3D Poll: Will 3D at Home Make a Comeback? (2 Viewers)

[RobertR]

Mark, I think you might be missing my point.

What I am saying is this.

The viewer should perceive no difference in brightness between a 2D version of a movie watched without glasses, and a 3D version of the same movie watched with glasses on. The 3D version should be presented with a higher level of overall brightness hitting the screen than the 2D version (whether that is something that is adjusted in the creation of the digital master, or on the display device), so that when viewed properly with 3D glasses on, it appears the same.

If something is dim or difficult to see in the 2D version, then it should remain so in the 3D version. But it should not be the experience of viewers that a film is bright and visible in 2D, but dim and hard to make out in 3D. And if that is happening, that means that there is a technical problem in how the film is being presented.

According to this article, 3D theatrical presentations do suffer lower brightness levels compared to 2D:

https://www.thewrap.com/3d-progress-lost-dark-19392/

Does the same thing happen with home TVs? In my experience it does, and my TV is calibrated. No matter how bright the 3D picture, the TV is capable of making the 2D picture brighter. That's an inescapable fact.

 

[revgen]

It depends upon what theater you go to. My local Cinemark theater uses much brighter bulbs during 3-D projection, so brightness isn't an issue during RealD showings. Others are a mixed bag. IMAX solves the problem by using two projectors.

 

[WillG]

It's depends on the studio.

To begin with, in the wake of Dunkirk, Warner as a studio has made a new policy that all of their IMAX releases will be 2D only, regardless of whether there is a 3D version, and regardless of the filmmaker preference. The reason for this is that the 15/70 film release of Dunkirk did very well, so Warner has taken the lesson from that that people prefer 2D IMAX. They have completely missed the idea that Dunkirk was popular in IMAX because it was shot with IMAX film. That's why the IMAX grosses were huge for that title. To say that, for instance, people wouldn't be interested in Justice League in IMAX 3D because Dunkirk was successful in 2D doesn't make much sense. Unfortunately, it seems that Warner is sticking to this.

For the record, IIRC, IMAX said they were "cutting back" on 3D. So in two years time, I'm sure that they will be showing Star Wars episode IX in 3D, for instance.

As for Warner. It amazes me how the actual industry can be so myopic to something that is so obvious to people like us. And you have to remember that Dunkirk was being marketed at something you HAD to see in IMAX (especially 15/70) to "Truly experience". Just like Avatar was something you HAD to see in 3D to "Truly experience"

 

[RolandL]

Two 3D Imax theatres near me but only 3D Imax of Star Wars is at 11pm at one theatre.

 

[RolandL]

Two 3D Imax theatres near me but only 3D Imax of Star Wars is at 11pm at one theatre.

 

[Radioman970]

I just got my first 3D tv a week or so ago. It's a 65" Samsung with active. I'm floored by what I've seen so far. I was waiting for moneys to get better but had to act if I wanted one because TV makers decided nobody wants it. I wish I could afford to get another like this, or projector system, and put it into the closets for when this one goes out.

People tastes change, people get nostalgic, new techs show up, some big thing happens like Avatar and people want it again. 3D no dif. It was invented in... (googling) ... 1844! We are printing in 3D! There's holograms, there's VRs and surround video can't be far away! Some new is coming. For now, I absolutely DON'T see me getting tired of what I bought with moneys I'm supposed to be saving for somehting else.

 

[DaveF]

I'm now regretting not getting LEGO Batman in 3D. 2D was fun, but it was obviously made to be watched in 3D.

3D may be dying as a consumer electronics feature...but there's fun to be found in it, even for folks like me who mostly don't care.

 

[Radioman970]

If my usage is any indication it was dead before it started. I have an early Panny 3D set and can't say I've watched more than 2 movies in it. I forgot that it even had 3D. It was a gimmick that basically sucked on the small screen, and by small I mean anything smaller than an IMAX theater. It was like watching people in a fish tank. No tanks.

I don't regret buying the TV as it was a good price for the quality, the 3D was supposed to be a bonus.

I read other comments where people felt they were watching miniatures. I guess flat miniatures is better than dimensional ones?

 

[StephenDH]

I read other comments where people felt they were watching miniatures. I guess flat miniatures is better than dimensional ones?

Sport such as football, rugby and athletics definitely suffer from 3D miniaturisation. It's like watching Subbuteo/ table football.

 

[Stephen_J_H]

Sport such as football, rugby and athletics definitely suffer from 3D miniaturisation. It's like watching Subbuteo/ table football.

