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This topic comprises 4 pages: 1 2 3 4
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Topic: Spy Kids 3-D
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Frank Angel
Film God
Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 07-17-2003 05:02 AM
Anglyphic glasses are readily available from third party vendors. If the theatre management sees that they are running low, they can have a box of 10k of them at the theatre door by FedEx the next day. No biggie. I guess the exhibitor can do a deal with Miramax as to what the split will be for the cost.
We are running CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON tonight --Universal sent no glasses at all; they were clear on that from the get-go. We were on our own to find a supplier.
Also interesting, evidently there is no standard for which color goes with which eye. The glasses are made so that you can bend the sides in either direction. We tested ours last night and it's blue on the left eye, red on the right -- all depends on which filter they used on which negative in the lab. You can tell right away if you've got them on backwards -- the depth perception is wild -- things that you know to be in the distance by normal 2D angular perspective, have a "depth feeling" that tells the brain that they are instead, close. Your brain has a real hard time wrapping around THAT contradiction! But reverse the glasses and it all "feels" right again....no need to up your medication.
And then there's this: "Rodriguez says. 'As a filmmaker you are unable to see what you are capturing on the set, which is crucal to capturing great 3D. That's why other 3D movies are so static.'"
How old is this idiot? He sounds like he was hadn't yet switched from tit to bottle when all those great 50s 3D films were made, which, in spite of lumbering 3D camera rigs, the cinematographers were quite capable of capturing much more that "static" imagery. What an ass.
He talks as if, without his big plasma monitor screen that "allowed Rodriguez to focus on two of the most essential elements of 3D filmmaking: convergence and focus," according to him, filmmakers who made the great 3D classics just couldn't get convergence right! Imagine what they could have done if they had a PLASMA MONITOR SCREEN!
He goes on to explain it: "Convergence refers to the point of focus at which two images cross. By using convergence, the filmmaker can determine if an object will appear to be behind the screen, in front of the screen, or somewhere in between." Oh, what a concept....sounds like he thinks HE discovered it and no one else ever paid any attention to convergence or focus before. All those 50s 3D films without any proper convergence....and probably out of focus too!
The guy sounds like someone who is learning to drive a car explaining to Mario Andretti how amazing it to work the clutch and shift at the same time.
And then there's: "Shooting in 3D further spurred Rodriguez to consider all kinds of visual elements in greater detail- especially the use of color and perspective. Early 3D effects from the 1950s appeared in black and white" (??!!??).
As if that's not enough, he continues....."Polychromatic 3D images are still a new frontier." What drugs is this guy on? Is he kidding? The use of COLOR with anaglyphic? Polychromatic 3D images are a new FRONTIER?? and require extreme care in color-correction (I'll say, and it that with or without putting different color filters on each eye!)
"Rodriguez used real-time color correction that allowed him to correct each frame's colors." EACH frame! Bet that took awhile! And was that WITH OR WITHOUT THE GLASSES??!!
Sometimes it fun to watch them drown in their own diarrhea.
Frank
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Paul Linfesty
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1383
From: Bakersfield, CA, USA
Registered: Nov 1999
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posted 07-21-2003 12:01 PM
And here's an article from the New York Times, that once again gets its information wrong (especially on the 50's processes):
July 20, 2003
3-D Rides Back to Save the Day
By RICK LYMAN
LOS ANGELES
ALWAYS frantic to revive the sense of magic that greeted the first motion pictures, Hollywood is taking yet another chance on one of the movies' most enduring challenges: 3-D.
On Friday, Robert Rodriguez, the Texas-based director who started with bloody shoot-'em-ups but has moved in recent years to family fare, is offering "Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over," the latest installment in his series about secret agents' children who go into their parents' business. And no less a light than James Cameron, who ventured into 3-D earlier this year with "Ghosts of the Abyss," an IMAX documentary, vows that he is now hard at work on his long-awaited first feature film since "Titanic." All he will say about his new project is that it, too, will be shot in 3-D.
"Whenever Hollywood is at a point where things are getting desperate, 3-D seems to be the first rabbit they try to pull out of the hat," said Robert Thompson, professor of media and culture at Syracuse University.
Perhaps desperation is too harsh a word for the nervousness now spreading through the studios, but it's not far off.
The big-budget franchise films — the sequels, prequels, remakes and the like — that have proved to be the most reliable bets for studio executives in recent years are suddenly not performing as the marketers and the numbers-crunchers expected, from "The Hulk" to "Charlie's Angels 2: Full Throttle." Both box office revenue and attendance are down significantly this summer, despite a steady churn of these movies.
The computer animation that created a revolution in special effects, allowing directors to recreate ancient Rome or insert an army of 10,000 at the click of a button, had been helping to keep franchise fever alive. But now there is a growing sense that audiences have seen what this new technology can do, and nothing deflates Hollywood hype faster than "been there, done that."
