3-D tidal wave swamps Hollywood (and Burbank)
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Nearly every day I hear someone new singing the praises of 3-D. Yesterday, it was Disney chief Dick Cook, who, during the studio’s big PR showcase for its upcoming releases, said that Disney, which is releasing the animated film ‘Bolt’ in 3-D this November, would also be rolling out five 3-D films next year, with 16 more in development, including Tim Burton’s ambitious Johnny Depp-starring ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ that is due in 2010. Having already enjoyed a big 3-D success with a Hannah Montana concert film earlier this year, Cook took a dig at Jeffrey Katzenberg, who until now been the industry’s biggest pom-pom waving 3-D cheerleader, saying, ‘I heard that Jeffrey may finally his first 3-D movie next year.’
The reason for the industry’s 3-D love affair is obvious. Theater attendance has been flat for years, so Hollywood is looking for a new way to get people out of the house, and get more money from them in the process, since theaters can charge a premium for 3-D films. What really got the bandwagon going was the success of this summer’s ‘Journey to the Center of the Earth.’ The film was only shown in 3-D on roughly 850 screens, but in terms of per screen average, the 3-D theaters outgrossed the 2-D theaters by a three-to-one margin. That kind of performance got everyone’s attention.
For anyone who studies film history and recalls the 3-D mania of the mid-1950s, when movie attendance had taken a dive after the mass introduction of TV, this is deja vu all over again. Jack Warner was so dazzled by the surprise success of the 3-D version of ‘House of Wax’ in 1953 that he announced that his studio was greenlighting 22 films -- half of the entire Warners slate -- in 3D, including such prestige films as ‘A Star is Born,’ ‘East of Eden’ and ‘Mr. Roberts.’ Of course, the boom went bust so quickly that only a handful of the movies ever got a 3D release.
As I explained yesterday, I’ve been out watching various kind of films and TV events in 3-D to get a better idea of what works and what doesn’t. While I’m not saying the current fascination with 3-D is simply a passing fad -- times have obviously changed -- I do think that 3-D is not an added value experience for every movie. Still, filmmakers are fascinated by the possibilities of the medium. Michael Lewis, who heads RealD, the leading company installing 3-D screens and software into theaters, says Baz Luhrmann, Michael Mann and the Farrelly Brothers have all been in recently to see his company’s 3-D reel.
He also had some very smart things to say about how 3-D works and the future of the medium. So keep reading:
According to Lewis, there are now about 40 films in the pipeline that will be released in 3-D, largely from Disney, Dreamworks and 20th Century Fox, which has Jim Cameron’s ‘Avatar’ and an ‘Ice Age 3’ sequel coming in 3-D. He described the aesthetic of the medium this way: ‘3-D magnifies everything, from the emotions to the visual experience. But it has to be in the hands of really great artists. That’s what encourages me, because it’s attracted the likes of Steven Spielberg, Jim Cameron, Bob Zemeckis and Peter Jackson. The artists are getting really good at it really quickly.’
If only we could keep 3-D in the hands of great artists -- and out of the hands of the hacks -- we’d be in great shape. But that’s not the way movies work. Everyone gets to play in the new technology sandbox, with wildly differing results. 3-D does magnify everything. And as I watched the RealD reel, it quickly became apparent that -- sitting out there in the audience -- you don’t always want every emotion, every visual effect to be so greatly magnified. I often had an unsettling feeling of sensory overload. In the wrong hands, in the wrong visual context, 3-D gave me too much visual stimuli, taking me out of the movie instead of pulling me in.
A classic example was seeing the 3-D trailer for Disney’s upcoming ‘Bolt.’ The technology didn’t make the movie any better. It felt just as frantic and over-amped in 3-D as it did in 2-D. On the other hand, the 3-D scenes from Cameron’s ‘Ghosts of the Abyss’ were pretty amazing, allowing you to feel immersed in an out of body experience; you felt that you were almost as far away from the world in the depths of the ocean as you would be in the distant reaches of outer space. Seeing an action sequence from ‘Kung Fu Panda’ in 3-D was surprisingly underwhelming, since the sequence itself was great, but for some reason all the quick-cutting in the scene felt more jarring in 3-D. On the other hand, it was a kick to see a 3D scene from ‘The Matrix,’ perhaps because the movie has more spatial complexity than animation, so you felt that 3D added another layer of depth to the way the action sequences played out.
Obviously this is just one man’s opinion. But if I learned one thing from my 3-D magical mystery tour, it’s that evangelists like Katzenberg are wildly oversimplifying the 3-D future. This is not a medium that will work for every movie or every sporting event. (As I said yesterday, football will be great in 3-D, but baseball would be awful -- the rhythms of the game and the geometry of the diamond are all wrong.) In the right hands, it will be a fascinating leap forward. When ‘Avatar’ comes along, I’ll be first in line. But the more you put 3-D in the hands of journeymen filmmakers, eager to make a cheap splash, the more it feel like what it felt like back in Jack Warner’s day -- a cheesy gimmick.