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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Author
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Topic: 3D film?
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Julio Roberto
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 938
From: Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Registered: Oct 2008
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posted 02-10-2010 02:54 AM
Generally speaking, 3-D on film has:
-The same resolution as digital (2K), potentially more.
-The same or better brightness than digital, USUALLY more.
-The same or better colors than digital.
The main reason film doesn't outpace 2K digital in things like resolution is that most movies nowadays originate as 2K digital files anyway, so of course you can't have "more than the original".
The drawbacks are:
-It may not be as "steady" as digital (i.e. weave)
-It may have slightly worse illumination uniformity than digital (i.e. the corners may be darker, etc, as a result of not using a condensation rod and the assymetric nature of Tech3D split lens design)
-It may have more scratches than digital
-It certainly is more proned to human error during handling than digital (i.e. missalignments, bad splicing, out of focus, etc).
So if you watch 3D on a theater that is careful with the way they handle the prints and care about presentation, rest assure the image and effect you'll see is as good if not better than digital.
The "3D" is exactly the same in all the systems when projecting the same "master", with the only significant difference among all the systems being how proned they are to ghosting, how much they "flicker" and how much are the colors preserved. Film excels in all those departments compared to most digital.
Tech3D will be like any other polarized system and exactly the same as Sony digital/RealD XLS 4K 3D, which is an exact version of the same scheme (put one image in top of the other in a 4K area, project each through a lens) but in digital instead of film.
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Julio Roberto
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 938
From: Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Registered: Oct 2008
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posted 02-11-2010 10:39 PM
quote: Michael Brown
LOL, something is wrong with your digital presentation if it has scratches
LOL
I was, of course, referring to the fact that film does NOT have to have a significant amount of noticeable scratches, but that it likely does have more than digital ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
We don't know for sure what the studios are going to be releasing in Tech3D yet, but it seems there is a good chance most of the films below will:
How to train your dragon (Dream Paramount 26 Mar 2010)
Shrek Forever After(Dreamw/Paramount, 7 Jul 2010)
Despicable Me (Universal, 6 Ago 2010)
Megamind (DreamWorks/Paramount) (5 Nov 2010)
The Hole (2010)
Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore (Warner,4 Ago 2010)
Friday 13: 2ª Parte (New Line, Warner, 13 Ago 2010)
Alpha And Omega (LFG, 10 Oct 2010)
Piranha (Entertainment) (16 Abril 2010)
Guardians of Ga’Hoole (Warner, 24 Sep 2010)
Oso Yogi (Warner, 17 Dic 2010)
And probably the Titans movie and the Harry Potters as well. Of course, nothing is stoping all the studios from releasing 35mm prints, other than their hidden agenda or trying to make exhibitors switch to digital at their expense. Disney is going to have to look how their competition rips the benefits from the 3D surcharge in markets where they won't be able to if they stick to digital-only 3D releases.
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Mark J. Marshall
Film God
Posts: 3188
From: New Castle, DE, USA
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted 02-13-2010 04:29 AM
quote: Julio Roberto
nothing is stoping all the studios from releasing 35mm prints, other than their hidden agenda or trying to make exhibitors switch to digital at their expense.
And of course a new agenda is developing to get as many 3D screens as they can. It's kind of amusing. Think about this:
All those people didn't pile in to see Avatar because it was DIGITAL - and they obviously didn't go for the ground breaking story - they went because it was 3D and it was cool to look at. So the studios have a "Now What?" situation on their hands. Which is a better way to be more profitable? 3D or digital? There's no denying that Avatar has kicked off a huge interest in 3D (again) so now we have a ton of movies being converted to 3D out of the blue (Harry Potter VII & VIII, Titans, etc.). And we now have by extension a huge push to get as many 3D screens in place as possible to maximize the profit on those movies, and to deal with something that the industry hasn't had to deal with before: 3D movie release schedule overlap. Since necessity is the mother of invention, we've now circled back to talking about 3D on film (again).
Could it be that Avatar just started a slow death of the digital movement as the focus shifts to 3D, and now back to film? Doubtful - but IF in this bad economy, folks start opting for the cheaper film based method of doing 3D, the digital manufacturers could feel that pinch big time. Especially if everyone starts to decide (as they did with digital) that 3D on film is "good enough".
Who knows what will happen, but for a "film guy" it sure is fun to think about, and even more fun to watch.
