This weekend I saw Fox’s upcoming 3D animated film Rio and before it the latest Ice Age short played featuring that fictional prehistoric rodent Scrat. I’d already seen the short (which you can watch to the right), but this time it was in 3D and when it got done playing I leaned over and told Laremy, “That was pretty good 3D.” And almost immediately after saying it I thought to myself, What does that mean? Good 3D? What exactly was good about it? Then the movie started and I hadn’t thought about it until now, but I there’s an interesting question here… What does make for good 3D?
Whether you like 3D or hate it, I would think there was at least a moment or two in some 3D films where you were able to admit the use of 3D served its purpose, but under what circumstances and what was on screen that actually made it work?
With the Ice Age short, “Continental Crack-Up,” one example comes as Scrat sniffs out a perfect spot for his acorn and his nose approaches the front of the screen. Considering this is a short that’s meant to be funny it doesn’t take you out of the narrative with something protruding from the screen, instead it’s funny since you are inching closer to the inside of this digital creature’s nostrils.
It works again as he quickly descends to the Earth’s core and then when he’s shot back up again. The rest of it is pretty much standard 3D, nothing you’d remember, but in just over two-and-a-half minutes Steve Martino and Michael Thurmeier were able to present a cute animated short and utilize 3D to their benefit. So why can’t so many feature films deliver at least three moments where the 3D truly impresses us?
I touched upon this briefly in my “Top Ten Previously Released Films I’d Pay to See If They’d Been Shot in 3D” article last week when I was talking about the framing of scenes and how well framing and composition served the IMAX 3D feature Hubble. Whether you’re shooting in 2D or 3D this is always an important aspect of filmmaking, but I’m beginning to realize just how much more important it is for a 3D film.
One of the reasons so many of the 3D films we’ve seen since Avatar started the craze are films that pretty much all used after-the-fact CGI for their 3D moments. The framing of the shot meant nothing, all that mattered was how they could fit some computer generated blood and effects in that could pop out of the screen. This is not efficient or quality filmmaking, 3D or otherwise and it’s proven to be unimpressive with films such as Clash of the Titans, The Green Hornet, The Last Airbender and Alice in Wonderland.
Along with Hubble, the only recent film I would say that actually used 3D to its advantage without being overused or simply used as a gimmick would be Zack Snyder’s Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole. For as relatively dumb as that film was, it really accomplished some impressive 3D visuals. But is this really much of a surprise coming from Snyder, who has obviously shown he has the visual chops over pretty much every other aspect of filmmaking?
To offer up my personal answer to the question I pose in the headline for the sake of argument and discussion, I pretty much have to say it seems filmmakers are making 3D films the same way they approach making a 2D film, which is the wrong approach in my book.
As 3D gained popularity I would read quotes from filmmakers saying they weren’t going to use it as a gimmick and simply have thing popping out of the screen at the audience, they were simply going to use 3D as a presentation tool. Such a statement speaks to the irrelevance of 3D in films today. Using it as a presentation tool means people are paying more money for something that is nothing more than an afterthought. To compose a film in 3D it needs to be realized and worked out with the director of photography before a single frame is shot or it simply doesn’t matter.
Why do so many people complain about 3D around the Internet? Because they see no benefit. It also doesn’t help that these 3D “spectacles” are shown in multiplexes, on tiny movie screens where the entire experience is lost. One of the reasons Hubble was such a great 3D film was because it was shot on IMAX 3D cameras and projected on the massive, real IMAX movie screen. I don’t care who you are, but had The Dark Knight been shot in IMAX 3D and had you first seen that opening shot of Gotham on a massive IMAX screen, in 3D and with Hans Zimmer’s score it would have floored you more than it already did. Size truly does matter.
The size problem, unfortunately, is out of the a filmmaker’s control. A director and his/her cinematographer have no idea what screen people will be seeing their films on, be it a massive IMAX screen or a 3D television at home. What they can control is the preparation and work that goes in to utilizing 3D for the benefits it creates. People don’t like 3D because there haven’t been many 3D films that gave them any reason to like it.
3D affords a filmmaker the chance to bring the audience into his/her film by framing a shot so it feels like an extension of the movie theater. It seems there’s no recognition for the fact that 3D isn’t about something coming out of the screen as much as trying to suck the audience into the screen. Sure, Scrat’s nose bumps you in the forehead in the opening seconds of that short above, but after that Scrat’s world exists inside that screen, not in the audience’s laps.
As far as upcoming films are concerned, I’m most interested in seeing Martin Scorsese’s Hugo Cabret as he seems like the one director that may be able to conceive a 3D film that considers the format from start to finish rather than simply as a tacked on gimmick in post production. By comparison, it will be interesting to see what Michael Bay has to offer with Transformers: Dark of the Moon. Bay has a cinematic eye, I just wonder if he was talked in to using 3D or if he saw the benefit before getting to work blowing up the world this time around.
