3D" movies in 2D, i can tell exactly when you are supposed to wear the glasses, you know when the villain is pointing the sword just
right toward you or when the shark .... well you know....it is so obvious.

you can perfectly shoot 3D as it would be 2D.
in that case i would take advantage of the glass floor to shoot from under the elevator, with the character in background and the phone falling toward the camera.
but that still old school thinking. "Hey man, we got 3D, let's something pop out of the screen".
The only thing you really need to change with 3D is to forget about DOF, or to make a really clever use of it.
In 3D , fuzzy things are just headache, because the brain will scan the scene a totally different way.
in 2D you just grab attention by making the part you want into focus, so the the brain is relax,no need to think, just follow the stuff in focus, you know everything is flat.
In 3D the brain is working more , trying to see what is "behind". So the brain ask the eye to make focus on some part of the background.
but if that background is fuzzy because you used DOF, then the eye will work a lot unsuccessfully and the brain will be lost and your eyes will hurt.
there are some accepted rules today that say you need 3 time more time to scan a picture in 3D than one in 2D, so the minimum length for a
scene must be at least 5 to 8 secondes in 3D, while it can be 2 secs in 2D.
Also, slow transition like cross fade sucks in 3D. Also forget insert in foreground at screen border, it is a call for 3d violation.
many close-up are bad too, sometime you just wish the camera being 1 step back on many 3D scenes, because in reality you are never so close of somebody,while
in a 2D movie you can accept to have a scene take just above the shoulder of somebody.
That's the drawback of 3D, some shots becomes impossible (even if technically you can do it), but it is the same when you pass from the book to the movie.
there are thing you can make feel to the reader with words that are impossible to explain with pictures into a movie.
 
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nosys70 said:
you can perfectly shoot 3D as it would be 2D.
in that case i would take advantage of the glass floor to shoot from under the elevator, with the character in background and the phone falling toward the camera.
but that still old school thinking. "Hey man, we got 3D, let's something pop out of the screen".
The only thing you really need to change with 3D is to forget about DOF, or to make a really clever use of it.
Click to expand...
Even if you shot that exactly the same way in 3D as you would in 2D, and you place the camera in the ceiling, looking down with McClaine's reaction in the foreground, the phone falling in the background, it still wouldn't be as effective.

First off, you still have that fundamental problem with 3D that the vertigo effect is created as a first person narrative effect, and not a third person through the emotions of a character.

Second, the glass floor at this point would be so small in comparrison, the 3D effect would even be diminished and hardly noticable.

Third, it's an attention problem. For the 3D effect to work you'd have to look at the floor in comparrison to the falling object. For the emotional effect you would have to look at McClane. You can't have both. 3D doesn't work in peripheral vision, and when you look at McClane that's where the floor is. If you concentrate on the falling object, you miss McClane's reaction.

As for clever use of DOF, I think that's always important. And if you're going to shoot it the same way you would in 2D, then why not shoot it in 2D?
There are some shots in Avatar that look hideous in the 2D version. Like when he's waking up from hypersleep in the beginning and you see the ship's interior. Everything is in focus, everything lit the same color, constant movement both with him as well as people in the background. One of the flattest looking images you can imagine, because there's nothing that separates the character that we're supposed to focus on from the background.
In the 3D version of this, you can look everywhere and get a sense of depth, but it's still the same basic, fundamental problem: You either look at the character OR the background. In this case, the shot is designed to make us look at the background and go "woah, it's a deep 3D space..." as opposed to make us look at the character waking up and go "woah that guy's been lying there for a long time, he's feeling stiff".
 
eh,

I remember I paid $18.50 to see Avatar on an imax screen the size of an eight-story building. When I came out of the theater, I was dizzy and bewildered, not cause of the 3D effect, but because the film's fictional environment was presented so convincingly, I felt like I stepped out of an alternate reality. point is, a good film leaves a lasting impression in its viewers, no matter the depth of the story, and 3D done right, viewed in true imax, is an epic experience I'll keep repeating.
 
i think you can say music industry has switched so much to industry, that there is not much left from art, creation, music.
It is more sound production, and this model is dying, because they made it a short life consumable product.
If cinema industry is doing the same (like they do for years now), we can expect the same result will hapens.
look how they think. One company make a nice movie ? immediately the other company pop up a clone of this.
so, sometimes you got dinosaures everywhere, then it is vampires, then it is ghosts and then Apocalypse (now we can expect a bunch
of movies about tsunami and nuclear disaster and luckily they do not even need to think, since all has been already said 20 years ago in the "china syndrom", easy money,easy done ).
and they don't care about story, just put some big names, nices FX and you are done.
It is so bad, they can even make a movie from a TV serie !
Or you can produce movie with a DV or DSLR camera now, who cares about quality today ?
Just shoot a big feature like you shoot the Evening news...
Well i think i can stand for that on tV, because i can switch it on and off for free and if it is bad i can zap channels.
But i expect more for paying a movie seat in a theater and my expectation are even growing more since i can watch my movie
at home on a big screen and even in 3D.
The "real" movie still exists, but starts to be a rare specie, because there are so many temptation to make a "noname" product
that could bring as much money, with less risks, in less time.
So yes, the product has changed, and you can expect the model used to produce and sell it must change too or
people will just go on their own, like it is now for music, internet , mp3 model.
 
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nosys70 said:
One company make a nice movie ? immediately the other company pop up a clone of this.
so, sometimes you got dinosaures everywhere, then it is vampires, then it is ghosts and then Apocalypse (now we can expect a bunch
Click to expand...
Don't worry. This is nothing new. It's always been that way for as long as there has been movies, and it's never killed the industry before.
 
no it won't kill the industry. Currently we do not worry about the industry, we worry about the other part, the one called cinema, and supposed to support
an other meaning than "sequence of pictures". Probably , for some people, cinema also include culture, art, creativity and many other concept you can usually not
find in industry.
That is just if you want to sell something, you cannot just put a name on any crap , you sometime have to deliver the real thing.
If i just need to spend my time in front of a screen to watch low quality pictures and story, TV is enough, and there is a ton of good old movies on DVD.
Cinema industry is supposed to be the big brother that drives all other similar industry (TV, entertainement) by providing the best that can be done.
I am ok if cinema industry turns to delivers disposable content like TV series, but then do not expect me to pay for a seat into a theater.
That is probably ok for most people, if the content is there. But then , do not complain if theater are closed, then people working for theater disappear,
then people working for providing equipement to theater , then equipement maker, then technicians etc...
This kind of industry is an ecosystem and the product that come out of that system is closely related to the way the system is made.

Even if Mc Donald call their fast food "restaurant", it does not mean they provide what people are looking for going to restaurant.
and if restaurant must "die" because this model is obsolete , i am not against, but do not ask me to pay the price of restaurant seat to go into a Mcdonald.
 
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