With all the talk about how bad the current 3D boom in cinema supposedly is, doesn't anybody remember how the demise of silent movies practically inhibited all creativity? How adding colour killed off artistic expression? And how CGI made everything artificial and bland? Oh, it didn't and the cinema is very much still alive, with countless multi-million revenue productions and artistically low-budget movies each year?
Nay-sayers like Mr. Ebert may be right in some regards for now, but the third dimension, with all its limitations we currently have, is not just another hyped technology. It is a new tool supporting artistic expression, a new language to tell a story in a never-before-seen way. Of course the language has to be learned, its limits and its unique possibilities have to be discovered. And sure enough we'll have to endure a huge amount of mediocre and even bad 3D movies now. Like we have in 2D. But we're also going to see some beautiful excellently staged stories that are best told using this means of expression becoming widely available. Or that even couldn't be told otherwise.
If the audience accepts this new way, technology and artistic expression will evolve further. If it doesn't, it will remain a short interlude in the rich history of cinema. Either way, it's good that people are getting creative with it and add another dimension to storytelling, hopefully not only in a geometric way.
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shockwave77598.livejournal.com 14 years, 6 months ago
Trouble is, except for emmersion in lush areas like used for Avatar, the 3D effect does nothing for me whatsoever. Sound is important. Color is important. 3D is... not important. It's a fad being pushed by the movie studios to drive more people into the theater rather than just waiting for the DVD (which isn't in 3D) and charging them an extra 2$ for the so-called option (as if having the only showing of the non3D movie on a single screen at 10am is much of an option...) The audiences didn't care about 3d in the 50s. They didn't care about it in the 80s during its short lived revival, either (and the 80s used the same polarized glasses for color movies we use today) People are going to see the movies from Pixar and such whether they are 3D or 2D -- their cramming people into the 3D showings by eliminating the 2D shows is just smoke and mirrors and doesn't mean squat about what people are really enjoying. I'll bet if you had 2D for 8$ and 3D for 10$ side by side, the attendence figures for the 3D shows would be a whole lot lower.
You would think that 3D would be a natural extension to how things have progressed. But every 3D film I've seen was just as enjoyable on DVD with only 2D, so the 3D effect didn't do anything for the film. Therefore, why bother with it?
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