Despite the unexpected critical admiration Byron Howard and Nathan Greno’s Tangled seems to have gained, I was somewhat neutral in approaching the film. In the end, though, I found much to admire in it, especially its use of lighting.

The film, which is inspired by the Brothers Grimm version of Rapunzel, is not without its problems. The story does not really gain traction until towards the end and its efforts to harken back to earlier Disney films  is a bit too self conscious. (For example, the scene in the boat pictured above seems to rather deliberately evoke a scene from The Little Mermaid.) Similarly, one could sometimes hear quotes from Beauty and the Beast’s music in Alan Menken’s score.

But the boat scene, however corny it may seem, does reflect the filmmakers’ use of lighting to invigorate a sometimes weak story. In the film, Rapunzel is kidnapped by Gothel, an elderly woman who covets the child’s magical hair, which can keep her eternally young (the hair glows when it performs its magic). Each year on Rapunzel’s birthday, the king and queen (and their subjects) send lighted lanterns floating into the sky looking for the lost princess. 

In addition to light being central to the film’s narrative, the filmmakers have also used it to strengthen its dramatic and comedic impact; unfortunately, the stills available barely hint at what art director David Goetz and look and lighting director Mohit Kallianpur were trying to do.

The use of a spotlight is an old trick that dates back to the early silent films of Cecil B. DeMille and is associated with his use of Lasky/Rembrandt lighting in movies such as The Cheat (1915) and Carmen (1915).  In the shot above,  the “spotlight” highlight’s our hero, Flynn Rider’s comic predicament. Below, similar spots are used to highlight Flynn’s more serious predicament after being arrested.

Perhaps more interesting is the scene where Rapunzel discovers Flynn after he has climbed into her tower. Sunlight creates another spotlight which shines on him, but initially she’s in the dark; she then slowly walks into the light, as if to mirror her sense of discovery. Again, this sort of staging and lighting is old hat in live-action films, but I don’t recall other animated film doing anything quite like it.

What is so exciting about Tangled’s use of lighting is the sense of discovery in being able to use digital technology to expand the animation filmmaker’s palette. As such, it is a reminder of the fact that the possibilities of computer animation have barely been touched. Credit must be given David Goetz and especially to Mohit Kallianpur, whose job as and lighting director seems somewhat akin to that of a cinematographer.

Credit, of course, should also go to the film’s directors. It’s interesting to note that in commenting on Bryon Howard’s previous effort, Bolt, which he co-directed with Chris Williams, I praised the film for  its use of 3D stereo “technology to evoke some very credible environments ,” especially its impressive “recreation of the streets of New York and Los Angeles.” The use of stereo in Tangled is also helpful in similar ways, and shows that the folks at Disney seem to understand how to utilize stereo more effectively than their cousins at Pixar.

While there’s much suspicion about the validity of Avatar’s box office performance due to inflated 3D ticket prices, the UK Film Council’s 2010 Statistical Yearbook paints a different picture. As reported by The Guardian,

last year was the best ever in terms of box office takings and the second best year since 1971 in terms of admissions, fuelled by the continuing growth of 3D and the through-the-roof success of Avatar, as well as the enduring, recession-resistant appeal of the big screen.

…

In terms of box office, it was a record year with takings topping £944m [about $1,457,000,000]. Cinema admissions also shot up from last year’s healthy 164 million to 174 million, not quite beating 2002 (176 million), but still up 6% and the second highest number since 1971.

As to the impact of 3D,

The 3D revolution arrived in earnest, with 14 3D films accounting for 16% of UK and Ireland box office revenues, up from 0.4%. There are still sceptics but [David Steele, the council's head of research and statistics] said: "It does not appear to be a flash in the pan."

Ace cinematographer John Bailey’s newest posting on 3D, “3-D, 3-D, 3-D, in All Directions,” is essential reading for those interested in stereoscopic cinema.  In it, he reports on “a 3-day 3-D workshop sponsored by IATSE Local 600 and longtime master 3-D guru Buzz Hays” as a jumping off point to discuss the problems and possibilities of the technique.  Among other observations, he notes that,

One thing quickly became apparent to me. Working in stereo movies in a responsible way is not simply a point and shoot affair, even in the most simple of conditions. Oh sure, you can do that—but that kind of off-the-cuff approach is what partly undid 3-D moviemaking in the past. Such a slipshod effort is one of the principal sources of viewer eyestrain. There is a dictate that became a mantra doled out by the workshop instructors and taken to heart by we eager students—3-D in movies is NOT REAL. Like an Escher drawing, it is an illusion. Our actual eyes simply don’t function the way 3-D movie imagery does. In constructing the 3-D movie frame we professional cinematographers have to evaluate carefully all the visual elements contained within the shot, as well as their cumulative effect as the sequence develops, shot by shot. One of the gravest mistakes we can make is to create exaggerated depth cues. This makes for an unreal sense of space that conflicts with the ability to integrate more dominant monocular cues. The result is a confusing sense of scale.

Among other things he discusses the process he went through in ultimately deciding not to use 3D for a film he will soon be shooting in the Arctic. As usual with John’s writings, it is essential reading.

According to a Digital Home story,

Samsung Electronics has posted an advisory on its corporate web site warning that children and teenagers may be more susceptible to health issues when viewing 3D content on their televisions.

The company also recommends that pregnant woman, the elderly and anyone under the influence of alcohol should refrain from watching programming in 3D.