And that’s because sports cameramen never received the specialised training required for filming in 3D. If you’re going to shoot in 3D, you have to understand how stereoscopy works and how to prevent miniaturisation.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

And that’s because sports cameramen never received the specialised training required for filming in 3D. If you’re going to shoot in 3D, you have to understand how stereoscopy works and how to prevent miniaturisation.

That, to me, in a nutshell is my biggest disappoint with the modern 3D wave.

3D presented the almost unlimited potential to have a new storytelling language, the way that sound changed everything about film. It took many years of trial, error, experimentation, and the creation and learning of new skills before sound moved out of its clunky infancy.

That effort was never put into 3D. 3D required everyone to go back to the proverbial skill to relearn everything, and almost no one put any effort into developing those skills. For the most part, modern filmmakers have simply made 2D films with a 3D rig, or made a 2D film and had it postconverted. The idea of re-evaluating long-held conceptions of things like framing and shot length and cutting speed were never seriously addressed. They made 2D-style films in 3D, and then complained when people didn't notice a big difference.

There's a renowned cinematographer named Seamus McGarvey, who has filmed things like The Avengers, Fifty Shades of Grey, Atonement, Life and others. He's been nominated for an Academy Award for Cinematography and is highly regarded in the industry. He's an example of the kind of thinking that killed any chance of innovation in 3D technique. He was hired to shoot The Avengers for director Joss Whedon, and Marvel had announced that the movie would be filmed in native 3D. As a test, Whedon and McGarvey shot a short scene that was used as the end credits tag at the end of a previous Marvel film. McGarvey had no prior experience with the 3D camera and, by his own admission, had done no testing with it and had no experience when he went onto the set that day to use it. He said that it took him hours to get a shot that would normally take minutes, and that the process was completely unworkable. After that one test shoot done by a man with absolutely no experience with that equipment, McGarvey told Whedon that it would be impossible to shoot the film using 3D cameras, and a decision was made to shoot it in 2D.

How in the world does that make any sense?

Ridley Scott is able to shoot native 3D, and he says it adds no additional time to their shooting schedule. While Ridley is clearly somehow superhuman, it doesn't make sense that Ridley and his crew can shoot with a 3D rig in the same amount of time as 2D, but somehow McGarvey needed ten times longer. What makes more sense, that Ridley's making it up, or that McGarvey didn't know what he was doing?

How is, "I don't know how to use this piece of equipment, therefore the equipment is stupid" a reasonable response? I don't know how that flies in a professional environment. If my boss came to me and said there was a new piece of equipment that I was now required to use in my job, throwing a glorified temper tantrum and refusing to use it would not be an acceptable response on my behalf.

But now McGarvey will tell anyone, anywhere, at any time, how much he hates 3D, how difficult it is to work with, how it ruins a picture, etc., etc., all because he had a single bad experience trying to use a piece of equipment that he had no experience or training with. The entire medium is without merit, says McGarvey, based on a poor experience he had that anyone could have predicted could have gone that way. You can't walk into a kitchen having never cooked before and expect to make a culinary dish for the ages on your first attempt; I don't see why anyone could reasonably expect that there wouldn't be or shouldn't be a learning curve on an entirely different way to photograph movies.

People like Seamus McGarvey, within the industry, have done a tremendous amount of damage to the format by refusing to learn anything about it, and then blaming their poor experiences on the format itself rather than their refusal to honestly engage in a new and different way of working.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I wanted to add to the above... that example might not seem like that big of a deal, with Seamus McGarvey, but I think it's huge.

When it came out in 2012, The Avengers opened to what was then the largest opening weekend of all time, and grossed over $1.5 billion worldwide. The movie was a gamechanger in many ways - DC's cinematic universe is a direct result of the success of that film, as is Universal's attempts at a monsters franchise, Sony's attempts at Spidey spin-offs, and too many more to list. That movie, and its success, changed the industry. Everything from what pictures are greenlit, to how franchises are constructed, what box office expectations can be, and more, now work differently because of The Avengers.

Is it too far fetched to think that if The Avengers had been shot natively in 3D, and designed as such, that it could have had the effect that Avatar did on 3D in the industry? When The Avengers was originally announced, they made a big point that it would be shot in native 3D, following the backlash of some early post-converted titles. Given how much everything else about the industry is different in a post-Avengers world, it seems only reasonable to assume that had the film been as groundbreaking in its use of 3D as it was in other areas, that would have been something that other filmmakers and studios would seek to replicate too.

