Toy Story and 3D
So I saw Toy Story 3 yesterday. I'm not going to review it because it really just is an awesome film and you should go see it if you ever really had any fondess for toys as a child. There, that's my review.
No this post is about 3D movies and my opinions on it's value and responses to some of the things I hear people say.
But first, let me explain how your vision works, and follow it up with the technical side of old 3d and the new real-d 3d.
You perceive the world as one single image with depth. In reality you have two eyes that see the world as two different images and your brain combines both images and translates the differences between the two into the experience of depth. That "experience" combined with other context clues such as shadows, the size of an object, its general velocity (speed & direction) combine to tell us where everything is around us in relation to what we see.
So given this, 3d attempts to make use of what your brain does naturally by presenting your eyes with 2 different images and letting your brain put it together to create that extra missing piece of depth that is hard to define. If the movie gives your left eye one image where the box turned slightly to the left, and at the same time, gives your right eye the image of the box turned every so slightly to the right, as your eyes might see if they were looking at a real box.
Old 3d attempted to do this by project the movie as two images, one tinted red, and the other tinted cyan laid on top of each other, called an Anaglyph image. The viewers would wear glasses that covered one eye in red and the other in cyan. Using the properties of light, the eye with the red filter does not see the red tinted image and the cyan tinted image appears black and conversely, the eye with the cyan filter does not see the cyan image, and red image appears black. This version had obvious limitations as it played with the color of the film. Additionally there were other downsides I'll address in the following section. This
New 3d, which is being called "Real-D", is the same concept except that rather than project a red image or a cyan image, the movie projector projects two images that are polarized differently (either with alternating images or simultaneously displaying both, depending on how expensive of a system your theater uses). Glasses with differently polarized lenses are worn, so that they eyes are limited to seeing only one image.
Side Note: It is interesting to note that this polarized technique isn't really new. It was used back in the 1930s for a short while.
So now that you know how it all works, let me address some of the common statements I hear.
1. "The 3d in the theaters is just a gimmick."
So when people say this, they're generally trying to express that the 3d isn't "real" 3d and is therefor of less worth or that 3d is only added to a film as a way to get people to see the movie without adding any actual value. I'll address both points individually.
1a. "Well the 3d isn't real 3d so its worthless."
Bullshit. I might as well just say that movies aren't being performed in front of me in real time, so they're worth less than plays! Or that plays aren't even real and people should just stop pretending and actually do the story in front of me. If anything the introduction of stereoscopic 3d is a step closer to true 3d displays and its addition doesn't take away from the film. And if you think about it from the perspective of saving space, stereoscopic 3d is far superior than actually presenting visual objects within a space, since you need the actual space to present them. I mean the act of presenting moving pictures on a screen isn't real either. It takes advantage of how slow our eyes are to create a really cool illusion. Why can't we take advantage of how our eyes work to make an even cooler and more realistic looking illusion?
1b. "3d is just a sales gimmick that lets them charge an extra money for no real value."
So this one is hard because it is both true and false. There are two types of movies out there right now. There are movies who developed a special type of camera which, in the simplest description possible, developed a camera which sees the world like two human eyes do, effectively "shooting" in 3d. This is more time consuming and definitely more expensive than normal shooting. These films are generally shot with 3d in mind and, assuming the movie makers care, can use it to have an impact upon the film. The most obvious example of this being James Cameron's film Avatar. Avatar made use of 3d heavily in its establishing shots in order to help prove to the audience that Pandora was a living breathing world. Space shots, wide vistas, the sheer massive size of the trees, trucks, and Navi, were all a combination of camera perspective shots and the addition of 3d.
I also said that this was true. There are films out there that take a cheaper way out. They "add on" the 3d after the movie has been shot by digitally creating a second image to be projected from the first. This leads to a less realistic looking 3d and quiet likely eye strain (See below). It is also cheap. So if you're worried about the film makers making money off of 3d, it'd be those films who do post-production 3d who are racking in money. I suppose another viewpoint is that they are being more efficient in their spending. But more likely they're trying to captalize on the actual 3d that Avatar presented to people, and in my opinion, is giving 3d a bad name.
Unfortunately it is hard for the average movie goer to know which type of movie the current 3d movie is. Digging online is about the only thing I can suggest.
Now there is a third class of movie. Computer Generated movies such as the Pixar films and the like. These movies can "cheat" by duplicating the special 3d cameras in software. But in some ways they can cheat even better because, since their world is completely virtual, they can do mathematical calculations to create better control over the depth of the objects. Now this means that CGI movies are easy to make into 3d but what does that mean for the value of the 3d? Will a CGI movie that has 3d always take good advantage of that extra depth? Well that leads into our next few questions.
2. "3d gives me a head ache and makes my eyes strain"
Sadly this is sometimes true. As described above, post-production 3d can lead to eye strain. Best examples of films I know of that did this include Coraline and Clash of the Titans. There is also a percentage of people out there whose brains don't process vision the way the majority of people do which means presenting them with stereoscopic vision cause their brain or eyes to go haywire, leading to pain. The current real-d version of 3d creates far less of this than the older red/cyan 3d systems, but this isn't due to the lack of color so much as the advancement in moving shooting techniques which allow us to better record and position the two images so your brain doesn't have to "work too hard" to put them together. In other words we've gotten better at simulating reality.