Samsung also says that wearing 3D glasses for any other purpose may be physically harmful and could weaken your eyesight.

Given such concerns and the tempting thought that glassless 3D technologies may displace the current crop of 3D sets (which require rather expensive glasses) throws doubt on the rapid acceptance of 3D television. 

Incidentally, while there are a number of companies working on glassless 3D TV, the fact that Sharp, one of the leading manufacturers of TV sets, recently unveiled its own entry, which is initially aimed at the cell phone and mobile device market. As DailyTech reported earlier this month that:

… Sharp aired its stunning new 3D display.  The mobile display offers switchable 2D and 3D display modes and best of all does not require the user to wear any goofy glasses.

The television manufacturing industry at CES 2010 revealed itself to be deeply enamored with 3D sets.  However, doubts remain over whether users will be willing to don special glasses every time they want to watch events broadcast in TV.

I’m embarrassed to say I was a bit late in catching up to John Bailey’s wonderful blog, John’s Bailiwick,  hosted by the The American Society of Cinematographers, especially since John and I have been friends since our days as cinema students at the University of Southern California’s in the 1960s.  (John’s recollection of me during our USC days found here is spot on; I should also note his credits include The Big Chill, Groundhog Day, In the Line of Fire, As Good as It Gets and The Kid Stays in the Picture.) I was especially taken with his extended piece on 3D, “Ray Zone and the “Tyranny of Flatness,” which is one of the best discussions on the topic.

It starts out as a profile of  his friend Ray Zone, a “3-D film scholar and 3-D photo buff,” who has not only written extensively on the topic but is also responsible for creating many 3D comics; and his book, Stereoscopic Cinema and the Origins of 3-D, 1838-1952, was a primary source for Anthony Lane’s excellent New Yorker article I mentioned in an earlier post. Like Lane, Bailey not only picks up on the importance of Oliver Wendell Holmes in the development of stereoscopic photography with his stereo-cards, but claims

The rapid introduction of sequential stereo cards that featured recurring characters in staged settings became a true forerunner of narrative cinema. A chapter on the work of famed photographers such as Marey, Watkins, and Muybridge, whose stereo landscapes and animal studies are much better known in flat versions, leads directly to William Kennedy-Laurie Dickson’s exit from Edison’s labs when the great inventor refused to adapt his still-new film technology to Dickson’s dream of large screen popular exhibition. There are also fascinating tales of how 3-D films, though still a curiosity, developed alongside flat ones in the early 20th century. The culmination of contending concepts came with the release of the first feature length 3-D film, The Power of Love, in 1922.

He also notes that some scholars link Greg Toland’s interest in deep focus cinematography from his  “projection of film tests at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in 1935 with producer Sam Goldwyn, of footage shot with a purported 3-D camera built by William Alder” of Cal Tech.

He also quotes from the last published article by Sergei Eisenstein (whose writings were the cornerstone of film theory for many years) in the January 1949 issue of the Penguin Film Review,

Nowadays one meets many people who ask: “Do you believe in stereoscopic cinema?” To me, this question sounds as absurd as if I were asked: Do you believe that in nought hours it will be night, that the snow will disappear from the streets of Moscow, that there will be green trees in the summer and apples in autumn?”

Zone’s writings also lead Bailey to Oliver Sacks’ New Yorker piece on Dr. Susan  Barry, a neuroscientist who (contrary to conventional wisdom) learned to see in three dimensions late in life with the help of  optometric vision therapy despite having a history of strabismus, wherein one’s eyes look in different directions.

Though he hesitates from being a full-fledged 3D advocate, Bailey ends by one of those might have been moments:

[British cinematographer Jack] Cardiff also had a distinguished career as director, with more than a dozen credits. His most satisfying film in this role is the black and white feature Sons and Lovers, adapted by Gavin Lambert from an early D.H. Lawrence novel. For his work on this film cinematographer Freddie Francis received his first Oscar. It is a tense and dramatic film, photographed mainly in small sets. It was released in 1960 at the time of a real slough in 3-D production. I can’t help but wonder what Cardiff and Francis, two of the greatest cinematographers in cinema history, would have done if they had elected to film Sons and Lovers in 3-D. Cinema stereopsis may have had a far different history during the following half century had they done so, and my generation of film school brats would perhaps now not be looking at 3-D, here in our mature years, with both intrigued and ambivalent eyes.

A little over a year ago, I wrote that, “I suspect 3D will not go away anytime soon; the question , I believe, is whether or not it will go beyond being a niche market.” I also noted that it was seen as a way to get theaters to switch to digital projection, providing what Tim Partridge, Executive Vice President, Products and Technologies, for Dolby Laboratories, called the “wow factor.”  Well, it now seems certain that 3D has established a strong beachhead, which will go beyond being just a niche market.

For most, the game changer was James Cameron’s Avatar, which seemed to  legitimatize the process; if nothing else, its $2 billion plus box office receipts, with an overwhelming  amount of domestic revenues coming from 3D theaters, made people realize that stereoscopic films were no longer a recurring fad.

