interesting article on making (good) 3D films

[Fat Tone]

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2010/08/02/why-bad-3d-not-3d-glasses-is-what-gives-you-a-headache/

[Brian Ellis]

I hae ma doots that 3-D is here to stay for mainstream cinema.
1. As one of the commenters said, it's like cardboard cut-outs
2. You have to shoot with all the objects in the field sharp. In a close-up where there is insufficient DoF to have the background sharp, 3-D will befuddle the user
3. It assumes the viewers' eyes are ± identical. E.g., bad astigmatism in one eye will be almost painful, because of differential correction with prescription multifocal glasses works with variable distances. With 3-D, the real distance remains constant and the virtual distance changes; the eye will try to compensate but will distort the image. Margaret has severe astigmatism (+4 & +5) at different angles. In the 1950s polarisation 3-D, she had to leave the theatre because her eyes could not accommodate. I suspect diplopia will be another problem area.
4. Glasses are necessary. These are not only a nuisance, but frame-sequential ones are too expensive. Especially for family TV: a grand to be spent for a family of 4!

[Evildead666]

So many things are just "Blah bla bla -3D !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Wait for all the Remakes "Rambo 3D", Titanic-3D, Dances with Wolves -3D !!!!!!!!!!


One place where 3D will do very very well, is Porn.

Wonder what the First 3D porno will be ?

[Dr Mordrid]

And I hear that some porn outfit is readying content for the Nintendo 3DS, which uses Sharp's no-glasses 3D display tech, as well as coming smartphones and other devices that use the same tech. Made quite an impression at this years E3.

There are also major TV makers, including Sharp, that are coming out with no-glasses 3DTV's that work with 3D-BR, the new 3D Blu-Ray standard. We have such a player in the home theater and are just waiting for the TV's to come out, though porn isn't part of the programming.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/04/23/porn.technology/index.html

(CNN) -- It was just days after the release of the iPad -- Apple's slate computer heralded as a tool for gaming, book and magazine reading and Web consumption -- when the announcement arrived.

One of the world's biggest porn companies claimed it had created a way to stream its videos onto the device, skipping the Apple store and its restrictions on salacious content.

The announcement illustrates a widely acknowledged but seldom-spoken truth of the technology world: Whenever there's a new content platform, the adult-entertainment industry is one of the first to adopt it -- if they didn't help create it in the first place.

"It's not necessarily that the porn industry comes up with the ideas, but there's a huge difference in any technology between the idea and the successful application," said Jonathan Coopersmith, a professor at Texas A&M University who teaches the history of technology.

"They're kind of the shock troops, and one of the nice things for them is that they can claim, 'Hey, I'm advancing technology.' "

While the shadowy nature of the adult-entertainment industry makes exact figures hard to nail down, it's generally acknowledged that porn was the first product to make money on the Internet and still rakes in upward of $1 billion annually online.

[Although porn, like many industries, has felt the pinch of the last couple year's recession, leading Hustler's Larry Flynt and others to jokingly ask for a federal bailout].

From the printing press to instant cameras, from pay-per-view to VCRs, pornographers -- both professional and private -- have been among the quickest to jump on board with newly developed gadgets.

The first public screening of a movie was in 1895. Less than two years later, Coopersmith notes, the first "adult" film was released.

"The classic example is the VCR," said Oliver Marc Hartwich, an economist and senior fellow with Centre for Independent Studies, a conservative Australian think tank. "When it was introduced, Hollywood was nervous because the big studios feared piracy. They were even considering suing the VCR producers.

"Not so the adult industry. They saw it as a big new market and seized the opportunity."

On the internet, streaming video, credit-card verification sites, Web referral rings and video technology like Flash all can be traced back to innovations designed to share, and sell, adult content.

iReport: Porn and the economy

Experts attribute much of the success of AOL, the social networking forbearer of sites like Facebook and Twitter, to its private chat rooms -- and anyone who remembers scanning the user-created chats remembers the adults-only nature of many of them.

Websites that require memberships, encryption coding, speedier file-sharing technology -- all can trace their roots back to the adult industry.

These days, in addition to the race for the iPad screen, at least a couple of porn flicks are in production using burgeoning 3-D technology. While Hollywood has scored with a few blockbusters, 3-D tech for the television is still in its infancy -- and porn, as always, is right there to capitalize.

"Just imagine that you'll be watching it as if you were sitting beside the bed," Hong Kong-based producer Stephen Shiu Jr. said of his movie, "3D Zen and Sex," which is set to begin filming this month with a budget of nearly $4 million. "There will be many close-ups. It will look as if the actresses are only a few centimeters from the audience."

For adult-entertainment companies, staying on the cutting edge of technology can be necessary to survive.

Ilan Bunimovitz is the CEO of Private Media Group, the company that announced the iPad porn offering, which uses cloud computing to store a customer's videos.

In effect, he's saying it's like an iTunes for porn -- an online service that lets users buy and access a personal collection of adult videos via their iPads. Of course, the slate computer's browser can already be used to surf the internet for adult content.
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[Sasq]

The astigmatism is an issue brian, mine is fairly bad as well. however by chance I selected lightweight and small frames for my glasses and they fit quite comfortably under the 3D glasses.

While I am in no rush to get a 3D tv, as the tech becomes more saturated, so will the skill level and quality of the movies we watch. I'll be honest, it wasn't until I saw avatar that I actually took 3D movies as anything more then a joke. (we can argue somewhere else if avatar was a good or bad movie, but I feel the 3D was done very well)

It's just going to take time to mature.

[VJ]

It is indeed a good read, but the comment thread under it is equally interesting.

I for one also have quite severe astigmatism, but have no problem seeing the 3D effect for what it is worth. On a Sony demonstration, I saw it as cardboard cutouts, far from the "immersion" they promise. I'm probably the only person who hasn't seen Avatar, so I cannot comment on that; I did see other movies in 3D, and while I don't consider the effects so spectacular, it did not give me a headache.

While I think the use of 3D is still to blame for a lot of problems people have (wasn't it Katzenberg who said that badly done 3D could put people off of it?), I feel it is still a bit too early to full go into the whole 3D thing. The technology is just becoming usable, moviemakers are still learning and experiencing, and for many movies I don't really see the added value... Our brain is so used to watching 2D movies and interpreting it that it suffices for many movies (IMO).


Jörg

[Fat Tone]

I agree. I saw Avatar in 3D in a large cinema and found the 3D a distraction (I've commented on the details elsewhere). I've also watched it in DVD format on my 42" Toshiba Regza LCD TV and enjoyed the expereince far more.