3. "3d is pointless for most films and can only be used for gimmicks" or "3d doesn't do anything normal 2d doesn't already give us."
I'm willing to state that regardless of the film, the extra level of realism good 3d provides us is actually worthwhile. Sure we've grown used to seeing 2d screens that pretend to show us a 3d environment and give us tons of context clues as to how 3d it is and let our minds pretend. Regardless of if it is a simple drama film where there is little to no action save for the dialog, or a blockbuster film with explosions and fast movement. It looks more realistic. Now are drama films taking advantage of the 3d depth? No. Not as much as the action films who actually move through the environment more.
But the question of worth, these days, tends to come down money. Is it worth an extra $2.50? Thats... completely dependent upon your economic standing, sadly. I've stated that I feel 3d adds worth to a film. You might feel that that worth isn't enough in a movie that won't take full advantage of moving through the environment like an action film. Perhaps your ability to immerse yourself in a 2d film is great enough not to need 3d for a dramatic film.
4. "3d forces us to focus on where the camera want's us to focus"
I used to think this is true. But now that I've seen more "good" 3d films, I disagree. If a film was shot correctly, and aligned correctly, your eyes can move anywhere on screen and get the feel of depth with no eye strain.
Really though, what annoys me the most are the people who actively lobby against movies being made in 3d. For a variety of reasons stated above, they wish 3d movies would fail. It is like walking into an ice cream store that has a group of people actively lobbying against strawberry flavored ice cream. Now I don't really like strawberry ice cream but that doesn't mean I wish nobody could have it. Right? Perhaps it is more accurate to say that chocolate and vanilla are having a war and one side is worried that the other is just going to wipe them out. Or perhaps this metaphore has reached its limit.
I do not believe the current iteration of the technology will replace 2d vision based entertainment. But what I would like to believe is that this current trend in 3d helps spur commercial research into even better versions or even true 3d interfaces. Now that'd be awesome.
So you might wonder why I ranted about this so much and what it had to do with Toy Story 3? Well I have heard a lot of people claim Toy Story 3's 3d wasn't worth it. And I'll agree that the movie did not take full of advantage of what 3d can do as I stated above. However the extra $2.50 spent to see the film in 3d I felt was worth it for it added a level of realism to a bunch of talking toys and they never once went out of their way to remind me I was watching it in 3d. That I believe is one of the reasons why it was worth it.
No this post is about 3D movies and my opinions on it's value and responses to some of the things I hear people say.
But first, let me explain how your vision works, and follow it up with the technical side of old 3d and the new real-d 3d.
You perceive the world as one single image with depth. In reality you have two eyes that see the world as two different images and your brain combines both images and translates the differences between the two into the experience of depth. That "experience" combined with other context clues such as shadows, the size of an object, its general velocity (speed & direction) combine to tell us where everything is around us in relation to what we see.
So given this, 3d attempts to make use of what your brain does naturally by presenting your eyes with 2 different images and letting your brain put it together to create that extra missing piece of depth that is hard to define. If the movie gives your left eye one image where the box turned slightly to the left, and at the same time, gives your right eye the image of the box turned every so slightly to the right, as your eyes might see if they were looking at a real box.
Old 3d attempted to do this by project the movie as two images, one tinted red, and the other tinted cyan laid on top of each other, called an Anaglyph image. The viewers would wear glasses that covered one eye in red and the other in cyan. Using the properties of light, the eye with the red filter does not see the red tinted image and the cyan tinted image appears black and conversely, the eye with the cyan filter does not see the cyan image, and red image appears black. This version had obvious limitations as it played with the color of the film. Additionally there were other downsides I'll address in the following section. This
New 3d, which is being called "Real-D", is the same concept except that rather than project a red image or a cyan image, the movie projector projects two images that are polarized differently (either with alternating images or simultaneously displaying both, depending on how expensive of a system your theater uses). Glasses with differently polarized lenses are worn, so that they eyes are limited to seeing only one image.
Side Note: It is interesting to note that this polarized technique isn't really new. It was used back in the 1930s for a short while.
So now that you know how it all works, let me address some of the common statements I hear.
1. "The 3d in the theaters is just a gimmick."
So when people say this, they're generally trying to express that the 3d isn't "real" 3d and is therefor of less worth or that 3d is only added to a film as a way to get people to see the movie without adding any actual value. I'll address both points individually.
1a. "Well the 3d isn't real 3d so its worthless."
Bullshit. I might as well just say that movies aren't being performed in front of me in real time, so they're worth less than plays! Or that plays aren't even real and people should just stop pretending and actually do the story in front of me. If anything the introduction of stereoscopic 3d is a step closer to true 3d displays and its addition doesn't take away from the film. And if you think about it from the perspective of saving space, stereoscopic 3d is far superior than actually presenting visual objects within a space, since you need the actual space to present them. I mean the act of presenting moving pictures on a screen isn't real either. It takes advantage of how slow our eyes are to create a really cool illusion. Why can't we take advantage of how our eyes work to make an even cooler and more realistic looking illusion?
