From: Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com [mailto:Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of
Jay Mahavier
David's latest post appears to be a more reasonable argument. It makes a
statement about something David thinks needs to be overcome. Now I'm not at
all sure of what he means by "too literal". I mean I'm following what he's
saying right up to that point and then I'm lost. The wine glass becomes too
much like a wine glass? And once that wine glass is to much like a wine
glass then it's not representative enough of a wine glass for the audience
to believe that it's a wine glass?
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I think what he says relates to what I was just saying about the advent of
true, holographic 3D.
At its birth, film was seen as a way to reproduce the experience of seeing a
play, before it's unique abilities to tell stories in its own way were
realized. Sound was a way to hear the real voices of the actors, color
brought a realism that B&W couldn't achieve. Both of those could be used
literally to show the way things look and sound in real life. Eventually
they were used creatively, through sound design and grading, in ways that
enhanced the story being told.
Because 2D is not a true representation of real life, there is always a
level of abstraction. Those abstract qualities can be shaped to guide the
audience's experience. Whenever I see BTS footage of a movie scene being
shot, even the most well acted studio features look a little silly to me.
Those riveting performances turn into grownups playing make believe because
the artifice has been stripped away and you are put into a more realistic
perspective of an ordinary bystander, without the influence of music,
framing, sound design and editing.
I think David is saying that 3D is a step toward this kind of mundane
realism, because it takes away some of the artifice that is usually
manipulated to tell the story in a certain way. This might be a little bit
like complaining that film is a poor way to stage a play because you lose
some essentials of a live performance, like dimensionality and connection
with the audience. You could complain that sound, and the ability to hear
the voices, while enhancing realism became a crutch and diminished the art
of telling stories visually. That is still a pitfall for show runners who
get lazy and fall into producing "radio with pictures".
The problem with 3D is that it is touted as a way to increase the realism of
a film when for many stories, realism isn't something that should be
desired. It is still artifice since it is representing 3D in a 2D space.
Like the other artificial constructs of film it should be used creatively,
and not realistically. I think it would be most effective if the things
that make stereo unrealistic could be exploited in the same ways that DoF,
color, framing, lighting, etc are, to shape the audience's experience and
not simply make it more realistic. This might mean parts of the film have a
slight or no stereoscopic effect (embossed?) and others are more pronounced.
I think Harold and Kumar looks like a good example. It may be a gimmick,
for the purpose of making fun of the gimmickry of 3D, but it is still a step
toward using 3D to serve the film and not realism.
All of this is of course depends on a kind of 3D that does not require
glasses, cause headaches, and raise production costs. It probably won't
happen this time around, but maybe in another 15 years there will be a
version that is more like introducing Surround Sound to the world of LR
Stereo.
Ian
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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