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Julio Roberto
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 938
From: Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Registered: Oct 2008
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posted 02-13-2010 10:07 AM
Film has ALWAYS been able, of course, of excellent 3D. Even VASTLY superior to current digital 3D (i.e. dual 35mm projection, like done in the 50's, not unlike the digital Imax of today).
Unfortunately, as we know, standards of film pressentation in general (2D or 3D) vary considerably. As a result, out-of-focus, weave, scratches, flickering lamps, missaligned shutters, etc, are not uncommon. These problems only get worse in 3D, where additional attention to alignment, splicing, etc is needed and problems with existing 2D get a bit magnified in 3D.
But it doesn't mean that film can't do 3D just as good, or again MUCH better, than digital.
The current digital Sony 4K 3D system is almost an exact copy of the Technicolor 3D system, but in digital instead of analog. So is the system used during the 80's. The only problem is that during the 80's, it seems, a lot of setups were done by booth-runners instead of projectionists and with cheap-and-not-very-good optical adaptors (mirror boxes), although personally I saw (and run) plenty of excellent single-strip 3D presentations during the 80's.
Digital, 2D or 3D, is not without its share of problems either. The web is full of complains on dark images, flicker, ghosting, etc. Even some cases of digital pseudoscopic projections (there are pictures of people wearing the glasses upsidedown). And the occasional stuck pixel.
But, thruth be told, digital is much harder to screw up than film, and thus, 3D digital is much more of a push-buttom solution than film 3D is.
But it costs $100k+financing/taxes/maintenance/depreciation/obsolency etc. With that money, you can have your 35mm booth running smooth and scratch free by a good professional for several years.
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Julio Roberto
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 938
From: Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Registered: Oct 2008
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posted 02-13-2010 03:27 PM
There is common misconception that 3D systems are "different" or obtain "different results".
All 3D systems, from the 50's til today, strive to do the SAME EXACT thing. Put two images on the screen (left-and-right eye) as shot by the cinematographer. We'll start with the assumption that film is roughly equivalent to a 4K digital projector, with the known advantages and dissadvantages (i.e. scratches, weave).
HOW you put two images on the screen is not *that* important.
In the 50's, two 35mm projectors (4K each) were used. In the 00's Imax is doing the same thing with digital, but only with 2K.
In the 80's, a single projector with two images stacked one over the other in a 35mm film (4K) was used and projected either through a split lense (2-lenses stuck together) or a mirror box. In the 00's Sony/RealD XLS uses a 4K digital imager and puts one image on top of the other and shows them through a dual-lense/mirror box combination. Same thing. Same as Technicolor 3D also.
In the 00's there is a 3rd way of putting two images on the screen that wasn't widely used before. Because the digital projectors can do 48fps with easy, even more than that (up to theoretical 144fps), a single projector can be used to quickly show one image after the other (instead of both at the same time, which would be the ideal way) and, thus, "simulate" that both images are on the screen at the same time.
That's it. The idea is the same. Put two "2K" images on the screen. That can be done easily on film or video.
Then comes in play how those two images are going to be selected by each eye. Here, once again, the systems are the usual: during the 50's and 80's, it was polarized light. Now, it's also polarized light. Anaglyph (red/blue) has always been a failure. Additionally, XpanD in the 00's uses a system not widely used in cinemas before of using shutter glasses and Dolby is using another system not widely used of spectrum division. All the rest (Master Image, Technicolor, Imax, Sony, RealD, Dual) use the same polarized light commonly used in the past.
There are no major significant differences between the methods and all attempt to do the exact same thing: show one image to one eye only and filter-out the other. Some are more succesful, some a bit less. The only difference is in how much "ghosting" they will produce, but the all try to do the same thing and get "zero" ghosting.
The rest of the differences have to do with the "2D" aspect of the image, such as light levels, keystoning, uniformity, "flicker", resolution, colometry, but once again there is not a whole lot of difference to the naked eye. Sure film may be more proned to scratches, but digital has a "screendoor" effect. Digital 3D may be more steady, but it's harder to obtain good ilumination levels. Etc.
There is nothing "inherently" significantly superior to 3D on film or on digital. It all comes to small differences in stuff like weave, light levels, resolution, color, scratches, etc. A good theoretical 4K DLP projector could match film quite well (whenever they come to market) when equipped with a powerful lamp. And film can be a good or better match to digital in putting an image (or two) on the screen, if done with care.