But because Seamus McGarvey spent one afternoon making a bad faith attempt to use a piece of equipment that he had no training on, no experience using, and more importantly, no desire to learn, the entire trajectory of modern 3D may have been changed.

 

[StephenDH]

It's always struck me that the 3D graphic end credit sequences in Marvel's movies have much more life and depth (no pun intended) to them than the main movie.

 

[Radioman970]

 

[TJPC]

Every time we go to an IMAX 3D movie we are blown away by the astonishing depth and pop out of the count down numbers. The 3D in the actual movie not so much.

 

[Camps]

Returning to the question posed in the thread, I actually think it's kind of a chicken-egg question. Will rights-holders license 3D blu rays on the chance they will sustain if not drive 3D home equipment sales? Or will they hold back, and in turn likely hasten the death of those sales?

I'm a big believer in the old entertainment-industry saw "content is king." I belatedly jumped onboard the home-3D bandwagon (buying one of Samsung's last 3D sets) when Kino and 3D Film Archive released a gorgeous 3D blu of 1954's Gog.

Since then, I've bought a lot of classic and recent 3D titles I wanted and, I suspect like many fellow classic-3D enthusiasts, I've "taken one for the team" multiple times by buying other titles I'd never buy in 2D -- in order to inspire rights holders to keep the classic-3D spigot open. For example, I've bought: Kiss Me Kate from WB, Miss Sadie Thompson from Twilight Time, and, from Kino, Those Redheads from Seattle (sorry, I'm just not into musicals) and APE (this stinker of a movie wasn't released; it escaped... but the 3D on the blu, thanks to 3D Film Archive, is pretty great).

The good news is that I can look forward to The Maze from Kino in a couple of months, and possibly another couple of titles on my classic-3D want-list before long. But too many classic-3D rights remain frustratingly elusive. And that won't help...

 

[LouA]

Returning to the question posed in the thread, I actually think it's kind of a chicken-egg question. Will rights-holders license 3D blu rays on the chance they will sustain if not drive 3D home equipment sales? Or will they hold back, and in turn likely hasten the death of those sales?

I'm a big believer in the old entertainment-industry saw "content is king." I belatedly jumped onboard the home-3D bandwagon (buying one of Samsung's last 3D sets) when Kino and 3D Film Archive released a gorgeous 3D blu of 1954's Gog.

Since then, I've bought a lot of classic and recent 3D titles I wanted and, I suspect like many fellow classic-3D enthusiasts, I've "taken one for the team" multiple times by buying other titles I'd never buy in 2D -- in order to inspire rights holders to keep the classic-3D spigot open. For example, I've bought: Kiss Me Kate from WB, Miss Sadie Thompson from Twilight Time, and, from Kino, Those Redheads from Seattle (sorry, I'm just not into musicals) and APE (this stinker of a movie wasn't released; it escaped... but the 3D on the blu, thanks to 3D Film Archive, is pretty great).

The good news is that I can look forward to The Maze from Kino in a couple of months, and possibly another couple of titles on my classic-3D want-list before long. But too many classic-3D rights remain frustratingly elusive. And that won't help...

I'll be buying the Maze, and any other vintage 3D revival on BD even though I don't have a 3D TV set . The reason is that the 're usually pretty good movies, so I watch them "flat" . Having said that , I'd prefer to watch them in 3D and I'm hoping someone comes out with a reasonably priced (around $1000) 50 to 60 inch 3D television.
Meanwhile , the 3D format for modern blockbuster films seems to be pretty healthy in theaters. Most new films seem to have a 3D counterpart.

 

[Panman40]

I'm now regretting not getting LEGO Batman in 3D. 2D was fun, but it was obviously made to be watched in 3D.

3D may be dying as a consumer electronics feature...but there's fun to be found in it, even for folks like me who mostly don't care.

I love 3D, but IMO any Lego movies should be assigned to the bin. Just our opinion.

 

[RJ992]

The answer is no. And no matter how many times I am and will be branded a "hater" by the more indoctrinated faction of this community, the answer will still be "no". Because in two months, the manufacturers will be announcing their new 2018 models and none of them will have 3D. The ones that do will become increasingly scarce and astronomically expensive and by the time you start looking for an upgrade, they will all be gone. That's why its a legacy technology, Home 3D lost the long game and in a big way.

BTW: That petition has stalled at 16,000 signatures.

BTW: 16,213 and still growing

 

[RJ992]

Yes, it definitely will. Along with VHS, Beta and laser discs.

And vinyl?