Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: "Star Wars" 3-D Re-Issue

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Posted by Michael Coate (Member # 757) on 07-26-2006, 06:47 PM:

Steve Sansweet, Head of Fan Relations for Lucasfilm, made this interesting comment at Comic-Con last weekend regarding the planned 3-D re-release of the original "Star Wars."

quote:
"George [Lucas] and Rick [McCallum] are really excited about the technology they have seen in 3-D... they showed about 10 minutes of Star Wars at a trade industry show about a year ago, and there was a lot of great buzz. Well, a couple of things have turned out. You have to look at the business plan: When does it make sense to do something like that? And you need thousands of digital screen theaters. It does not work on a film projector... This may be the thing that is finally going to force a lot of theater chains to bring in digital projectors at least for one of their screens... A lot of theater chains have announced they are going ahead. That said, how long is it going to take to get three- to four- to five thousand theaters digitally converted? It's not going to happen this year. It's not going to happen by the end of next year. In addition, the process to do the movie turns out to be a little more expensive than initially thought. So you have the theaters converting, you have the costs of converting one or all of the six Star Wars movies into 3-D, and you have the fact that the technology involves wireless battery-operated glasses that blink maybe a thousand times a second; it's not like a [red] and blue lens. So you have to take all those factors into consideration. I think Lucasfilm is still very interested in releasing the saga in 3-D. I think it's really just a matter of time, but I don't think it's going to be in the next couple of years."

Posted by Hillary Charles (Member # 769) on 07-26-2006, 07:18 PM:

quote:
...and you have the fact that the technology involves wireless battery-operated glasses that blink maybe a thousand times a second; it's not like a [red] and blue lens.

They never heard of polarized glasses? I suppose this flicker method is designed to be used without having to install metallic screens...?

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 07-26-2006, 07:34 PM:

quote:
you need thousands of digital screen theaters. It does not work on a film projector

Why not?

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 07-26-2006, 09:46 PM:

I said it before, I say it again, I will say it many times more (I think): if they were really serious in their belief in that this is something which would be a good thing, there is no reason to wait many years. They could go ahead soon and if it really is da bomb (which I personally doubt), it will push digital cinema and those who are in the vanguard (like us...) would benefit from it and be rewarded for the early investment. They could just release the stuff in a limited number of cinemas (like in the old days when "prime content" was only released in such theaters as were seen as technically superior) and the same number of people would still go to see it, maybe over a longer time. But no, they need to plaster the whole country with thousands of copies to make sure they get their BS opening weekend numbers and also to make sure each of the participating exhibitors gets as little out of it as possible.
[fu]

Posted by Mike Heenan (Member # 392) on 07-26-2006, 09:57 PM:

More interesting I think is what Lucasfilm did apparently with the DVD release of the original trilogy at the Comic Con (according to Digital Bits), is to downgrade the old LD masters, and then show a comparison as if they actually made an attempt to clean it up, so to say.

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 07-26-2006, 10:00 PM:

quote: Michael Schaffer
the same number of people would still go to see it

Not necessarily. I mean, everyone who thought Episodes 1-2-3 were crap in 2D will be quickly reminded that they're still crap in 3D. If Lucas can't milk a big 3000-screen opening weekend with the 3D factor, maybe he knows it's not worth his trouble. [Wink]

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 07-26-2006, 10:01 PM:

Well, if it does get pushed back, I'm not too surprised. As I noted in my review of Superman Returns in IMAX 3D, the process of 3D-izing 2D source material apparently (according to the credits) required a lot of work from a lot of people, and the result was only 20 minutes of 3D material with rather mixed and (in my opinion) sub-standard results.