As a result, there looks to be a dramatic shift toward 3D production  and, yes, a wider use of digital projection; however, I suspect theaters will only install digital projection only when necessary to show 3D films. After all, digital projection is not cheap (especially in the current economic climate), but those multiplexes that put up signs saying they were not showing Avatar in 3D, will not want to be put in such a situation again. In fact, my local AMC multiplex in the North DeKalb Mall, in Decatur, Georgia, which had one of those signs, has converted its largest screen in time to show Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland in 3D. And the Regal Hollywood 24, which had been my closest 3D venue (a 15-20 minute drive), now has two 3D screens; previously, the nearest multiplex with two such screens was on the other side of Atlanta.

The shift to 3D production has now gone beyond the party faithful and Warner Bros. announced it will release the new version of Clash of the Titans, as well as Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 1, Guardians Of Ga’Hoole, and Cats & Dogs: The Revenge Of Kitty Galore in 3D. No matter that these films, and Alice in Wonderland, were not designed for stereoscopic viewing, the major studios  see the writing on the wall. In this, it has some semblance to the post-Jazz Singer shift to talking pictures, when talking sequences and musical tracks were anxiously added to silent movies, and to the shift to color in the mid-1960s, when films that began shooting in black and white, like Norman Jewison’s The Cincinnati Kid, were reshot in color.

The Problem

The problem, according to this Associated Press story, is:

Movies in 3-D are becoming such big moneymakers that Hollywood studios are cramming them into the nation’s theaters, even though there aren’t enough screens available to give each film its fullest possible run.

That will mean an unprecedented number of 3-D movies for film fans to choose from this spring, and smaller profits for Hollywood studios than they might otherwise get with fewer 3-D competitors.

Subsequently, The Los Angeles Times reported, “Studios are using high-pressure tactics to book their films into theaters,” adding that,

Paramount Pictures is using high-pressure tactics against theaters to book DreamWorks Animation’s upcoming big-budget 3-D film, "How to Train Your Dragon" onto scarce 3-D screens around the country, according to industry executives. "Dragon," opening March 26, will be going head to head against the swords-and-sandal 3-D picture "Clash of the Titans," from Warner Bros., which opens a week later, and Disney’s 3-D "Alice in Wonderland," still drawing audiences and expected to remain in theaters for several more weeks.

Frankly, I don’t see the shortage lasting very long. If history is any guide, the shortage could be short-lived.  When The Jazz Singer came out in 1927, there was only a limited number of theaters wired for sound; but when Warner Bros. brought out its follow-up, The Singing Fool, in 1928, there were enough theaters available for it to set a box office record that would only be broken 10 years later by Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Also, in the early 50s, most theaters underwent wholesale conversions to both 3D and widescreen in fairly short order.

But I see no reason to believe that theaters will feel compelled to convert each and everyone of their theaters to stereo, let alone digital projection.  For now, 3D will probably be limited to specific types of large-budget movies or exploitation films, much as color was initially limited in its early days to the likes of animated cartoons (Snow White), spectacles (Gone with the Wind) and musicals (Meet Me in St. Louis). It was only when US TV networks decided they would only broadcasting movies made in color that Hollywood almost overnight converted to making films only in color. (Since, then, only directors with some clout, such as Martin Scorcese (Raging Bull), could use black and white.)

Though 3D TVs have recently been introduced, sales would have to take off dramatically for broadcasters to add more than token stereoscopic programs (such as the World Series). The amount of 3D product available on Blu-Ray will be limited over the next few years, though one should not count put the lure of 3D for gamers being a factor. (One of the problems probably hindering sales of 3D TVs, beyond the added premium over conventional HDTVs, is the cost of glasses, which will initially be over $100 each; this will certainly limit the purchase of such sets by bars and restaurants (which were among the first to buy TV sets after World War II and more recently HDTVs) and institutions such as schools, where the cost of providing patrons/students with expensive 3D glasses will be prohibitive.  And until these markets reach some sort of critical mass, any hope of wholesale conversion to stereoscopic production and exhibition seems premature.

Right now, the only type of movie where 3D production will be de rigueur are mass market animated features. Of the non-3D animated films released lately, only Ron Clements and John Musker’s The Princess and the Frog made any sort of impact and then mainly for its merchandizing revenues; ; and because of this, Disney will likely continue to make the occasional drawn animation. (For the record, I found some of its musical numbers sporadically entertaining, but felt it was a lesser effort than than directors’ last effort, the underrated Treasure Planet.)

Conversion Fever

In the short run, we are in for a number of special effects laden, live-action films haphazardly converted to 3D. The first being Tim Burton’s “version” of Alice in Wonderland, which predictably looks rather awkward. Much of the 3D looks artificial, with discernibly flat layers of action substituting for any real sense of depth (a sort of multiplane effect, if you will). Having no desire to see the film in its flat version, I can only suspect that the conversion did little to help. (I never liked the original Lewis Carroll books and have found any previous screen versions satisfactory.)

The earlier 3D conversion of Tim Burton and Henry Selick’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, with its occasional insertions of foreground props in a vain attempt to provide added depth, really diminished the film; even worse was Toy Story, which had new animation added, including full-figure shots of the boy and his mother instead of just legs, which really made no sense. The 3D version of Toy Story 2, however, did not seem substantially hurt by the conversion, since there seems to have been little or no tampering with the film itself. (The two films were given a modest release last year, with distribution obviously limited by the scarcity of 3D venues.)

Though critics will surely pounce on these bastardized films as proof of 3D’s inferiority or whatever, I don’t see the public turning away from them.

