2D Cinema vs 3D

The 2D vs 3D cinema debate rumbles on, though the studios seem committed to the new technology.

In the old days of cinema, before polarising glasses, I never used to sit irritated in the dark thinking - this is far too flat for me. Why? Because through the art of the cinematographer, the image projected onto the 2D screen had 3D depth.

It is a trick of the mind and the eye so subtle that I was never even aware of it until I started to make films myself. The subject - the thing on the screen which the film maker wanted to direct my eye to - was in perfect focus. Other things, closer to the camera or further away, were softened. The slightest of out-of-focus blur.

This so closely maps onto the way we experience depth of field in everyday life that in watching a 2D movie, the mind tells us some things are further away and other things closer. A flat screen becomes 3D.

But in the old days those three dimensions were trapped behind the screen. Modern 3D extends out into the space between the screen and the audience. It offers that spooky moment when the Cheshire Cat hovers in the air just in front of you and speaks in Stephen Fry's voice.


For that moment of magic however, a payment is required. A thirty percent loss in colour. The hassle of having a pair of uncomfortable glasses pressing down on your nose - over your own glasses if you are short sighted like me. And a substantially more expensive cinema ticket.

There is also a strange mismatch between the old and the new systems of indicating depth. The subject is still in focus, the background and foreground are out of focus. But now some of those out of focus things are floating around in the air just in front of you. I find my eye is no longer pulled only to the thing I should be looking at, but jumps between things at different depths. They remain out of focus, which my brain finds hard to accept. The experience is disorientating and mildly unpleasant.

Perhaps we are in an age similar to the end of the silent era, when cinematographers were experimenting with the new technology and hadn't quite got it right. Or perhaps this is an unneeded technology. Time will tell. But for now, given the option, I'll be going for 2D screenings.

And here, for your enjoyment, is Mark Kermode and Simon Miller's revolutionary invention - glasses that allow you to see 3D screenings in spectacular, immersive 2D.

3D vs 2D cinema

I haven't come to a conclusion on 3D vs 2D, but following a trip to see Avatar 3D, I do have some thoughts:

1) Wasn't cinema 3D already? I never sat there looking at the screen aware that I was seeing something one dimension short of reality.

2) I hate having to wear the glasses over my own glasses. Perhaps a real myopic 3D lover would get a prescription set made up.

3) Cinema images tell us what to look at by putting some things into focus and some things out of focus. While watching this in 3D, I found my eye jumping around to things at different depths and being confused that they were out of focus. Perhaps I need to learn how to watch a 3D movie.

4) As Rhys Davies pointed out to me yesterday, 2D cinema has depth behind the screen. 3D cinema has depth in front of the screen. These are quite different from each other.

5)Whilst awareness of the glasses does take me out of the film from time to time, there is something intensely immersive about the 3D experience. I suspect I was pulled deeper into the 'reality' of the world I was seeing in Avatar because of it.

6) It is a long time since I have felt a lurch of vertigo at the cinema. But I most certainly did with the 3D of Avatar. That was a really good experience. The weightless scene at the beginning was also particularly effective.

7) There were moments in Avatar where the 3D was breathtakingly beautiful. Particularly the floating, luminous seeds in the forest.

8) I can't help feeling that 3D is being pushed by the studios as a means of fighting back against piracy rather than it being motivated by a desire to expand the scope of the art form. But perhaps it can expand the art form anyway. I am undecided.

9) Silent movies were extended by the introduction of sound. Black and white was extended by the introduction of colour. But it seems to me that in each case it took time for artists to understand how to use the new capacity. Why should it be different in this case?

10) Perhaps when we start getting low budget, indi-produced 3D movies, we will start to see people being brave enough with this new dimension to discover its true capacities.

I'm undecided and with a lot to learn. Your thoughts and comments would be particularly welcome on this.

UPDATE - new article on 2D vs 3D cinema here.

Avatar Review

I hated the Avatar trailer, which projected a corny plot and unbelievable, blue CGI creatures. I might not have gone to see the film at all if James Cameron hadn't been the director. But he was. So I did. I mean, the man created Aliens and Terminator 2 - both formative movie experiences for me. So I had to go.

That's the problem with trailers. There is no time to get immersed in the world of the film. Image and story are reduced to a few seconds. And these days the most likely place to see those images will be a small rectangle on the screen of your laptop.

But in a finely crafted film - as Avatar most certainly is - the film makers have the time and the tools. It is a testament to their skill that watching the movie itself, the strangeness of the imagery never burst the bubble of my belief. Even the flying mountains.

In Avatar James Cameron takes the European genocide of native American peoples and re-writes it, placing it on an alien planet and thus giving himself the space to re-cast the ending. The humans (European-American colonists) want the planet because of its mineral content. The indigenous blue tinted humanoids (native Americans) just want to live in harmony with the ecosystem.



But the humans have a trick that is going to get them into native culture and discover its weaknesses. A human mind can be made to temporarily inhabit a lab-grown alien body. And thus our paralysed hero gets to walk again - as a tall, blue skinned native. And of course, there is love interest along the way. Who was it who called this film 'Smurfahontas'?

Cameron cleverly uses imagery evocative of the destruction of the World Trade Centre to help us feel the obscenity of the destruction of native peoples. (I'm not saying there is any kind of moral equivalence between the two. But that is the power of metaphor - taking feelings that were attached to one event and juxtaposing them with another, without ever having to define logical equations of meaning.)

The film is not carried on the strength of the sci-fi story. The major act climaxes were obvious some 45 minutes before they arrived. This is Hollywood. We know where we're heading. The film is carried by its imagery, movement, immersion and, yes, emotion. It caught me up. I was enthralled. And, unexpectedly, I found myself weeping with emotional release at one particular moment near the end.

It is not, in my opinion, as perfect a film as Aliens or Terminator 2. But is is excellent none-the-less. Don't wait for it to come out on DVD. This is one for the big screen. As for 3D or 2D - perhaps that can wait for another blog posting.