3D industry mistakes

[Jimmy Smith]

4 ways Industry are killing 3D

In case you’ve been living under a rock the last 3 years you might not be aware that 3D is all the rage. Avatar’s huge success show people love 3D when it’s well done. When given the choice at most theatres of a cheaper 2D option 70% of consumers choose to see the movie in 3D. Major animation studios have all announced all computer animated movies will be 3D from now on. Best of all we now have a standard to deliver high quality 3D at home on everybody’s favorite format Blu-Ray. Not everything is well in 3D. Hollywood has made some decisions that are flat out stupid and putting temporary greed over the long term success of 3D.

1. Anaglyph – One of 3D biggest hurdles is convincing people to jump into 3D whose only perception is 3D delivered through the anaglyph process. Several Blu-Rays have given 3D releases done through the anaglyph process. Including Journey to the Center of the Earth, The Final Destination, and Coralline. The advantage to anaglyph is that it is by far the cheapest form of 3D requiring only cardboard glasses that you can practically make yourself and works and delivers a true stereoscopic 3D effect on any television and any Blu-Ray player. This is because it doesn’t truly send two independent eye signals but simply color tints a single image and allows glasses to filter out different colors to each eye. The problem with this process is that it produces pretty pitiful 3D. People bought these releases probably after seeing movies like Polar Express or Coralline in the theatres 3D. Only afterword did they find out the 3D experience these Blu-Rays deliver is not what they saw in the theater. Anaglyph 3D movies are filled with ghosting, depth of field problems, low resolution appearance (even when encoded at 1080p), and the movies color field totally destroyed. There not all bad. They do deliver a real 3D effect for those who need some kind of 3D and don’t want to shell out the cash for active shutter. The problem is the consumer confusion these movies are certain to create. It is gonna be difficult explaining to people that there are different kinds of 3D on Blu-Ray. Fact is every person turned off by anaglyph discs is one less potential sale of true 3D. I’m sure thousands have given up on 3D entirely because they were turned off by anaglyph. The industry should have foreseen this and waited till proper technology was available before bring 3D to Blu-Ray. However Hollywood put short term ahead of the interests of the 3D market.

2. Overpriced glasses – New 3D televisions are based on active shutter. These glasses are battery powered and actively shut from one eye to the other to deliver the 3D effect. This makes the televisions cheaper due to the lack of extra light polarization used in the theatres would. The price of these glasses is simply outrageous. They currently sell for $150. 3D at home will never be viable until the glasses come way way down. With televisions only coming with one pair a family of five will have to spend $600 to have a family 3D night. All this for a 3D experiance similar to what movie theatres deliever for an extra 2 bucks. But its worse. The glasses can only be used for that brand of television. If you have two different 3D televisions u need different glasses for each. But wait it gets even better. These glasses are easily broken when dropped or mishandled. Do you really feel comfortable giving your kids a fragile $150 piece of equipment to wear on there face. Simply put active shutter glasses today are a financial risk that few in today’s poor economy can bear. For 3D at home to take off the price of the glasses are gonna have to drop and drop fast and more standardization is important

3. Exclusivity deals and double dip attempts – There are presently zero 3D Full HD movies available for open purchase. Zero. In the real world content is king. What reason does someone have to buy an expensive new television when there is nothing avalible to take advantage of its star feature. Now matter how good 3D looks it will never take off until it’s given affordable movies that people actually want. At the moment the only 3D Blu-Ray is Monsters vs. Aliens which can only be purchased with Samsungs equitant. What if you bought a 3D TV from a different manufacturer and want the movie. Well you’re out of luck. DreamWorks will be selling it exclusively with Samsung for a year and they plan of doing the same thing with the Shrek trilogy later this summer. This is classic studio putting short term profit over long term success. Surely Samsungs exclusivity deal got them more cash then the extremely small 3D market ever would. However 3D will never have a market unless movies are openly available. This goes double for Fox’s decision to release Avatar in 2D only for 2010. Avatar is the kind of movie that would convince thousands to purchase 3D televisions just to see this in 3D. Fox however doesn’t seem to care about that instead favoring the profit of a few double dips over helping 3D take off. Avatar was shot in 3D from the ground up. 3D is how Avatar was meant to be seen and seeing the movie in 2D is just incomplete. The paradoxical reasoning is mind numbing. They limit 3Ds growth by not providing any real content and then justify it by saying 3Ds market is too small. It will remain small indefinitely until people can affordable purchase 3D Blu-Rays without needing to buy expensive equipment to get it.

4. Half conversions – One of problems with 3D is the extremely limited nature of native 3D content. For computer animated movies this is a non-issue. All computer animated movies are natively rendered in 3D and can easily be converted to stereoscopic vision with a simple re-render from the original digital files. This is why modern 3D has been mostly used with animated movies. Unfortunately for live action content it’s not so simple. There are two ways to deliver live action content in 3D. First is to shoot it with 3D cameras. These cameras shoot the world like the human eyes do. They use two lenses right next to each other and capture two very similar images that can be combined into a single 3D image. Unfortunately many filmmakers see shooting in 3D to difficult on site so simply converting 2D shot footage is very popular. With conversion a digital artist manipulates the image breaking it up into layers of depth and adding a layer of digital shading on the 2D image to give it a 3D effect. Problem with this process is that the real world doesn’t have a finite number of layers of depth but a virtually unlimited number of layers of depth. A 3D camera captures this fact much better then even the best conversions can. When all the resources are there to shoot in 3D it makes no sense to use conversion in my humble opinion. However when done right conversion can still look pretty damn good. For example The Nightmare before Christmas and Alice in Wonderland looked great at times. My biggest problem is conversions done at the last minute with a low budget. The best example is the recent Clash of the Titans given a quick 8 week 3D conversion late in post production that look awful. Full of ghosting, flat backgrounds, and dark color. Quality conversions take time according to James Cameron six months to a year depending on the movie. Therefore the decision to convert must be made early in production never in post. Just like anaglyphs Blu-Rays half assed conversions leave a bad taste in people’s mouths about 3D in general and hurt 3D when it’s done right. If people are gonna pay $2-4 extra the 3D better enhance the experience not be there as a cheap trick. Sadly with Clash pulling in big bucks it might convince cynical greedy executives that putting the cash for quality 3D is unnecessary to make a profit. That’s why it’s important to save your money and see poorly converted movies in 2D or not at all.

5. Droping extras from 3D Blu-Rays - In the early days of Blu-Ray dropped extras were a real problem for the format. Fox was the biggest offender. Even when space to include all the extras was ample many releases would obnoxiously drop extras from previously released DVD versions left and right in the vain hope that people who want everything will buy both versions. This was truely anti-consumerism at its worst. People who upgrade to a new format don't want to keep there old releases they want to replace them and studios dropping extras made that difficult. Lukely today studios have been much better and giving the Blu-Ray all the DVDs extras. Unfortunitly studios seem to be doing the same thing for 3D. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 3D Blu-Ray was announced to have less extras then the previous 2D only release. Given the movies short length there really is no excuse for this. Yes 3D does require higher bitrates but BD-50s space is still ample. A 90 minute 3D Full HD movie can still easily fit 2 hours of HD extras and 12 hours of SD extras. If space is not there for extras for example a long 3D movie like Avatar a second disc can easily and cheaply be provided. For 3D to suceed 3D discs need to be a true upgrade and they must include ALL the content from previous 2D only Blu-Rays.