Post Scripts

By the way, I do recommend “Third Way: the rise of 3-D,”  by Anthony Lane, in the March 8th issue of The New Yorker, which can be found here. It provides an excellent summary of the history of 3D cinematography, including the role played by Oliver Wendell Holmes in its pre-history.  Along the way, he perfectly reflects both the attraction and horror felt by many at the prospect of converting older films:

Faced with the thought of a 3-D “Casablanca,” one is torn between outrage at such blind desecration and a sneaking wish to know—well, what the hell would it look like? The mind runs riot, in search of screenings past. Imagine the older couple dancing, with slow grace, in “The Magnificent Ambersons,” with the younger pair behind them, watching in admiration from the stairs; imagine the gentle ascent of the camera, at the end of “Ugetsu Monogatari,” as the child lays an offering on his mother’s grave, and we gaze beyond him to the workers, with griefs and rituals of their own, toiling in the distant fields; imagine the arrival of the train at the start of “Once Upon a Time in the West,” with those seamed, all-knowing faces so close to us and the railroad stretching so far; imagine the flirtatious darting between trees, in “Smiles of a Summer Night,” as the maid half seeks to flee the randy groom in the background, both of them blessed and maddened by the midnight sun. All these scenes depend on figures held in separate planes, and on the unspoken feelings that brim in the spaces between them; would it weaken or intensify those feelings if the spaces were given solid form? Try asking Patrick von Sychowski, the chief operating officer at Reliance MediaWorks [an Indian company involved in such conversions], quoted in the London Times: “You can’t just press a button and have a computer do it. You have to take artistic decisions, such as what’s going to appear in the foreground.” Ah.

I would also recommend Kristin Thompson’s report here on a screening by archivist extraordinaire  Serge Bromberg (owner of  Lobster Films and the Annecy Festival’s Artistic Director) of early 3D films, which ended with a surprise:

… two films that had never been meant to appear in 3D.

[Georges] Méliès’s early shorts were often pirated abroad, and a lot of money was being lost in the American market in particular. After the Lubin company flooded that market with bootleg copies of a 1902 film, Méliès struck back by opening his own American distribution office. Separate negatives for the domestic and foreign markets were made by the simple expedient of placing two cameras side by side. The folks at Lobster realized that those cameras’ lenses happened to be about the same distance apart as 3D camera lenses. By taking prints from the two separate versions of a film, today’s restorers could create a simulated 3D copy!

Two 1903 titles–I think that they were The Infernal Cauldron and The Oracle of Delphi–triumphantly showed that the experiment worked. Oracle survived in both French and American copies, and the effect of 3D was delightful. For Cauldron only the second half of the American print has been preserved. Watching the film through red-and-green glasses, you initially saw nothing in your right eye, while the left one saw the image in 2D. Abruptly, though, the second print materialized, and the depth effect kicked in. The films as synchronized  by Lobster looked exactly as if Méliès had designed them for 3D.

Of course, if you’re in Toronto, you could also check out the activities of Reg Hartt’s Cineforum, which tomorrow tonight is having a screening of “The History of 3D in the Movies,” which he describes as

Stereoscopic Cinema from its origins to the present day (Reg Hartt has the most advanced 3D system in Canada and, in his archive, nearly every 3D motion picture ever made). The Cineforum is THE ONLY PLACE in the world where stereoscopic cinema can be studied IN DEPTH.

‘

Well, the wait is over and, whether one likes it or not, Avatar looks like the game changer that James Cameron, Jeffrey Katzenberg and other promoters of 3D movies said it would be, quieting critics who said the technology would never really work in live action. It also looks like it will be the film which legitimatizes motion/performance capture, especially as a way for live-action directors to enter the wonderful world animation (though sometimes without necessarily admitting it’s animation). It also helps that, despite its occasionally comical mixture of Star Wars and FernGully, it’s a pretty good movie.

As I wrote a year ago, “I suspect 3D will not go away anytime soon; the question , I believe, is whether or not it will go beyond being a niche market.” Avatar’s success certainly solidifies 3D’s place in the cinematic mainstream, though calling it a live action is problematic. (In this regard, do read Brad Brevet’s “Should ‘Avatar’ Be Considered for Best Animated Oscar?” on RopeofSilicon.com here and Steve Hulett’s follow-up comments on The Animation Guild blog here.) Thus, Kristin Thompson’s comments on Beowulf that “It’s still fiendishly difficult and expensive to shoot live action material in digital 3-D, so most projects are animated,” perhaps still seems to hold.

In regards to his use of motion capture, Cameron has been especially boastful about how he has overcome the last obstacle to the technology’s acceptance, that of being able to reproduce not only the reference actor’s bodily actions, but their exact facial expressions as well. As a result we are left with the spectacle of critics gushing over how, for example, Sigorney Weaver’s avatar face looks just like Sigorney Weaver’s actual face (see comparison below). This, as Brevet points out, is something that animators have been doing since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (actually since Otto Messmer’s pre-Felix the Cat work on Charlie Chaplin cartoons).

Also, the film really does not fully address the problem of the uncanny valley, as the mocap characters are not meant to be realistic humans, but highly stylized humanoids; a better test would be to see how Cameron would do on a follow-up to Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.

