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3D TV is on its way to a satellite near you
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“But the cream always rises to the top”
If that were only true in the real world.
In the writing world, music world, and especially “Hollyworld”
I’m afraid it is the rare exception rather than the “rule.”Dual 2.5 G5, IO, Kona LH, IO, Medea Raid, UL4D, NVidia 6800, 4Gig RAM
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[David Roth Weiss] “Arsenals don’t contain tools — tool sheds do & toolboxes do, but arsenals contain guns and ammo.”
Oh come now, David.
Gun is just another word for a tool to help you get the unwilling to quickly back your play. Another word for a gun, might be a “motivational lead dispenser.” Or perhaps an “inter-personal doubt rearrangement device.”
(You do know I am kidding, right? But I just couldn’t pass that one up.)
Ron Lindeboom
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[Ron Lindeboom] “Gun is just another word for a tool to help you get the unwilling to quickly back your play. “
Well, I think Mark really meant to say, “3D is just another weapon in the filmmaker’s arsenal,” but I like your “motivational lead dispenser” so much that I’m willing to forgive him for his improper mixology. He was probably drinking already when he wrote that one anyway.
David Roth Weiss
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Naw, I only drink grown-up drinks about once a year and this wasn’t it, but i WAS in a hurry typing while making luau preparations for tonight, sorry for the clumsy prose.
If we can take a step back off the ledge and ditch “The poetics” and a bunch of arcana and subjectivity for a minute, I just want to point out how unique Cameron’s system really is, and why I think that is important.
In his setup, the mocap and performance happens first, pretty much simultaneousl., as actors play out a scene in real time. A low-level 3d world is generated around them right then, viewable on screens, not unlike the “video village” of a typical high end film shoot today.
And here’s the brilliant bit, after a bit more rendering, Cameron becomes his own D.P., flying a virtual camera thru the already-performed scene, picking the angles AFTER the performance. Do you see how breakthrough this is?
Prior to this, you would have shot multi-cam coverage and been stuck with whatever viewpoints the physical cameras could capture, even if the actors turned to a bad angle for that camera. Your edit would have to put aside art to just fix the mechanics of presenting that scene cleanly, of hiding the break. I know I have often thrown away excellent shots, perfect performances, during an edit, just because they would not match for continuity. And no matter how talented the actors, you can’t expect perfectly identical takes every time from human beings. Just getting the coverage you wanted between tight and wide and medium was a crapshoot up till this system. You might have had to have the actors go thru the scene many, many times to capture it right for just one good take. Cameron’s system means you have infinite camera placement control at all times, within each take. Even before the EDIT, you’ve sculpted a perfect performance of perfect takes and perfect angles. Truly, this is perhaps as close as one can come to making a film that is *exactly* what the director envisioned in his head. If I WAS a drinker, I’d be hoisting a Mai Tai to Cameron for that alone. That is the revolutionary part of the technology for me, not so much the stereoscopic aspect.
Story wise, I have to say that while it is not a horribly novel plot, and while it had numerous holes and hand-waving in it, and some flawed character logic, it still succeeded in moving me, in manipulating my emotions and making me think and feel what the director and writer wanted me to think and feel, to identify with made-up characters and story as if it were real, and fuse with it for those 2 hours. Whenever I’ve tried to explain to my folks what my fascination for this business was about, this is the thing I tried to communicate to them, without much success. It’s beyond mind control, beyond simple propaganda. Beyond making a sale or closing a deal. It’s maybe a cousin to what a teacher feels when the student finally lights up and “gets it”, or when a preacher sees a convert cross a decision point and commit to a new way of living. Or when a street magician fools you with the ball and cups even after “showing” you how the trick works and giving away the location.
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I can criticize any filmmaker I pay to see. If anyone wants to criticized my work, they are free to do so. I call 3D a gimmick since it, in no way, promotes the story itself. If Avatar wasn’t a 3D film, where would the hype come from? I think its hard to argue that its the only reason it got me, and many others, into the theater. His 3D work was amazing! My brain actually thought I was floating above the trees at points, bringing a sense of vertigo. I thought that was incredible. But, in the end, it was just Fern Gully meets Dances With Wolves. C’mon! This man made great films like The Abyss, Terminator and Aliens- great original screenplays! You bet I’m going to judge his work on the past.
