Why most 3D is just a movie studio scam

There’s no greater debate in the movie industry today than about the newfound surge of 3D and its seemingly permanent $2-4 addition to all of our tickets.

I’ve claimed that AVATAR was the film that finally “converted me” to believing in 3D, but recently when I went to see ALICE IN WONDERLAND, I reversed that position, as it frankly, looked like shit. Now thanks to this Gizmodo article, I know why.

The piece details the difference between James Cameron’s 3D, which usues multiple cameras to capture every angle of a scene and upconverted 3D, where layers are just pulled and pushed around in order to trick your eye into thinking a scene is 3D.

“The problem is it’s expensive and difficult to do it right. Double the camera gear means double the footage and often doubling the camera crew. It also doubles much of the visual effects work as you have to render everything twice. A lot of the old gags we once used to do our “movie magic” no longer work in stereo films.

But what you get is the real thing, a true stereo view of everything in the frame. Just like a director or cinematographer chooses to focus the camera to direct the viewers eye you must make the same decisions in 3D to direct the convergence of the two eyes. Not doing this right (or having to do it with a faked perspective in the second eye) is like overlooking composition or sound design, it’s crummy movie making.”

There’s too much knowledge in this article to post all the best parts here, but I highly suggest you go here and read the whole thing for yourself. It pretty much sums up my entire argument against 3D-ification, and uses science to back it up. Moral of the story? Only Cameron knows how to do it right so far.