Cameron also boasts that his work on performance capture technology will eventually lead it to becoming more commonplace and cheaper. I suppose so, but less expensive approaches already exists. For instance, director Neill Blomkamp in an interview about his District 9 with Todd Gilchrist notes:

Pretty much in any shot with an alien interacting with a human, which 99 percent is Christopher interacting with Wikus, there was Jason Cope, who was the actor who plays Christopher and who also plays all of the other aliens in the film. He was always on set in a lycra, light-reflective suit, and he would be interacting with Sharlto. It was not performance capture from a data-recording standpoint; like, there were no motion-capture cameras around. But once our live-action camera was tracked, the animators at Image Engine would sort of trace-animate the motion of Jason, almost literally like tracing him. That rotomation would become the essence of the performance of this digital creature, and then they would paint Jason out and put the digital one in, and you would have both performances and they would both be real and they would both be interacting with one another. It’s just very difficult and very expensive to paint someone out of a moving-camera [image] and then replace them with something, but we factored that in.

And despite District 9’s $30 million budget, it doesn’t suffer much in comparison with Avatar and, I would argue, is the better film.

The comparison between the two films is also interesting in that Blomkamp’s training and experience was an animator and special effects artist, while Cameron’s was not. (True, Cameron can draw, a skill which is often considered the holy grail of qualifications to becoming an animation artist or special effects artist, he never had any particular training in either craft.)

Yesterday, tired of Atlanta’s continuing lack of Imax theaters showing Hollywood fare, my wife and I drove to the AMC Southlake 24, in Morrow (about a 30 minutes away) to see Avatar. The theater complex is a rather comfortable oasis in the midst of a rather desolate shopping complex and largely enjoyed the movie; but right now I don’t want to focus on the movie itself, but on the fact that about two hours into the film I began to get a headache on both sides of my head. Reports of headaches while watching 3D films are certainly nothing new or strange, but, for someone who has been seeing stereoscopic films without incident since 1952 (yes, I’m old enough to have seen Bwana Devil when it first came out), this really caught me by surprise.

I suppose there are several valid explanations for my what happened, including the fact I never before sat through a 3D movie over two hours long, or saw a feature-length 3D Imax film, or age was finally catching up with me, or some combination of these or other factors. And attempts to use the techniques to avoid 3D headaches discussed on Shadowlocked did not seem to help left me fearing my 3D moviegoing days might be numbered.

However, in talking this over with my wife, she suggested that my headache came from the glasses applying too much pressure on my head muscles. She herself felt uncomfortable during the show and was able to relieve her discomfort by moving her glasses into a more comfortable position. I’m not sure if this explanation is valid or not, but the RealD 3D glasses the Southlake used were noticeably different from any I used before; and though I was not conscious of any added pressure to my head, it’s not something I can rule out.  And even if it is valid, I doubt it explains all reports of headaches while viewing 3D movies.

While part of the animation blogosphere has been agitated by the apparent resemblance between James Cameron’s Avatar and Marc Adler’s Delgo (see here and here), Jonathan Jones’ On Art Blog for The Guardian uses the film’s impending release to make a rather bold statement on the importance of stereoscopic movies. He feels that the technology’s ability to provide an “unprecedented depth of field it creates and the convincing sense of looking not at a flat screen, but into a world of solid forms in real space” is a artistic revolution comparable to the Renaissance.

In the 15th century, artists discovered how to paint bodies and landscapes as if they had depth and solidity. Painting triumphed over the flat surface to create the illusion of a real scene glimpsed through the square enclosure of the wooden panel or canvas, as if you were watching a play on a stage.

The effect was just as dazzling, just as unexpected as 3D cinema – and it has lasted a lot longer than the gimmicks of 1950s science fiction. Visitors to the National Gallery stand fascinated by the illusion of a real room, with real shadows, depth – even real air – in Jan van Eyck’s painting the Arnolfini portrait [see below].

I’ve been rather busy of late with work on this summer’s The Persistence of Animation/Society for Animation Studies Conference (check out what’s happening with it here), but did want to put in my two cents about Henry Selick’s Coraline and Conrad Vernon and Rob Letterman’s Monsters vs. Aliens before it’s too late.

Henry Selick is one of the good guys in the animation world and Coraline was eagerly awaited by one and all, myself included; however, I found the film disappointing, especially in its use of 3D stereo; on the other hand, Monsters vs. Aliens seemed much more enjoyable and its use of 3D considerably more effective and, above all, was not as self conscious.

Coraline’s reception seemed to ran from mixed to ecstatic, with a generally positive response to Selick’s handling of 3D. Among the few dissenters of sorts was Cartoon Brew’s Amid Amidi, who led off his comments on February 26 by noting,

Coraline was the first time I’d seen a film in 3-D in a very long time, and while I enjoyed the film immensely, the 3-D technology was a huge dud. The imagery on-screen was so fuzzy that I initially thought my glasses were defective and exchanged them for another pair. Apparently, it wasn’t the glasses though; that’s just part of the 3-D “experience”. Add to that an annoying strobe on close-up shots, tinted glasses that obscured details during the film’s darker scenes, and leaving the theater with a headache, and it ends up being a miserable experience that I don’t anticipate repeating anytime soon.

One of the reasons sometimes given for the failure of 3D films in the early 1950s were complaints of headaches, which recent technology claims to avoid; though Amid’s is the only such complaint I have come across of late, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was not alone. This is not something to be taken lightly, but so far it does not appear to threaten the technology’s increasing popularity. (Recall that the Denn? Senshi Porygon episode of Pokémon caused seizures among Japanese children; also, a few students complained to me about the stroboscopic effects when I screened George Dunning’s Yellow Submarine.)