1b. "3d is just a sales gimmick that lets them charge an extra money for no real value."
So this one is hard because it is both true and false. There are two types of movies out there right now. There are movies who developed a special type of camera which, in the simplest description possible, developed a camera which sees the world like two human eyes do, effectively "shooting" in 3d. This is more time consuming and definitely more expensive than normal shooting. These films are generally shot with 3d in mind and, assuming the movie makers care, can use it to have an impact upon the film. The most obvious example of this being James Cameron's film Avatar. Avatar made use of 3d heavily in its establishing shots in order to help prove to the audience that Pandora was a living breathing world. Space shots, wide vistas, the sheer massive size of the trees, trucks, and Navi, were all a combination of camera perspective shots and the addition of 3d.
I also said that this was true. There are films out there that take a cheaper way out. They "add on" the 3d after the movie has been shot by digitally creating a second image to be projected from the first. This leads to a less realistic looking 3d and quiet likely eye strain (See below). It is also cheap. So if you're worried about the film makers making money off of 3d, it'd be those films who do post-production 3d who are racking in money. I suppose another viewpoint is that they are being more efficient in their spending. But more likely they're trying to captalize on the actual 3d that Avatar presented to people, and in my opinion, is giving 3d a bad name.
Unfortunately it is hard for the average movie goer to know which type of movie the current 3d movie is. Digging online is about the only thing I can suggest.
Now there is a third class of movie. Computer Generated movies such as the Pixar films and the like. These movies can "cheat" by duplicating the special 3d cameras in software. But in some ways they can cheat even better because, since their world is completely virtual, they can do mathematical calculations to create better control over the depth of the objects. Now this means that CGI movies are easy to make into 3d but what does that mean for the value of the 3d? Will a CGI movie that has 3d always take good advantage of that extra depth? Well that leads into our next few questions.
2. "3d gives me a head ache and makes my eyes strain"
Sadly this is sometimes true. As described above, post-production 3d can lead to eye strain. Best examples of films I know of that did this include Coraline and Clash of the Titans. There is also a percentage of people out there whose brains don't process vision the way the majority of people do which means presenting them with stereoscopic vision cause their brain or eyes to go haywire, leading to pain. The current real-d version of 3d creates far less of this than the older red/cyan 3d systems, but this isn't due to the lack of color so much as the advancement in moving shooting techniques which allow us to better record and position the two images so your brain doesn't have to "work too hard" to put them together. In other words we've gotten better at simulating reality.
3. "3d is pointless for most films and can only be used for gimmicks" or "3d doesn't do anything normal 2d doesn't already give us."
I'm willing to state that regardless of the film, the extra level of realism good 3d provides us is actually worthwhile. Sure we've grown used to seeing 2d screens that pretend to show us a 3d environment and give us tons of context clues as to how 3d it is and let our minds pretend. Regardless of if it is a simple drama film where there is little to no action save for the dialog, or a blockbuster film with explosions and fast movement. It looks more realistic. Now are drama films taking advantage of the 3d depth? No. Not as much as the action films who actually move through the environment more.
But the question of worth, these days, tends to come down money. Is it worth an extra $2.50? Thats... completely dependent upon your economic standing, sadly. I've stated that I feel 3d adds worth to a film. You might feel that that worth isn't enough in a movie that won't take full advantage of moving through the environment like an action film. Perhaps your ability to immerse yourself in a 2d film is great enough not to need 3d for a dramatic film.
4. "3d forces us to focus on where the camera want's us to focus"
I used to think this is true. But now that I've seen more "good" 3d films, I disagree. If a film was shot correctly, and aligned correctly, your eyes can move anywhere on screen and get the feel of depth with no eye strain.
Really though, what annoys me the most are the people who actively lobby against movies being made in 3d. For a variety of reasons stated above, they wish 3d movies would fail. It is like walking into an ice cream store that has a group of people actively lobbying against strawberry flavored ice cream. Now I don't really like strawberry ice cream but that doesn't mean I wish nobody could have it. Right? Perhaps it is more accurate to say that chocolate and vanilla are having a war and one side is worried that the other is just going to wipe them out. Or perhaps this metaphore has reached its limit.
I do not believe the current iteration of the technology will replace 2d vision based entertainment. But what I would like to believe is that this current trend in 3d helps spur commercial research into even better versions or even true 3d interfaces. Now that'd be awesome.
So you might wonder why I ranted about this so much and what it had to do with Toy Story 3? Well I have heard a lot of people claim Toy Story 3's 3d wasn't worth it. And I'll agree that the movie did not take full of advantage of what 3d can do as I stated above. However the extra $2.50 spent to see the film in 3d I felt was worth it for it added a level of realism to a bunch of talking toys and they never once went out of their way to remind me I was watching it in 3d. That I believe is one of the reasons why it was worth it.