I don't get Sansweet's comments concerning the shutter glasses. All of the new 3D DLP installs use plastic circular polarized glasses. I also don't get the comments about how it doesn't work with film. It worked with film fifty years before the first digital projector showed up in a main stream theater. I've seen a ton of 3D presentations on film in the last five years, and digitally, I've seen two. Oh, and they really need to do something about that horrible flickering effect from the field sequential nature of the current digital 3D setups. But I guess they probably can't. [Frown]

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 07-26-2006, 10:45 PM:

I guess nobody here at Film-Tech knows why digital cinema is needed for 3D.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 07-26-2006, 11:20 PM:

quote: Joe Redifer
why digital cinema is needed for 3D

I am one of the people who saw the 10-minutes Star Wars 3-D digital presentation with the battery operated glasses. (At the Great States convention in '04)

At that time, it was explained to us that BRIGHTNESS was the main reason digital is "needed" for this. Also, the battery operated glasses don't work (or don't work as well?) with film.

I can give these observations about the Star Wars demo.

1. The 3-D was not that impressive. It looked like cheap 3-D.

2. The glasses were uncomfortable and they have a red LED up near the top inside corner that I think would drive some people crazy. (It didn't bother me though.)

3. I took the glasses off once to see if I would be blinded by the excess brightness. I was not, but it was clearly much brighter than you'd ever see with a conventional theatre and print.

4. New material created for the same process looked 1000% better than Star Wars. The Star Wars stuff looked ... dull.

I was underwhelmed. People I talked to felt the same way -- the new material (all computer-animated stuff) looked great, Star Wars, not so much.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 07-26-2006, 11:26 PM:

I don't see why "digital cinema" would provide any advantage in showing movies in 3D over film....

...other than projecting an image in a lower resolution than that of the native image, thus perhaps kind of masking the shortcomings of the faux 3D process.

I saw the IMAX 3-D version of Superman Returns during a recent trip to Colorado Springs. While it didn't look as bad as I thought it might, it wasn't great either. Edge definition on objects was blurry and iffy in many instances. Perhaps it might have been better had the movie been shot in 35mm 'scope and scanned in at 4K or better resolution for this sort of image manipulation.

Fundamentally, if a movie is going to be 3D and needs to look convincingly good in 3D it really needs to be natively photographed that way. I don't really care about seeing Star Wars or any other 2D movie faked into 3D. It may not have the wierd liver disease look of colorizing black and white movies. But it is still pretty strange regardless.

Also, laser controlled LCD-based glasses have been used on IMAX-3D -and used to much greater levels of success. This thing about digital projection being required sounds like a load of bullshit.

Posted by Darryl Spicer (Member # 711) on 07-26-2006, 11:43 PM:

The one thing I can see as far as digital over 35 mm film with 3-D is that the picture would be steady as a rock and the problems involved with over under and side by side 3-D on film would probably be eliminated. What needs to be done is taking samples of all the 3-D productions from the past and putting a digital package together to show at the industry conventions we have every year.

Posted by Paul Konen (Member # 41) on 07-27-2006, 09:05 AM:

Joe, maybe this might help. The 2D trailers that are shown on the 3D shows have to be encoded for each eye, or as they were marked, 48fps. If they were played traditionally, the image would stobe on screen because of the z-screen.

I think d-cinema works because you don't have any motor drift if you were to use side by side film projectors. You can't run a single image through a film projector to achieve the 3D effect that is being offered today with polarized lenses. (I think).

One thing that hasn't been mentioned is upcoming 3D releases
Nightmare Before Christmas - Oct 20, 2006
Meet The Robinsons - Spring 2007

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 07-27-2006, 09:54 AM:

quote: Paul Konen
I think d-cinema works because you don't have any motor drift if you were to use side by side film projectors.

D-Cinema DOESN'T work well exactly for that reason. While there are no motors with D-Cinema, the images for both eyes come from one projector and alternate on the screen creating the exact effect you're talking about if 35mm motors slip. But with 35mm done correctly, that problem doesn't exist at all because both eyes hit the screen at the same time. With D-Cinema, even when done correctly with only one projector as most of the installations will be, the problem will always be there no matter what. Even at the ridiculous 140 frames per second or whatever it is.