I wonder whether Amid’s problems were aggravated by Selick’s poor use of 3D? While Selick is not throwing things in the viewer’s face as much as Robert Zemeckis did in Beowulf, it’s a major annoyance. Yes, the story of a young girl who finds an idealized version of her parents in a parallel universe has a certain whimsical appeal, but Selick’s use of 3D, which constantly calls attention to itself, just gets in the way. (I suspect this self-consciousness might even carry over into the non-3D version.)

In terms of story, Monsters vs. Aliens, which tells of a woman turned into a giantess on her wedding day after being hit by a meteor and her subsequent encounter with aliens, seems more pedestrian; however, in terms of direction, script and use of 3D, it is easily the better film. DreamWorks Animation, like Disney before it in Meet the Robinsons and Bolt, seems to see no need to constantly slap the viewer in the face to remind them they are watching a 3D movie. (I did cringe at the beginning when a bouncing paddleball is aimed at the camera, but this thankfully proved proved a momentary affectation.) Instead, Vernon and Letterman make the stereoscopic environment seem natural and unaffected; as a result, the climatic scenes, where the stereo effects are most pronounced, does not call attention to itself.

I wonder how much of the positive reception accorded Coraline was due to it being a Henry Selick film produced by an independent studio (Portland, Oregon’s Laika), using stop motion puppets, rather than from a mainstream Hollywood studio (DreamWorks Animation) using computer animation? (Film history is littered with films whose initial reception was heavily colored by premature expectations [e.g., Orson Welles' Citizen Kane and  Mike Nichols' The Graduate], which may or may not be fully realized.)

While, Monsters vs. Aliens may not stand up to the likes of Sita Sings the Blues, it nevertheless affirms my faith that the current wave of 3D films will not soon go away.

P.S.: In the for what it’s worth department, my wife, who has limited vision in one eye and thus limited depth perception, has no problem in this regard when seeing stereoscopic movies;  and one of my students with similar vision problems reports a similar experience.

I am a little late in reporting my thoughts on Madagascar: Escape to Africa, the new DreamWorks Animation movie directed by Eric Darnell and Tom McGrath, and Bolt, the new stereo 3D film directed by Byron Howard and Chris Williams. Madagascar 2, which continues the screwball capers of the original, seems much the better of the pair; the DreamWorks Animation team, under Jeffrey Katzenberg, seem to have gotten their comic formula down pat and now seem able to rattle off the visual and verbal gags like clockwork. I don’t know how much longer they can keep it up without getting tired, but so far they’re doing OK.

Bolt, however, tends to totter around a rather weak premise (a movie star dog who lives in a Truman Show/Buzz Lightyear-like cocoon escapes into real world), which is almost rescued by a good sense of pace and its use of stereo 3D. Like Meet the Robinsons, it use of 3D is much superior to the likes Beowulf and Journey to the Center of the Earth, which seemed to have taken their cue from the cheap stereoscopic effects that made Bwana Devil so popular in 1952. Instead, Bolt manages to avoid throwing things things at the camera and uses the technology to evoke some very credible environments — I was especially impressed with its recreation of the streets of New York and Los Angeles. If the promised flood of stereo movies from DreamWorks and Pixar follows Disney’s lead in this matter, we’ll all be better off.

Speaking of art direction, Madagascar 2, like Kung Fu Panda, uses an extremely rich and detailed tapestry almost unimaginable in the days of 2D animation. At least it was until digital ink and paint came along, which did away with the limitations of the camera stand. (Basically, 2D animators were limited by the size of animation cels, which usually could not be more than 16 field, or 16½  inches wide and 12½ inches high.) This enabled films like The Lion King to easily employ much more detailed imagery than previously thought possible.

The use of CGI further enabled 2D artists to expand their visual horizons. This can be seen in the trompe l’oeil effects used on the periphery of DreamWorks’ Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, and in the spectacle of Ron Clements and John Musker’s underrated Treasure Planet. Thus, the visual virtuosity on display of late in the films of DreamWorks and Pixar can be seen as part of the continuing exploration by animation artists of the still new possibilities offered by animation’s digital revolution.

Is this the future of drawn animation? The National Film Board of Canada has recently posted this fascinating film in which “Munro Ferguson explains the principles of the 3D Stereoscopic animation technique a.k.a. Sandde. He also shows us the lab where these short animations are shaped up.”

Reg Hartt announced that he will be showing a 3D version of D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance at The Cineforum, in Toronto. His email ]proclaimed that,

The Greatest Spectacle In the History Of Motion Pictures Just Got More So. See for the first time ever in 3D…  D. W. Griffith’s INTOLERANCE. Using the same technology employed by Imax Theatres to show 2D movies in 3D I have added more depth to an already great motion picture. This is your chance to see this magnificent film as you never imagined it could be seen.

His reasoning is provided in an article he wrote on The Cineforum website, where he says, in part:

I have bad news for you if you are a film purist and good news, if, like me, you are interested in adding a new dimension to your film going experience.

3D can and should be an exciting process that allows the film maker to take us into new emotional and intellectual landscapes. So far it has not been. …

while back, on Jerry Beck and Amid Amidi’s site, Cartoon Brew, I found someone had converted a 2D Popeye cartoon to 3D.

