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Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by DannyB2 on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @10:01AM (#13471795)
Yes, that!

3D is and has always been a gimmic.

It doesn't improve the story telling. It doesn't contribute to the plot in any way.

But then, some movie makers remark, 'story' ? 'plot ? what strange words you use.

Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by lukeschlather on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @10:32AM (#13472094)
3D was a big part of Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby. It made me wish Moulin Rouge had been done in 3D.

I think using 3D effectively is hard, and most films being made don't have a good reason to use it. It also makes my eyes feel a little uncomfortable, so I'm not crazy about it getting widespread use. Most filmmakers don't have the visual sense (and budget/tech crew) of Baz Luhrman or James Cameron.

The Wizard of Oz was a really masterful tech demo for color, because color was a pivotal part of the story. 3D's problem is that it has been totally driven by technologists and financiers rather than storytellers. If the first big 3D film were The Great Gatsby rather than Avatar I think we'd have a very different sense of what 3D is. Although The Wizard of Oz may be unique in the way the tech manages to serve the story just as much as the story serves the tech.

Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by rm999 on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @10:18AM (#13471967)
It's not a gimmick, it increases immersiveness when done right. The problem is the technology isn't quite there and directors haven't been trained in it (and usually don't make the effort) - so it's basically never done right.

3D as we know it is probably never going to happen. Most movies don't gain much from more immersiveness, and the tech may always be clunky. I've seen some VR movies lately, and I predict they will supercede 3d entirely. Whether they'll end up being the next fad is an open question.

Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by throwaway91111 on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @10:28AM (#13472054)
It only increases immersiveness if it doesn't make you throw up. This is only going to get worse with VR.
Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by teach on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @10:54AM (#13472324)
There's a huge difference between immersiveness (you feel surrounded by the image) and presence. Good modern VR gives you a sense of presence, which tricks the body at a level below conscious awareness that you are somewhere else.

And presence is characterized by lack of nausea.

If your only experience with VR is cell phones or the Playstation 4, then you probably have never experienced presence.

Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by NTripleOne on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @11:55AM (#13473059)
Yeah, if you want to experience presence you basically have to use a Vive - a Rift might just about do it but you'll probably run into a whole lotta tracking issues thanks to their (awful) tracking solution.
Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by ehsanu1 on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @12:36PM (#13473504)
Wow, even HN has been infected! JK, but Rift tracking is great too. For "room-scale" with good tracking you basically need 3 sensors (you can buy additional sensors). For some games that cause heavy occlusion due to needing to lie on the floor or whatever, you would have to put the sensors in ceiling mounts to get the full volume tracked accurately. And the tracking volume will be smaller for the Rift compared to the Vive, but very few people have a bigger than 2.5m by 2.5m space, which the Rift can track just fine.

I just got my third sensor a couple days ago, and it has made a night and day difference (there is also an option for 360 tracking with two sensors, but I didn't set that up). But even when I had two sensors the tracking was fine except under certain situations where my body would occlude the controllers. Not a problem anymore after the third sensor.

Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by josho on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @11:14AM (#13472539)
What's a movie you can suggest that should be seen in 3D? Preferably one in theatres so that us nay sayers can give it another try.
Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by NTripleOne on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @11:54AM (#13473043)
Anything that's 3D animated IMO, your pixar or dreamworks kinda stuff - they all work far better than camera-3D stuff as the '3D gimmick' fits with the fact that it's animated, as well as the nature of 3D CG allows for the stereoscopy to be tweaked and perfected far easier.
Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by rosege on Wednesday January 25, 2017 @12:28AM (#13478833)
I agree - the best, by far, 3D movie I have seen is Pixar's Up
Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by drivers99 on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @12:22PM (#13473359)
Doctor Strange is, but unfortunately at least in my town it's only showing in 2D at the cheap ($1) theaters now. I was blown away by the appropriate use of 3D and visuals in 3D IMAX for that movie. I saw Rogue One in 2D and then IMAX 3D and hated it in 3D.

Article about it: http://www.thisisinsider.com/doctor-strange-how-you-should-s...

When new movies come out, google "should I see it in 3D $moviename" type articles. Unfortunately it's January now; not many good movies coming out.

Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by Gracana on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @03:52PM (#13475340)
Ohhhhhh. I saw Dr Strange in 2D and thought the rippling building effects and hurling of bodies and such was kind of goofy. Didn't think of 3D at the time, but now it makes sense.
Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by _benedict on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @09:09PM (#13477814)
Dredd was fantastic in 3d, but it was 90-95% 2d, only exploding to 3d for dramatic effect, particularly in the slo-mo scenes and some of the other set pieces.

Obviously, that doesn't help very much since it isn't in cinemas.

Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by Keyframe on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @12:26PM (#13473400)
Avatar. Crap movie, but a nice theme ride in 3D theatre.
Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by dood on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @12:06PM (#13473179)
Avatar and Gravity are the standout examples.
Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by josho on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @12:26PM (#13473397)
I saw Gravity in 3D and strongly hated it. One scene in particular killed it for me. In what should have been an emotional scene when the hero looses all hope and sheds a tear. The tear floats into 3D space and the camera changes focus from the distraught hero to the tear drop instead. So, the audience is taken from what should be an emotional scene to admiring a fucking tear drop floating in 3D space.
Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by burkaman on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @10:04AM (#13471824)
I know you've heard this argument before, but isn't that the same thing people said about color movies? This sort of reminds me of arguments about Snapchat. A lot of people really enjoy 3D, trying to logically convince them that they actually shouldn't like it is not going to work.
Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by vidarh on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @10:53AM (#13472317)
Chaplin fought against sound in movies on a similar basis.

Not an absolute rejection, but a concern that it took focus away from other parts of the story-telling and wasn't necessary.

He supposedly sabotaged attempts to add speech to Gold Rush (1925) after the actors pushed for it.

City Lights (1931) was basically his ode to silent movies, famous for its endless retakes of the initial meeting with the blind flower girl [1], while he tried to figure out how she could mistake the Tramp for a rich man without words. In the end the solution was simple, and both funny and provided motivation for the Tramps desire to help her: The Tramp walks through the car of a rich man to avoid passing a police office, and so when he stands before her she has just heard him slam the car door. He accidentally knocks the flower he's purchased out of her hand and realises she can't see that he has picked it up. As he hands her his money, the owner of the car comes and drives off and the girl thought he had left without his change, and he didn't want to break the illusion and so walks off without money he badly needed for himself.

It's one of my favourite movies because it masterfully made his point that you can tell a complex story without it feeling like you're missing something because you can't hear dialogue.

He added speech in his next movie - Modern Times - but his character still didn't speak dialogue (but did sing).

It was first with The Dictator (1940) that Chaplin himself spoke on screen: Finally he had something where the speech added clear value by conveying more than he knew how to convey with just pictures.

In the same way I think we will see more and more movies eventually come out in 3D as the industry gets enough experience with it to see where it adds clear value and leave it low key other places, rather than add it to make a spectacle of it.

I think one of the first to do it well was Prometheus. A friend saw the 2D version and afterwards told me elated that it felt like it was made as a 2D movie - no weird camera work solely to make 3D effects stand out etc.. Meanwhile I'd seen it in 3D and been blown away at how good it looked in 3D. The effects were clear and beautiful but not in your face. Crucially they didn't alter the visual language noticeably.

[1] http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/378808/City-Lights-Movie-...

Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by woofyman on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @11:39AM (#13472868)
>I think one of the first to do it well was Prometheus

Too bad they didn't put as much thought into the script.

Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by vidarh on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @04:51PM (#13475936)
Personally I loved it - it's one of my all time favourite moies. I find a lot of the criticism of it tends to boil down to whether or not people believe the science expedition was meant to be a serious effort vs just an thin veneer of a cover for Weyland. There's nothing to indicate that it was meant to be serious. E.g. it has the wrong set of specialties for an expedition looking for live aliens, for starters, and Weyland clearly see everyone but himself as expendable.
Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by coldtea on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @10:09AM (#13471867)
>I know you've heard this argument before, but isn't that the same thing people said about color movies?

No in any large numbers. Besides, 3D cinema has been coming and going as a fad for 6 decades now.

But even if it was true that people said that about color movies, people can say the same thing about different inventions and be wrong in one case and right in another.

>A lot of people really enjoy 3D, trying to logically convince them that they actually shouldn't like it is not going to work.

Well, they are not that many to sustain 3D TVs (as TFA tells us), and they have never been that many to make it not be a fad in the cinema either.

In which case, whether some enjoy it is a moot point.

Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by baddox on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @11:29AM (#13472752)
> No in any large numbers.

This implies that "large numbers" of people complain about 3D. I suspect this isn't true, and that it's really a very loud very small minority.

> But even if it was true that people said that about color movies, people can say the same thing about different inventions and be wrong in one case and right in another.

Yes, but the point is that some evidence needs to be provided. Since some statements are wrong and some are right, the argument needs to be more than "it's true because I said it."

> and they have never been that many to make it not be a fad in the cinema either.

What does this mean? At what point do you concede that it's not a fad in the cinema?

Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by coldtea on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @01:24PM (#13474008)
>This implies that "large numbers" of people complain about 3D.

No, it just implies that they don't care about it enough to e.g. sustain a 3D TV lineup.

>Yes, but the point is that some evidence needs to be provided. Since some statements are wrong and some are right, the argument needs to be more than "it's true because I said it."

The article is one piece of evidence, isn't it?

>At what point do you concede that it's not a fad in the cinema?

At the point it surpasses regular viewing and studios don't stop making such movies 5-10 years down the road?

Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by burkaman on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @10:19AM (#13471981)
Well, I love 3D movies but I've never been interested in a 3D TV, I think because watching movies in a theater and at home are very different experiences. If I always watched TV sitting up straight without leaving my seat, I'd probably buy a 3D TV.

I don't really understand how enjoyment is a moot point. Enjoyment is pretty much all that matters for a consumer entertainment product.

Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by bnolsen on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @10:26AM (#13472047)
pretty much the whole population who can see perceive color. about 15-20% don't see in stereoscopic 3d. I'm one of those and i like seeing this 3d trend die...
Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by burkaman on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @10:51AM (#13472300)
Why? Maybe it's just my area, but I've never seen a 3D release that isn't also available in 2D. I guess it's slightly annoying when once in a while you can tell a scene was designed for 3D, but I don't think it's that big a deal.
Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by emodendroket on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @10:10AM (#13471875)
But do they really enjoy it as more than a novelty?
Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by burkaman on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @10:11AM (#13471883)
I guess I can only speak for myself and people I know, but yes.
Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by vidarh on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @10:57AM (#13472350)
It varies a lot. E.g. the Transformers movies are poster-children for overdone 3D for the sake of making the effects look cooler, while in Prometheus the 3D looks fantastic but is subtle enough that they don't become the focus of any of the shots.
Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by baddox on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @11:34AM (#13472806)
Like with "fad," it's important to define "novelty." Is it a novelty if cinemas profitably offer 3D for 20 years before moving to some other technology? What about 50 years?
Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by emodendroket on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @08:30PM (#13477611)
Yes, it can still be a novelty even if it exists for a long time. The question is whether people continue to value it after it's no longer novel and surprising; if a steady stream of people try it once or twice for years on end it could last a long time while still being a novelty.
Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by baddox on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @10:30PM (#13478218)
I don't really understand that argument. It seems like everything would be a novelty under that definition. Will we be watching 2D movies in 100 years? What about 1,000 years? Even ignoring the halting problem, how can we possibly guess what is and isn't a novelty under your definition?
Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by emodendroket on Friday January 27, 2017 @11:22PM (#13504898)
> how can we possibly guess what is and isn't a novelty under your definition?

By observing the typical behavior of one person using it?

Think of a Chinese finger trap. It's been around forever. And yet one person is not going to play with a Chinese finger trap every day. Once you experience it and figure it out there's not much to do with it. That's a novelty.

Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by eric_h on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @10:19AM (#13471979)
I saw The Martian in 3D, and I thought the 3D added value in the shots of the Martian desert.

Then they had indoor shots that used depth of field, while still using some 3D effects and totally ruined it for me.

The whole point of 3D is you can choose what to focus on! The moment you ditch that the effect is ruined.

Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by Shorel on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @11:59AM (#13473104)
Plot and story are very important. To me the most enjoyable movie of the year is usually the best script winner. Almost never the best movie winner.

But there's this thing called cinematography. And when it is done well, it adds another layer of enjoyment to the movie viewing experience. 3D is part of cinematography.

So, yes, plot is important. But if you are watching a movie instead of just reading a book, it is usually because the added elements are worth it.

And I say that as someone who usually reads the books as well.

3D is fun, and films like Avatar and Tron and Pacific Rim are totally worth in 3D.

Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by javiramos on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @10:24AM (#13472020)
The only movie that I have felt that was better in 3D is Gravity. Wow - what a movie.
Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by kijin on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @10:55AM (#13472338)
It seems that 3D is better suited to slow-moving, large-scale images than typical Hollywood action sequences. I can't stand 3D action movies, they make me dizzy. Especially when it's combined with shaky cameras!

But Gravity was awesome, animated 3D movies from Disney/Pixar are generally OK, and I really enjoyed the 3D version of Titanic that James Cameron produced in 2012 for the 100th anniversary of the sinking. (It's the same movie that came out in '97 but converted to 3D. Most of the time, you don't even realize that it's 3D. It's quite subtle.)

Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by baddox on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @11:41AM (#13472886)
Gravity was spectacular in 3D, but I have a much larger list of films (many of which aren't great) that have immersive and not distracting 3D. Off the top of my head:

Life of Pi

Pretty much every Marvel movie

The new Star Trek films

Star Wars: Episode VII

The Martian

The Hobbit films

How to Train Your Dragon and sequel

Finding Dory

The LEGO Movie

Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by dijit on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @11:43AM (#13472925)
You left out "Avatar" which was the movie that single-handedly sold 3D to the world.
Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by baddox on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @12:03PM (#13473147)
I never saw it in the cinema. I did watch it at home on my old and terrible 3D TV, which was a fairly mediocre experience.
Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by derrickdirge on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @12:12PM (#13473250)
If the visuals don't contribute to the storytelling, then why watch movies at all?

Why not just listen to radio plays?

Re:Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets by bitJericho on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @12:05PM (#13473164)
It makes it much more immersive.