We just saw Monster House on a brand new DLP at the Regal Brandywine in Delaware, and anything on the screen that was moving looked horrible because of this problem. The only way to avoid that strobing problem is to have the images appear on screen at EXACTLY the same time. Then the 3D would probably look awesome. But the only way to do that, is to have two projectors running at the same time like the El Capitan theater is doing. But that's still cost prohibitive for most folks.

quote: Paul Konen
You can't run a single image through a film projector to achieve the 3D effect that is being offered today with polarized lenses. (I think).

The stuff in the 80s was done either side by side or over under with one film projector and polarized lenses. I've never seen those processes though, so I wonder how they would handle that problem. The over/under process might be particularly prone to that problem since the shutter uncovers one frame before uncovering the other and then blocks the light the same way. I would suspect that there's a very slight strobing problem with that format as well. I'm guessing that the side by side method would look better, but that's just a guess. Nothing, in my opinion, beats the two strip method, whether it's 35mm, 70mm, or IMAX. I'd love to see the two projector DLP method to see how that measures up.

Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 07-28-2006, 09:05 AM:

3D film in the 80's failed for many reasons:

1. Changes in perspective during the shooting of the film.

2. Poor quality prime lens on projection.

3. Wrong focal length prime lenses

4. Severe reduction in light output. (75-90%, and remember the average theatre in the 70-85 time period only had 5-7 ft/lamberts.

5. Many, many films were not spliced correctly at the negative level, resulting in "eye reversal"....very upsetting to the audience. I, personally made over 800 splices in a film to correct this.......the entire nation thought 3D sucked.

6. Glasses, especially if you already wear them.....when will this madness end. Louis

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 07-28-2006, 04:59 PM:

It's pretty much impossible to do good 3D without glasses unless you use holograms.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 07-28-2006, 05:26 PM:

What makes any one think 3D will do more for the industry than it did in the 50s? How long did 3D last back then when it was a totally new experience for the moviegoer, before the public got totally bored with it? Three & a half, four years? And back then, they were watching NEW films, not half-baked re-treads, and even then they gave up on it.

How many times does Lucas think he can rerun 30 year old stuff? We all love the first three, but that was a much different era; our expectations were different. Moviegoers today, when they put that the original SW up against what they expect to see in the way of special effects and slick filmmaking, most young moviegoers will find it quite dated, and 3D will not help that at all.

As for the last 3 SW installments...not digital, not 3D, not even the video gods can help that pile-o- [bs]

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 07-30-2006, 02:23 AM:

What I don't comprehend is how they're taking a flat (i.e., 2D) image and generating a stereo pair out of it? This has got to look like the old 3D cartoons did in the 50s, where the animation cameraman just shifted the background slightly under the foreground cels, to make the second image.

This results in a "shooting gallery" type of effect on the screen; nothing really looks dimensional, they only look like planes of flat images moving in relation to one another.

Posted by Charles Greenlee (Member # 3856) on 07-30-2006, 02:55 AM:

You're referring to the multiplane camera. It's truely a remarkable acheivement, at least for cartoons. It allows for them to have depth. However, with today's technology, it's uneccisary. Computers can composite the different layers much more effectively, and even apply special effects to make it more seamless. That said, I would not want a faux multiplane effect on my live action movies. I don't even want it in my cartoons, now that something better is out. I don't see how you can take a 2d image and make it 3d without cutting elements out of the back plane, and superimosing the in other planes in the 3d environment. Which as stated before, makes flat elements at different percieved distances. It'd look similar to taking carboard standees and moving them back and forth in front of a matt background. This would be amusing for the first 5, maybe 10, minutes before it'd get cheezy. If you're going to show a 3d movie, then film it in 3d to begin with. Heck, I'd be tempted to film in 3d as a default, and if you wanted to present it in 2d, you could simply discard the second images, but if you wanted 3d, you'd use both in whatever your preferred 3d format is.