That caused me to start surfing the web for more information.

The more information I discovered the curiouser I became.

Now I have installed in the Cineforum the same field sequential 3D process used in Imax Theatres,.

This is, in Roger Ebert’s words, “The one 3D process that works.”

As well as acquring movies filmed in 3D I have converted Kid Dracula, Oz Darkside, Metropolis, and The Salvador Dali Film Fest to 3D.

The problem with 3D has not been with the device itself but with the fact that we only got to see it used in movies that, for the most part, did not represent the art of film making at its best.

I am now in the process of converting The Lord of the Rings trilogy, all six Star Wars films, D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance, Lawrence of Arabia, The Matrix trilogy and more to 3D.

The neat thing about this is that in each of the films I have done so far the added depth the process brings to the films does take me into the movie precisely as [Andre] De Toth [director of 1952's Bwana Devil, the first 3D feature] saw it would.

Watching Buster Keaton in Cops in 3D is an indescribable joy.

Eric Brevig’s version of Jules Vernes’ Journey to the Center of the Earth is not a film I would usually comment on, but several things piqued my interest. First, I’ve always been something of a sucker for stereoscopic films ever since seeing Bwana Devil, the film that started the first wave of 3D films,  when it came out in 1952. Its recent resurgence is something I look on with interest, though I’ve limited my recent viewing to animated films such as Meet the Robinsons and Beowulf. And as I’ve recently taken up teaching the history of visual effects, it was also time for me to check up on what’s happening in the “live-action” side of things when special effects are involved.

The film, which has a modern scientist  discovering that Verne’s book is science fact and not science fiction, is a rather pedestrian affair. As expected, it has the usual, ill-conceived money shots, in which objects and fluids of all sorts are aimed or thrown at the viewer, which have plagued 3D movies since Bwana Devil. Better is a sequence of a roller coaster ride in a mining shaft straight out of Ben Stassen’s Devil’s Mine Ride, an early CGI ride film.

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Then there are the visual effects, which is interesting since the film is Eric Brevig’s feature directing debut, especially given that  most of his recent credits mostly were as visual effects supervisor on such films as The Day After Tomorrow. (Are visual effects, like TV commercials and music videos to be the new path to directing movies?) Though most people will focus on things like the mine ride and prehistoric beasts, including the obligatory T-Rex, I was intrigued by the problems involving the film’s use of matte paintings.

Matte paintings have been around movies from its very earliest days and continue to be an effective (and economical) means for creating environments ranging from simple houses to vast panoramas (as in the scene above). Matte artists have effectively adapted to digital technology in recent years, but stereo imagery seems to have posed a something of a problem in Journey. The thing is that the matte paintings sometimes look like paintings or backdrops better suited to a stage play than to a dimensional environment. I suspect this is not as evident in the 2D version of the film, but the film’s matte artists have not been able to effectively adapt to 3D. I would think matte artists will eventually overcome this challenge, but it’s always interesting to see how the film world copes with new technologies.

By the way, if you do see the film, stick around for Bruce Schluter’s animated  end title sequence, which makes much better use of the mine ride material than the film  itself.

Last month, IMAX signed a deal with AMC Entertainment to “to install 100 IMAX digital projection systems at AMC [theater] locations in 33 major U.S. markets.” Once this is done by 2010, IMAX says it will have doubled the amount of its 3D large-format theaters. This, coupled with the small but increasing number of films being produced for stereoscopic theatrical presentation, is further evidence that this is not a trend that will soon go away. It is particularly marked in animation and has some interesting implications for theatrical exhibition (especially for the future of digital projection), and even for TV and home video.

Stereoscopic film production and exhibition has been gradually percolating up for the past few years. However, it has only been in the last year or so, that there have been enough venues to see these films in 3D in all major metropolitan areas in the US. For instance, in 2004, Polar Express was shown in both flat and IMAX 3D, though the latter option was not available here in Atlanta, where the Fernbank Museum only shows popular science films. The IMAX-AMC deal will add 2 new Georgia facilities (both in Atlanta), which will double the number of locations in the state (the other being in Buford, outside of Atlanta).

Actually, the increase in IMAX theaters in multiplexes rather than in science museums will more than double the venues showing Hollywood films. For instance, New York City, which has 2 IMAX theaters (including one at the American Museum of Natural History), will see 6 new locations; the same will happen in Los Angeles, where one of the 2 current sites is also in a science museum). (This IMAX press release lists all the new venues.)

However, IMAX is not the only game in town, as the number of multiplexes having a 3D-equipped theater has also increased during the past year. Thus, when I saw the 3D version of Meet the Robinsons in Savannah last year, I had a choice of 2 locations. (This means that in certain cities, one can see 3 different versions of a film like Beowulf: IMAX 3D, traditional 3D and flat.

Film historians Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell’s blog recently had an interested discussion on Beowulf which also speculates on the future of stereoscopic films. Thompson said,

It seems to me that the people who are pushing 3-D so hard and hoping for it to become standard in filmmaking are forcing it on the public too soon. It’s still fiendishly difficult and expensive to shoot live action material in digital 3-D, so most projects are animated.

Because of this some, she feels some filmmakers compromise and use motion capture, as in Beowulf, which Thompson is not a fan of.

Bordwell is even more adamant in his view against stereo projection.