Let pretend the 3D thing never happened…was Avatar a great film? An original story? Should we judge a film these days on how good the SFX are?
I’ll eat my words if Avatar joins Hamlet as one of the great classic stories in human history. 🙂
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[eric pautsch] “I call 3D a gimmick since it, in no way, promotes the story itself.”
Spoken like someone who cheered against all the hub-bub when “talkies” came along. I can just hear it now: “What’s all the noise about? I don’t need all that noise to see the story… Besides, it’s not very realistic and all that hissing and clicking just drives me nuts!”
;o)
No offense, Eric, but in my humble opinion, Avatar would have been a GREAT movie and film experience without the 3D but it is made even more intense by the fact that it is in 3D.
[eric pautsch] “If Avatar wasn’t a 3D film, where would the hype come from?”
James Cameron has done MORE to alter the human psyche against atrocities like that which happen whenever one group of humans think that they should have something that belongs to another group, just because they are savages or less refined than we are — than all of the efforts of documentary filmmakers and storytellers who have tried to alter the human psyche in this area.
All their efforts just got trumped by all the “hype” of a 3D movie called AVATAR.
I wish I could make a pile of crap like that.
Don’t you?
Ron Lindeboom
PS: [eric pautsch] also said: “I’ll eat my words if Avatar joins Hamlet as one of the great classic stories in human history. :)”
Boy, using this as our benchmark, I can’t think of a single film born of an original story/screenplay that didn’t exist before it became a film that was made in the last 50 years or more that is likely to stand up to that test. Not one. Not even Citizen Kane.
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Interestingly, most of the articles and tv coverage of Avatar that I have seen have ignored the 3D aspect. Most focus on the motion capture and face capture technology, the political overtones, the environmental overtones and the visuals.
It is actually amazing the number of Avatar related posts around the COW this past week. I could not search the archives as far back as 1977, but presumably Star Wars had a lot of chatter on the COW back in the day too 😉
Mike Cohen
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You don’t make a billion dollars and then disappear from the literary canon. Would you like egg on your words?
Moreover, Hamlet isn’t classic. It’s Renaissance. 🙂
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[eric pautsch] “I’ll eat my words if Avatar joins Hamlet as one of the great classic stories in human history. :)”
Avatar is Pocahontas in 3D. Basic, predictable story set in an incredible 3D world. Nice 3D and SFX, but little attention paid to the storyline.
Did it earn a lot of money? Yep. Is it a masterpiece? For artwork, sure. For story, nope. I have to say SpongeBob Squarepants the Movie had about as equally predictable a storyline as Avatar. Although I have to give a nod to Spongebob for “riding the Haselhoff” and the great voice work of Alec Baldwin.
Sure we can critique a film or any other creative works. In fact we have people who get paid to do this. They’re called Critics of all things. I don’t think you’ll have to worry about eating your words anytime soon. It may go down as a “landmark 3D effort” or “landmark 3D film” but I don’t think it will go down as “classic cinema.”
Heck I think Pixar demonstrated what a 3D film is all about with the Toy Story releases earlier this year. Those were flat out amazing and with great storylines too.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author.
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I had to chuckle this morning as I swung by Yahoo.com to see the latest box office on AVATAR.
$351,114,898 so far.
I don’t think that James Cameron cares one twit about his critics or who thinks his story is simplistic or trite.
As I said somewhere else: Cameron has already done more to affect the psyche of future generations (regarding tragedies such as happened in North America, Africe, Australia and elsewhere when indigenous peoples were eradicated) than all of the documentary filmmakers and authors that have addressed the subject heretofore.
Using these two yardsticks to measure what is success or not, I think I can see why Cameron is going to laugh all the way to the bank in the face of his critics.
Man, I’d like to fail like him when I grow up.
Ron Lindeboom
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