A top-quality industry professional and man I respect has brought it to my attention that I may have slighted those working hard in the stereo realm with my recent post invoking Leone and small 35mm cameras and the millstone that is 3D production. Never mind that I am also an industry professional working hard in the stereo realm, and that too much slighting might end up with me getting slightly bitten by the hand that feeds me.
Even so, I am compelled to more clearly focus the record and say that I have nothing but respect and admiration for all those risking their comfort zones to work in stereo filmmaking. There is nothing easy about it. There is nothing obvious. There is only a 40 foot leap into a tub of water and we all better hope the tub is more than a few inches deep.
It takes a lot of guts and a little foolish bravado to step onto an icy lake hauling a Steinway piano. But this is what we are all doing making a 3D movie. Few of us have any real experience in it and just hope to get across safely, if not gracefully. If we do manage to make it to the other side it will be because of the skill, dedication and temperament of artists, artisans and craftsmen like Andre Sobczak, Mike Johnson, Conrad Hunziker, Alex Carr, Jim Carbonetti and, of course, Irek H, Richie M, the fearless Marius W and many others.
No, I think what I am wrestling with the most is that I have yet to experience any clear moment in which the addition of 3D to an act of cinema actually made the experience
better. This is not the fault of the medium. That is to say, this is not 3D's fault.
Instead, it is our privilege as filmmakers to be able to work with these new tools and see what they are capable of. And those on the vanguard are a lucky bunch. I count myself among the luckiest because I get the comparatively easy job in inheriting the fruits of all these great people's labors and playing with it in a safe and warm environment.
So what is the real challenge here? Well, I've said before that
Anna Karenina would not be a better book if the type appeared to float over the page. In fact, it would be a net loss since the addition of depth would be a distracting layer of experience that would only distance the reader from Levin and Vronsky and Kitty and Anna and that ubiquitous
muzhik eating his bread in the long shadow of a bail of hay.
We face the same challenge in adding depth to movies (although remember that movies already have depth by virtue of color, contrast, perspective, selective focus and all the other things our brains already use to interpret depth in the real world). I've heard it said that adding depth is like adding color or sound. But I disagree. There is nothing alien or artificial about color or sound. But the stereo we experience from behind our 3D glasses looks nothing like real life. In fact, it introduces ocular challenges that are substantially different from real life. Sometimes in direct conflict with real life.
Traditional 2D movies have always been the multi-sensory equivalent of a printed book. And I think that's part of the reason why these two mediums have been so wildly successful -- one success story spanning nearly 4600 years and the other over a hundred. These two mediums strike the perfect balance of technology and human relatability. They feel organic and human-scaled. (Although Kurzweil would say that 'organic' and 'human scaled' don't matter because the very definition of what is organic and human-scaled is a moving target.)
But now here comes 3D cinema (again). This time the motivation for its resurgence can be found in Panasonic, Sony and Samsung's flagging flat panel display sales. And you can find a cousin motive in the Studios' all-consuming fear of a waning theatrical and home video market. This isn't to say there aren't conscientious filmmakers authentically and sincerely exploring the potential art of 3D filmmaking. There are.
But I'm not really interested in the tension between commerce and art. It's not a surprise that studios rushed out craptacular 2D-to-Stereo conversions in a shameless money grab. That I expect. Instead, I'm concerned with what we as audiences gain and what we lose when we experience stereo movies.
I'm concerned that we have this perfectly balanced, delicious, well-understood plate of spaghetti. It's good, it's satisfying, it's a little like Joe Gideon's rose; it's perfect. But then we have Chef Cameron and Chef Katzenberg and Chef CEOs of SonyPanasonicSamsung and they come up to our table and they say, "You love spaghetti. But you also love ice cream sundaes. So here, let's put an ice cream sundae
on top of your spaghetti and then you'll have
Super Spaghetti!"
Actually, what you have is a big mess that ruins both dishes.
Please don't get me wrong.
I am not saying that all 3D movies are a plate of Super Spaghetti. But I am saying that we have to take great care in making sure that what we are doing is
not a plate of Super Spaghetti. That's the challenge.
Because just because we
can so something, it doesn't mean that we
should do it. Of course, how do you know unless you actually try? I don't know. Ask Oppenheimer the day after Trinity.
But in our far more modest (and less consequential) realm, we can only find out whether or not stereo filmmaking is something truly enduring or if it's just an ice cream sundae on our plate of spaghetti by actually trying it. And we are trying it. And I have nothing but respect and admiration for all those on the journey. Because if anyone can make it work, it's the guys here with me in Kiev and back home in LA.