The only significant difference is an economic one. One costs 3 times more than the other and it's doubtful it will have such a long life-span or easy maintenance. You figure out which one it is. ![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
EDIT: I should mention that during the 80's, the system used was inherently assymetrical in illumination and thus, "sucky". To do it right, you needed to either obtain a VERY flat light field in the projector, which is harder to do in film compared to digital due to the lack of integrating rods, or optically compensate for it with filters on the lenses/mirrobox/prismatic attachment (which wasn't commonly done in the 80's and thus lies most of the deserved bad reputation) or through digital manipulation (assymetric vignetting) of the print today (i.e. for Tech3D).
ANOTHER EDIT: During the 80's, a lot of films were SHOT with "bad 3D" and thus, you can only project what was shot. This was basically because it was shot "blind" (no way to monitor during shooting) and with convergence as the only available (optical) method to control depth in many cases (when using a single lens). Now that ALL movies are digitally manipulated, there is no excuse to SHOOT (and thus project) "bad 3D" anymore. Not saying it doesn't happen (God knows the same mistakes are being made even in Avatar), but there is just no excuse for them to happen other than ignorance or budget/time limitations.
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Frank Angel
Film God
Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 02-13-2010 10:48 PM
quote: Mark J. Marshall
And of course a new agenda is developing to get as many 3D screens as they can.
That's right -- all of a sudden their lack of support for film 3D all along has come back to bite them in the ass. After AVATAR, all they see is dollar signs in front of their greedy bloodshot eyeballs (and they are in 3D). But oh, wait -- there can't be as many dollar signs as there could potentially be if only THERE WERE MORE 3D SCREENS. To bad they so crazed about pushing their Make Them Buy Digital agenda that they forgot they were going to need more 3D screens.
Los Angeles Times
The Big Picture
Why is the Katz Man suddenly unhappy with a 3-D movie?
February 11, 2010 | 11:55 am
"For the past 18 months, DreamWorks Animation czar Jeffrey Katzenberg has been circling the globe, touting the glories of 3-D movies with evangelical zeal, essentially saying -- over and over again -- that everyone should be making their movies in 3-D, since its the format of the future. (He even managed to woo New York Times political columnist Maureen Dowd, who just did a puff job touting Katzenberg's 3-D crusade.)"
"But guess what? Apparently even Katzenberg's 3-D zeal has its limits, especially when it comes to a rival studio that's going to open its 3-D movie a week after Katzenberg's new film. As you may have heard, Warner Bros. announced it will release "Clash of the Titans" in 3-D on April 2, one week after DreamWorks Animation unveils its latest 3-D film, "How to Train Your Dragon." According to my colleagues Richard Verrier and Claudia Eller, Katzenberg was furious when he heard the news, so much so that he shot off an e-mail to Warners Entertainment chief Barry Meyer, heatedly protesting the decision."
"It's easy to understand why Katzenberg was so unhappy. As my colleagues wrote, Katzenberg was "counting on having the lion's share of 3-D screens for 'Dragon,' but the Warners move will inevitably rob the DreamWorks movie of many of the U.S.' 3,500-odd available 3-D screens. Needless to say, it seems a teeny-weeny bit hypocritical for the Katz Man to beat the drums for rolling out every sort of film in 3-D yet complain when the marketplace suddenly gets so crowded that it's his big new release that might be hurt by all the congestion."
So now they are like pirhanas all turning on themselves. Had they realized that with just about a tenth of all screens in the country being available for 3D, THEY ARE SCREWED if a few more AVATARS come out at near the same time. Idiots. Not only should they have been vigorously pushing film 3D, but they should not be following the robber barron econmic model they used with the digital conversions, i.e., getting their new cash cow to be paid for by the exhibitor (you could just about use that Virtual Print Fee as toilet paper). $12,000 in a year and you don't get to own the damn lens?....what a joke. The studios want more 3D screens? Let the exhibitor buy the damn lens and be done with it. And as far as the studios letting Technicolor horn in on the action because what, they digitally vinyette the two eyes? That can be done in post production just as easily as any other manipulation in the studios' labs.
If they want more 3D screens, film is the answer and they need to get off the pot and step up to the plate, and that plate isn't charging the theatre $2000 to rent a lens for each engagement.
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