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Topic: "Star Wars" 3-D Re-Issue — Postponed?

Michael Coate
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1904
From: Los Angeles, California
Registered: Feb 2001

posted 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."

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Hillary Charles
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 748
From: York, PA, USA
Registered: Feb 2001

posted 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...?

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Joe Redifer
You need a beating today

Posts: 12859
From: Denver, Colorado
Registered: May 99

posted 07-26-2006 07:34 PM

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

Why not?

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Michael Schaffer
"Where is the
Boardwalk Hotel?"

Posts: 4143
From: Boston, MA
Registered: Apr 2002

posted 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]

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Mike Heenan
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1896
From: Scottsdale, AZ, USA
Registered: Mar 2000

posted 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.

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David Stambaugh
Film God

Posts: 4021
From: Eugene, Oregon
Registered: Jan 2002

posted 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]

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Mark J. Marshall
Film God

Posts: 3188
From: New Castle, DE, USA
Registered: Aug 2002

posted 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]

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Joe Redifer
You need a beating today

Posts: 12859
From: Denver, Colorado
Registered: May 99

posted 07-26-2006 10:45 PM

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

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Mike Blakesley
Film God

Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99

posted 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.

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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 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.

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Darryl Spicer
Film God

Posts: 3250
From: Lexington, KY, USA
Registered: Dec 2000

posted 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.

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Paul Konen
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 981
From: Frisco, TX. (North of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99

posted 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

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Mark J. Marshall
Film God

Posts: 3188
From: New Castle, DE, USA
Registered: Aug 2002

posted 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.

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Louis Bornwasser
Film God

Posts: 4441
From: prospect ky usa
Registered: Mar 2005

posted 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

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Joe Redifer
You need a beating today

Posts: 12859
From: Denver, Colorado
Registered: May 99

posted 07-28-2006 04:59 PM

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

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