Fantastic Fest 2009 Panel: The Future of 3D

So Matt (one of the amazing writers here) and I went to the Future of 3D Panel at Fantastic Fest on an early Sunday Morning. We both fell asleep right away. Why? Well 6 dudes in one hotel room with an average of 4 to 5 hours of sleep will make any non-movie experience boring. But we learned some things and now I’d like to think of myself as a bit of a 3D film expert. There’s a lot I’ve learned about how the cameras are set up, what kind of lenses and filters you have to use and how to tell when a movie was either not made for 3D or poorly shot and constructed.

The biggest thing I learned was how you’re supposed to edit and shoot a 3D movie. Many techniques that have grown over the past 10 years need to be thrown right out of the window and the cinematographers need to get back to basics. Smooth steady shots and long takes are the key to a great 3D movie. The more you cut, the more of a headache your audience will suffer. An example I heard from one of the panelists was about how you’d typically structure your movie in the past. Before if you wanted to show a woman in red dress in a crowd, you’d simply cut to her… now with the advent of 3D, especially digital 3D you want to make the move to push to her. This brings the audience in and let’s the experience the 3D effect as much as possible.

Another thing I learned is that you don’t want to shake the camera EVER, and would never want to shoot with a steady cam. A steady cam, which can often lead to shaky cam, is for inflection. It’s supposed to give you the feel that you’re in the scene and show you the pressure or urgency or force of whatever is happening. Now with 3D you’re already there. You’re experiencing the event much more dynamically than you normally would, so there’s no need to shoot it that way. You want smooth steady shots, the head doesn’t really bounce around like that after all.

There was a movie trailer being showed at Fantastic Fest quite a bit and seeing it made me really sad after this panel because of what I had learned. If you read my favorite films of FF list then you Mandrill was way up there and if you read my review then you know that I have a lot of respect for Marko Zaror and want nothing but the best for him. Sadly his new film Defender 3D is a remake of a classic he was already in, MIRAGE MAN. Defender 3D literally does everything wrong when it comes to 3D cinema. Luckily it’s trailer isn’t anything more than a test to try and get more funding, but as it stands right now, it’s an epic fail on the big screen. It’s full of quick cuts, misaligned 3D shots, and camera angels where the camera is at a 45 degree angle with the ground. These shots all lead to a large headache and make the movie very very hard to watch.

So where am I going with all this? Well It’s become very clear to me that 3D films are meant to be shot a very specific way in order to be effective. They have to be shot and edited in an extremely precise and meticulous manner. Not every film can simply be transfered to to this style, and most shouldn’t be. Some films can, especially older films could be transfered and not really have this problem. Films like STAR WARS which are shot rather steady and don’t have many quick cuts, would do perfectly. But now I hear Joss Whedon’s new film CABIN IN THE WOODS is being transfered to 3D simply because the initial buzz on the movie is good. I’m very sad about this since the film is admittedly not shot in 3D.

Shooting in 2D and transferring to 3D isn’t the worst thing you can do with a movie, but hearing this makes me wonder if the movie can even handle the transition. Was it shot in a way where 3D will add to the experience or will it make the movie one big giant headache of a film? Pushing the movie back a year is rather sad since it’s apparently so good as it is, but will the final product suffer because the studio is trying to jump on a bandwagon of 3D cinema in order to cash in a little more.

Here’s a simple trick to find out of your 3D is good or not: Put your 3D glasses on the edge of your nose so you can quickly peer over them. You should see double images up on the screen. IF they’re exactly level with each other, then you’re seeing properly aligned 3D and that’s how it should be. If they’re not then you’ll notice one part is slightly higher than the other, which will be lower. This is a misaligned effect and can give you a massive headache in the back of your skull. Apparently some really big films that were made in 2D and transfered into 3D have this problem.

Be smart about your 3D cinema choices. It’s a very cool technology and sitting through the Real D presentation and the AVATAR footage, I can tell you that it can truly revolutionize the way we watch some films, but only those that can be properly transfered or that are properly made. Not every film is a prime candidate for 3D. As much as I hate to say it… no matter how much you love a movie it just might not be right. I loved this year’s STAR TREK and I thought it might really fit as a 3D feature. Looking back on it now though I realized it would do nothing but give me a throbbing skull… Here’s hoping Hollywood gets smart about their choices for 3D conversion and fast.