A result is that the heavily courted under-25 audience has become apathetic, some might even say discerning. So perhaps 3-D will do the trick. "Three-D has always been something we, in the audience, have been particularly interested in," said Jeanine Basinger, chairwoman of the film studies department at Wesleyan University. "Let's face it, those of us who are film nuts want to get up there in the picture."
Mr. Rodriguez, putting the finishing touches on the new "Spy Kids" at a post-production facility in downtown Hollywood one recent afternoon, said it was a new camera system invented by Mr. Cameron, in alliance with Pace Technologies and Panavision, that first drew him to the idea of working in 3-D.
To get that three-dimensional effect, each scene must be shot with two cameras — mimicking the pair of eyes that give viewers their depth perception — and then projected with the two images overlapped. Special glasses, with either the decades-old red lens and blue lens or newer polarized lenses (used by IMAX), unscramble the images and create the illusion that things are popping off the screen.
The problem had been that it was difficult to adjust the focal depth between the two cameras while filming. Moviemakers had to guess, and really didn't know how close they had come until the film came back the next day. "It was like painting blind," Mr. Rodriguez said.
Now, with digital videotape, moviemakers can watch a monitor and see exactly what the cameras are seeing. And Mr. Cameron's lightweight, dual-camera system allows an operator, looking at that real-time image, to adjust the focal depth simply by twisting a knob.
One result, Mr Rodriguez said, is that a 3-D movie can be shot in a matter of weeks. Mr. Rodriguez got his movie into theaters only six months after he started working on it, even though 90 percent of "Spy Kids 3" contains 3-D images, and almost all of those involve computer-generated effects. And he did the whole thing for about $37 million, just what "Spy Kids 2" cost.
ANOTHER problem with previous 3-D movies using the anaglyph red-and-blue glasses — as Mr. Rodriguez's film will — is that the tinted lenses distorted the colors on the screen. He said he had gotten around that by setting his 3-D scenes inside a video game (into which the heroes are sucked by an evil genius played by Sylvester Stallone), and then using unrealistically bright, computer-generated hues to make it seem as if the color distortions were part of the movie.
It is said that when audiences saw the first dramatic motion picture — "The Great Train Robbery" — they gasped in shock, and some fainted. It didn't take people long, though, to realize that the speeding trains and leaping lions would not actually pop out of the screen, no matter how realistic they seemed. So filmmakers began almost at once to find ways to break through that final barrier. The anaglyph process, for instance, was developed in the silent-film era. Another company, Teleview, overlapped two negatives to give a 3-D effect in a short film released at Christmastime in 1922.
Something called the Spoor System was used to inject 3-D into a 1930's short called "Campus Sweethearts" and a 3-D movie became one of the top attractions at the 1939 New York World's Fair. But it was not until 1952 and the release of an unlikely blockbuster called "Bwana Devil" that 3-D became a craze.
Using the anaglyph system, "Bwana Devil" had crowds lined up around the block to see spears fly off the screen. Copy-cat movies were made by almost every studio, including the 1953 releases "House of Wax," "Hondo" and "Kiss Me Kate."
But the craze died as fast as it began. Alfred Hitchcock spent much of 1953 shooting "Dial M for Murder" in 3-D, but by the time it came out in 1954 audience interest had waned so much that it was released almost everywhere in old-fashioned 2-D.
There have been several attempts to resuscitate 3-D in the intervening years, from "13 Ghosts" in 1960 to "Friday the 13th Part 3: 3-D" in 1982 and "Jaws 3-D" in 1983. None caught on.
"In its 50's heyday, 3-D was a desperate attempt by the Hollywood studios to provide novelty to battle off the nemesis of television," Mr. Thompson said. "Now the return of 3-D is a desperate attempt to provide novelty again, but this time the enemy is the industry's own aesthetic inertia."
Mr. Rodriguez says he thinks that such skeptics will be proved wrong as it becomes clear how the new technology at last makes 3-D more realistic — if filmmakers can justify the screen-popping images.
"One reason 3-D burned out in the 50's is that those movies felt so forced, with everyone aiming things at the camera," he said. "To make this work, filmmakers will have to do better at the storytelling part."
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Tim Reed
Better Projection Pays
Posts: 5246
From: Northampton, PA
Registered: Sep 1999
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posted 07-25-2003 03:50 PM
quote:
It is said that when audiences saw the first dramatic motion picture — "The Great Train Robbery" — they gasped in shock, and some fainted.
No, no, no... how in the heck did they come up with THAT?! Some audience members ran for the door at the first projected motion picture screenings, in the mid-1890s. "The Great Train Robbery" was 1903, and "flickers" had become commonplace by then.
Well, it's probably time for 3D again, maybe a little overdue. It used to come around about every 10 years there for a while. I remember the early to mid-70s had a bout, and the mid-80s saw it again... so we're probably in for the silver screen installations and such, coming up pretty soon.
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