3D in Adolescence

Over the past few months, I've come to the realization that 3D is going to be around for a long while yet.  Unlike 3D fads in previous decades, it's not going out of style anytime soon.  As a viewer, the decision and progress is out of my hands.  The question is, where does the industry stand? 



Various Hollywood bigwigs have weighed in on the proliferation of 3D.  Most, but not all, have been supportive.  Some, like George Lucas, have been extremely enthusiastic. When The Phantom Menace 3D was being released, he was quoted, "Watching a movie in 3D is simply a better way to watch a movie.  It's like black and white versus color.  Watching a movie in black and white is fine, however, color makes it look more real.  With 3D... it becomes a truly immersive and overpowering experience,"1.  The Phantom Menace, despite being the weakest of the Star Wars films, scored well over a billion dollars during its 3D release. 

The Star Wars films are epic sci-fi films filled with special effects and eye-popping visuals, and lend themselves very well to 3D.   Nowadays, this type of film is converted to 3D without a second thought.  But at least one summer blockbuster managed to escape this.  Cowboys and Aliens from last year was neither shot in nor converted to 3D based on a veto from director, Jon Favreau.  When asked why, he responded, "I have nothing against [3D], I think it's here to stay... but it has to serve the story.  Just like casting, just like performances, dialogue, everything has to serve the story, otherwise you're just being indulgent,"2.  No Western has ever been seen in 3D, and Favreau was nostalgic enough to respect that.  He also kept both of his Iron Man films off the 3D bandwagon, making him the last Marvel director to do so.   

Favreau appears to exercise an artistic prudence: use when necessary.  One of the points of difficulty in 3D's progress is the difference between film and digital video.  Many directors like the stylized appearance of film, but it is impossible to shoot 3D with film, it has to be converted.  For traditionalist, Chistopher Nolan, that's just taking it too far.  He says, "It's cheaper to work on film, it's far better looking, it's the technology that's been known and understood for a hundred years, and it's extremely reliable... I've carried on making films in the way that works best and waiting until there's a good reason to change.  But I haven't seen that reason yet,"3.  Despite studio pressure, Nolan is keeping The Dark Knight Rises as a 2D IMAX film.  "I wanted to be stylistically consistent with the first two films... The thing with stereoscopic imaging is it gives each audience member an individual perspective.  It's well suited to video games and other immersive technologies, but if you're looking for an audience experience, stereoscopic is hard to embrace."  

The future of 3D, while technically innovating, is artistically troubling. Re-releases are increasing in frequency and scope.  I'm reminded of the debate in the 1980s over the colorization of B&W films.  Back then, George Lucas went against Ted Turner to protect the films from colorization because of their significance to national heritage:  

People who alter or destroy works of art and our cultural heritage for profit or as an exercise of power are barbarians ... These current defacements are just the beginning. Today, engineers with their computers can add color to black-and-white movies, change the soundtrack, speed up the pace, and add or subtract material to the philosophical tastes of the copyright holder. Tomorrow, more advanced technology will be able to replace actors with “fresher faces,” or alter dialogue and change the movement of the actor’s lips to match. It will soon be possible to create a new “original” negative with whatever changes or alterations the copyright holder of the moment desires... it will become even easier for old negatives to become lost and be “replaced” by new altered negatives. This would be a great loss to our society. Our cultural history must not be allowed to be rewritten. 4  

-George Lucas 1988

His remarks were directed at studios who owned older films, but hadn't actually produced them.  He's since exploited the loophole that as the original artist, he can change his own work.  Since 3D conversion is a purely digital process, the original films will remain intact, especially since 2D versions are widely available in other media.  But the works are still being altered for profit, regardless of who is holding the pen.  It's still a rewriting of cultural history, and if 3D becomes the norm,  the original versions may be lost to time.  Both Lucas and blockbuster director, James Cameron, are proponents of converting older films.  "My personal philosophy," said Cameron, "is that post conversion should be used for one thing and one thing only - which is to take library titles that are favorites... and convert them into 3D - whether it's Jaws or ET or Indiana Jones, Close Encounters... or Titanic,"5.

With Hollywood in transition while the 3D technology is perfected, Cameron has proposed a compromise to accommodate the differing viewpoints.  Using a new industry term called "5D," he proposes an integration of camera technolgies so that films and TV broadcasts could be shot in both 3D and 2D simultaneously.  This way, the 3D can look as good as possible and be spared the conversion, and 2D can still be available when desired.  But that's just a stopgap.  Cameron went on to say that the pressure to make 3D films isn't just coming from within, but from the television market.  "The thing that’s going to be the coffin nail for conversion is when the broadcasters start broadcasting thousands, if not tens of thousands of hours a year in 3D. If you’ve got 5,000 cameras doing live sports feeding in over many different network delivery systems, it’s going to be pretty hard for Hollywood producers to claim that 3D is just too complicated to make a movie in 3D, when it’s being done every day by people a lot less talented and a lot less well-funded." 

I was reading through Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land the other day and a rather insignificant detail caught my attention.  A character was watching the news on a 3D TV (referred to as a Stereo Vision box).  This piece of Golden Age sci-fi from the 1960s foresaw the coming of 3D TV and, by extension, 3D films.  It's been a highly anticipated technology in previous decades.  One can see prospective examples in Back to the Future Part II and Minority Report, among others.  3D technology has been around for almost as long as filmmaking has.  It was introduced in the 1930s, and enjoyed strong fads in the 50s and 80s, but it was always kept within the theater.  What held back its full proliferation was expense and later television.  The technology just wasn't ready.  Now, 3D TVs have entered mainstream and it is only be a matter of time before 3D signals become standard.  

So what makes myself and others despise it so?  Is it artistic conservatism?  Status quo syndrome?  Or is it just those damn glasses, which according to Cameron, will be gone in a decade or so?  Until 3D becomes the new reliable technology that Nolan speaks of, I have to rely on filmmakers' discretion.  From Favreau, use only when it serves.  From Cameron, shoot in 3D or have no 3D at all.  From Nolan, the outputs of convention.

I have a feeling that in ten years, this post, if it survives, will be filed on the losing side of an argument.