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 07-30-2006, 01:23 PM:

quote: Charles Greenlee
You're referring to the multiplane camera.

No, I'm talking about the handful of 3D cartoons that were made (like Casper in Boo Moon, Ace of Space with Popeye, Bugs Bunny in Lumber Jack Rabbit and Woody Woodpecker in Hypnotic Hick ) which only employed a shifted background (i.e., panning on a standard animation stand) to create their Left/Right stereo pairs.

Posted by Charles Greenlee (Member # 3856) on 07-31-2006, 07:11 PM:

I gotcha. Still uses the multiplane camera. [Wink]

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 08-04-2006, 03:51 AM:

Multiplane was Disney's alone. The titles I'm talking about were shot on normal animation stands - you can tell by watching them today. (You may be thinking of the camera mount itself, which rides up and down a prominent long vertical track, and which allows the camera to zoom or truck-in on the artwork.)

One frame was photographed, the bg shifted slightly left or right, and another frame was photographed of the same cel stack. The bg was returned to the original position and the next cel(s) put under the platen and photographed. Then, the bg was shifted left or right again (as before) and the frame rephotographed.

This created a faux L/R stereo pair, which was then skip-printed in the lab to separate the sequential L,R,L,R,L,R timing of the camera original. It was a very inexpensive way for the strapped cartoon units to make dimensional subjects with no additional equipment. The only other adjustment was in the X-sheet timing.

Posted by Mark Lensenmayer (Member # 134) on 08-04-2006, 09:48 AM:

Tim is right...there is a big difference between the multiplane camera and a 3-D rig.

The multiplane camera was a development by Disney studios to give a 2-D film the illusion of depth. The earliest case is in THE OLD MILL, a classic Disney cartoon from the 30's. I especially like its use in my favorite Disney cartoon TOOT, WHISTLE, PLUNK and BOOM, when the camera appears to move directly into the auditorium passed the usher. I believe Ub Iwerks had some hand in the development of this camera.

The 3-D technique Tim is speaking of was, I believe, also used for 3-D comic books in the 50's. The characters would appear to be on distinct layers of depth, as opposed to a smooth 3-D transition. For example, if Superman was flying toward the audience, you would see his hands outstretched on the front layer, the torso on the next layer, and maybe part of the cape on another layer. It was a quick and dirty way to get depth from a 2-D image.

Why does Superman fly with his arms outstretched anyway?

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 08-04-2006, 12:38 PM:

To keep the wind from messing up his super-hairdo.

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 08-04-2006, 03:03 PM:

quote: Mark Lensenmayer
I believe Ub Iwerks had some hand in the development of this camera.

You're absolutely right. When Iwerks was running his own studio in the early 30s, he came up with the multiple-level idea and built a prototype out of an old car frame, which he used to great advantage. When his studio subsequently closed and he returned to Disney's, he brought the Multiplane idea with him.

Posted by Charles Greenlee (Member # 3856) on 08-05-2006, 03:45 AM:

Ahh, I was thinking the multiplane would aloow for the effect alos, maybe with some modification it could facilitate a similar effect, and even allow you to pass amongst the 3d layout [Wink]

. But anyways enough with that. Yeah, I'd say if you think you may eventually want 3d, film in 3d to begin with, and just disregard the second perspective if you decide to go 2d. Who knows, you may want to dig up the secondary footage to do a 3d special edition later.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 08-05-2006, 12:41 PM:

I think I've figured out the Star Wars strategy. Every "new" version of the movie is really just a way to re-sell the "original" version again.

They brought out the new/improved version on DVD and sold tons of it, but now will sell tons of the "original" version that everyone wanted in the first place.

Now they'll put out the 3-D version in theatres, claim that the original "no longer exists because this is now the definitive version," all the fans will flock to see it and hate it, and then a few years later the "classic" version will be released again. This scenario will be repeated with hi-def DVD once the 3-D angle is perfected.

This cycle will continue until all Star Wars fans are dead.