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."

I’m writing this from Edinburgh, Scotland, where my wife and I have been enjoying a really wonderful Society for Animation Studies conference. A full report will follow when I get back home, but I can’t help responding to the Motion Picture Academy’s new rules for defining what is animation (see press release here), which states in part that,

a sentence regarding motion capture was added to clarify the definition of an animated film. The language now reads: “An animated feature film is defined as a motion picture with a running time of greater than 40 minutes, in which movement and characters’ performances are created using a frame-by-frame technique. Motion capture by itself is not an animation technique. In addition, a significant number of the major characters must be animated, and animation must figure in no less than 75 percent of the picture’s running time.”

It was mentioned during one of the conference’s many discussions of motion capture and drew some incredulous responses from the packed room (the person reporting it wasn’t sure if it was correct), but a comment by Sheridan Institute of Technology’s Tony Tarantini made around this time about James Cameron’s assertion that there’s no animation in Avatar is worth reporting. He basically felt that at a time when animation is becoming the dominant mode of production, Cameron is try to take it [the field] away from animators.

In the paper my wife Vickie and I gave yesterday, we discussed how live-action directors, like Cameron, liked motion capture because it enabled them to do animation in a way similar to the way they film live-action (i.e., they direct actors instead of animators). For whatever reason, he does not want to see himself as an animation filmmaker and I suspect the new rules regarding motion capture were added in part to assuage people like him; it would also please Pixar, DreamWorks Animation and Blue Sky, as it would reduce possible future Oscar competition. (Needless to say, I feel motion capture is animation.)

In a discussion about the new rules at Cartoon Brew, a number of people felt that motion capture films could still be considered animation if the data was finished by animators frame-by-frame, while Ryan McCulloch asked whether this would disqualify Happy Feet, which won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature several years ago (I believe it was the same year that another mocap film, Monster House was also nominated)? And the ever sane Floyd Norman said, “This is only going to get crazier.”

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.

These are wonderful times for animation bloggers, what with all the controversy raging about whether or not motion capture/performance capture is or is not animation. I have long said that it is, but would like to amplify my feelings a bit on the matter. The cause for this is a recent posting from the ever thoughtful Mark Mayerson, who criticizes Cartoon Brew’s Jerry Beck and Amid Amidi’s acceptance of the technique as animation; Mayerson argues that it is a postproduction technique, and thus should not and cannot be considered animation (which, he says, is a production technique).  He concludes by saying:

I’ve written extensively on how fragmented the process of making an animated film is and how so many of the acting decisions are made before the animator starts work. The character designs, the storyboard and the voice performance all make acting decisions that constrain the animator’s interpretation. There is no question that motion capture is yet another constraint, probably larger than all the others. To insist that Avatar is an animated film is to marginalize animators even more than they are in what are generally considered animated films. Is this the direction we want things to go? Better to agree with James Cameron [that it’s not animation] and focus our attention on films where animators create, not enhance, performances.

His argument is not a new one and I’m sure that any number of animators feel that motion capture work demeans them because it reduces the animation to a postproduction process. And similar arguments have long been lodged against rotoscoping. But if we take an historical approach, which I think can be useful, then the evidence is strongly in favor of both rotoscoping and motion capture being animation.

Remember, Max Fleischer invented the rotoscope in 1915 as a way to create more fluid animation; and though I have not done much research in this area, I would be surprised if anyone could find comments by any other animation pioneer that derided the process as being something other than animation. It is said that early animators struggled to have their characters move in a realistic manner, which arguably created an opening for Fleischer’s invention.

One of the earliest examples of motion capture used in lieu of animation in a mainstream production was the Brilliance commercial Robert Abel and Associates did in 1984 for the Canned Food Information Council. In the film describing its production posted above, it is clearly labeled as an animation process. And it should be noted that the company used the technique at a time when computer animation seemed incapable of easily producing realistic human movement.

Bill Kroyer, recalled in an interview with me that,

When we did Tron, all you could do is move one object, like a light cycle, and it had one thing on top, like a moving turret as in a tank. Having multiple movements was a big deal, because nobody had really written software which structures movement in a hierarchy; so when you move the shoulder, it moves the elbow, the wrist and the fingers; then you can move the elbow and it moves the wrist.

At Digital Productions, [in 1984] they wrote a program that created a hierarchy. They set up this hierarchy of a human body, but the objects were mere blocks — the head was a square and the torso was a kind of a little pyramid — but at least it had all the joints; it had a neck, back, hip, knee and everything. Then they gave me this block woman as we called her and said, “Just see if you can make it move.” And I just started creating key frames and animating; I started with the center of gravity and the hips, then I kept adding on and adding on and created this dance scene.

In other words, Robert Abel, one of the pioneers of computer animation, not having the technology available to Digital Productions (or perhaps feeling it was inadequate) turned to motion capture in much the same way that Max Fleischer turned to rotoscoping.

Thanks to Amanda Kieffer.

‘

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.