Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: The new 3D: just hand out transparent glasses and still ask for an upcharge...

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Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 12-12-2012, 08:08 AM:

About a week ago, I watched a horrendously botched presentation of Rise of the Guardians in Xpand 3D in a local multiplex.

First of all, like in so many theaters nowadays, convergence seems to be a bitch... All edges had thick red and green borders around them. I see this more and more often, in some cases, the picture even becomes unwatchable this way... Nobody seems to care, not even fellow patrons that paid a lot of money to see such a blurfest.

"New" technology comes with many new ways to screw things up it seems.

But now the main attraction... the left and right of the stereoscopic 3D was reversed...

I noticed it right at the start of the very first 3D trailers: Something is odd, stuff is "going the wrong way". So I flipped my glasses around and voila, the Three Dee was OK(ish) again. My girlfriend also noticed that something was "terribly wrong". The box with unused 3D glasses was still standing in the entrance, so I took the liberty to try two other glasses, just to make sure our glasses weren't malfunctioning, but the problem was the same.

So, I headed out and ringed a bell. The guy who entered the theater told me flat out: I don't see anything wrong with it... I also tried his glasses and yet again, left and right were clearly reversed.

I tried to convince him that I'm not hallucinating, he still didn't seem really convinced, but he was going to look into it. The picture went dark a few times, but the problem didn't go away. I didn't want to miss the entire movie, so me and my girlfriend just flipped our glasses 180 degrees around. That wasn't entirely comfortable, but at least you didn't end up with a major headache.

Right after the movie was done, I asked a few fellow patrons if they didn't notice anything odd... But nobody seemed to notice anything really special. One lady told me that she felt a bit funny, but that happens with all 3D movies...

So, why bother with this whole 3D thing anyways? Why not just buy a bunch of clear lens glasses and pretend you're going to see the movie in a VERY special way? Let's call it Virtual3D! You could still charge the same as real 3D, but save tons on licensing...