It would take a perceptual psychologist to explain why 3-D looks fake. Whatever the cause, I’d speculate that good old 2-D cinema is better at suggesting volumes exactly because the cues to depth are less specific and so we can fill in the somewhat ambiguous array.

He also brings in parallels with the first 3D boom in the early 1950s, and concludes that the current boom will also fade away. The two draw an interesting parallel between the motivation behind Hollywood embracing 3D then and now:

The American box office plunged after 1947 as people strayed to other entertainments, including TV, and so the industry tried to woo them back with some new technology. Today, as viewers migrate to videogames, the Internet, and movies on portable devices, how can theatres woo their customers? Answer: Offer spectacle they can’t get at home.

(One argument Thompson makes for the waning of the current trend was that the IMAX format was “actually waning in popularity, except in newly emerging markets like China,” which she had to backtrack on when the IMAX-AMC deal was announced.)

However, I suspect 3D will not go away anytime soon; the question , I believe, is whether or not it will go beyond being a niche market.

The Wow Factor

One reason for the growth of 3D is that such films bring in more money at the box office. Some of this is probably due to the premium theaters charge for tickets; for instance, the Regal Hollywood 24, in Atlanta, charged me $2.50 extra for 3D versions of The Nightmare Before Christmas and Beowulf. Nevertheless, 3D movies do seem to be genuinely more popular than their 2D counterparts. This was shown dramatically during for the initial run of Polar Express, which only did well in IMAX theaters. (So much so that IMAX brought the film back to some of its theaters last month.)

While the switch to 3D is not as great as it was back in the early 1950s, some major players are coming on board. In this Business Week story published in September, it is noted that,

[DreamWorks Animation's Jeffrey] Katzenberg is convinced they are about to become “the single most revolutionary change since color pictures.” … He thinks it could boost a slow-growing U.S. box office and, not so incidentally, help the prospects for DreamWorks’ own animated flicks.

Katzenberg’s army of followers seems to grow almost daily. Steven Spielberg is on board and is preparing to work with Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson to produce a 3D film. They join devotees like Titanic director James Cameron and a certain Yoda from San Francisco named George Lucas, who intends to trot out his six Star Wars flicks in 3D starting in 2009. “Jeffrey’s Mr. Go Go,” says Lucas. “The time has come for 3D to become more than some theme park attraction. We see a business there.”

Also, independents such as StereoVision Entertainment are also trying to get in on the act; to this end, it has hired Baywatch creator Doug Schwartz to run its production slate. In a recent interview in Digital Cinema Report, Schwartz in replying to a question about the relatively small number of theaters equipped for 3D, says:

There are currently over 1,200 3D theater screens in the world, most of them in the U.S., and that number is expected to more than double by next summer. This dramatic growth should continue into the foreseeable future: by late 2009 there will be over five thousand 3D screens, and by late 2010, over ten thousand. So, if anything, the numbers are on our side.

The new-found popularity of 3D may also prove to be a way for Hollywood to get theaters to switch to digital projection, which has holds the promise of considerable cost savings, especially in terms of print costs, for movie studios. However, theater owners have always resisted doing this for good economic reasons.

Leo Enticknap, in his book Moving Images Technology: From Zoetrope to Digital (Wallflower Press, 2005), pointed out that the barriers to theaters converting to digital projection “lie more in the economic and political domain than the technological.” (228). Among these factors he notes that,

with film, a 35mm projector can reasonably be assumed to have a service life of several decades, the rapid growth in computing power may well mean that a year or two after a cinema invests in a DLP, its rival venue acquires a newer model projector, producing a better image and rendering theirs obsolete and economically uncompetitive. (226)

Some of this technological one-upmanship was evident in the recent announcement by the San Francisco Opera that it will use superior [movie quality] technology to what the Metropolitan Opera has been using for its high definition theatrical broadcasts. (See the S.F. Opera’s press release and San Francisco Chronicle story.) But while there very well may be a difference between the technologies used by the Met and San Francisco Operas, I suspect the differences between competing projection systems is not a real cause for concern when it comes to most movies, whether 3D or 2D. (Incidentally, the Met’s success has led a number of other groups to join the fray, including Britain’s Royal Opera, La Scala, San Francisco Ballet, National Ballet of Canada and Theatro Madrid; if nothing else, these moves can only create additional demand for digital projection.)

The logic of using 3D to win over theater owners to digital projection is put forth in this video interview with Tim Partridge, Executive Vice President, Products and Technologies, for Dolby Laboratories, by Scott Kirsner on his CinemaTech blog, who feels that 3D provides a “wow factor.” (Best known for their audio technology, Dolby is also involved in digital projection).

With most live-action films having a large digital component and almost all animated movies being digital, digital projection would seem a natural, especially since it can produce a superior picture. If 3D does hang on, as I think it will, then the question remains what will happen to these films in terms of TV and home video. There have been experiments over the years in 3D broadcasting and DVD with mixed results. I suspect the ultimate solution will come through modifications to high definition TVs; though one can expect considerable buyer resistance given the high investment consumers have made recently in HDTVs.

By the way, I dragged out a prototype DVD sent to me a number of years ago of nWave Pictures‘ 1999 IMAX film, Encounter in the Third Dimension, complete with red and blue 3D glasses; the stereo effect was there, but it was easier to watch the film without glasses. The film is still available on DVD, either separately or as part of The Ultimate 3-D Collection.