Enlighten me, oh geekdom

[andrewducker]

As 3D versions of recent movies have shown themselves to be insanely popular - frequently raking in several times more money in the 3D screens than in the normal ones, and CGI movies should be trivial to produce 3D prints of, why wasn't there a 3D version of WALL-E?

Comments

[cdave]

Just a thought.

A lot of (the start of) WALL-E was shot in very wide deep shots, which presumably wouldn't work well with current polaroid lensed 3D.

Also I guess it was designed to look pretty in 2D, and they never thought about making it effective in 3D, so wouldn't handle retrofitting.

I'm glad I saw it in 2D mind you. I was towards the edge of the IMAX for Beowolf 3D and got a metric shed-load of bleed through. I think I was getting about 20% of left eye channel in my right eye and visa versa. Not good.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

3D is only really effective when objects come out of the screen towards you. That's why watching a film like Beowolf in 2D is somewhat consufing as there are various scenes in which people appear to make odd movements wave swords about for no apparent reason. Presumably in 3D, these are poking out of the screen towards the audience.

WALL-E was a very simple animation. I can't think of many moments where there would have been opportunity to make use of the 3D. As it must have taken several years to develop, 3D most likely wasn't even a consideration when the animation started.

As for finances, 3D movies are generating more revenue at the moment as people are willing to pay a premium price to go and see them. A large amount of that is surely down to novelty value. How long will that last I wonder if an ever increasing percentage of films are released in 3D. Also 3D films are not available to buy on DVD, so people are forced to see them in the cinema if they want the 3D experience.

[red-phil.livejournal.com]

I would love to see a 3d film where they hadn't put in "ooh! LOOK we are in 3d" scenes.

[andrewducker]

3D is only really effective when objects come out of the screen towards you.

Actually, I found those bits annoying - it was actually more effective when it was just the normal movie looking more real.

[recycled-sales.livejournal.com]

Well it'd certainly make up for a lot of the 1 dimensional characters in recent films

*ba-dum-tsch*

[broin.livejournal.com]

Why would a 3d version be trivially easy?

[red-phil.livejournal.com]

In theory for a computer genarated film you just need to re render with 2 virtual camera's instead of 1.

Then 3D cinemas will show a 3d view of the film.

[broin.livejournal.com]

Aye, but there's more to the movie than the camera angles. I'd have thought that simply storyboarding and 'shooting' the entire movie from othr angles would cost (in Wall-E's case) millions. And there's a chance you'd get it wrong.

[andrewducker]

You don't need to re-storyboard it though - you can simply re-render from the two fractionally different angles, which will be effectively the same angle as the original, when summed together.

Sure, there's a cost in using the render-farm to do that, but as Pixar are already doing it for all movies from now on - and re-releasing Toy Story 1 and 2 by doing this, it seems odd not to have done it for WALL-E.

[broin.livejournal.com]

I suppose, yeah. The angles aren't *so* different. True. Thanks.

[andrewducker]

I'm assuming there is _a_ reason though - it might be that the angles are different enough that certain effects will look screwy (the sandstorm, for instance).

Damn the lack of Pixar employees on my friends list!

[broin.livejournal.com]

Then I'd have to go with '3D movies aren't about watching a movie in 3D, they're about snot and swords and monsters jumping at you'. It's a new medium, in a sense. I've not seen a 3D movie where it did anything for the *story*. And god knows, Wall-E's story was pretty fucking marvellous.

[andrewducker]

It certainly was.

As I said above (and probably ought to write a post about) - the "Look! Stuff coming right atcha!" actually puts me off watching 3D movies - whereas the added realism of a little bit of depth added to the movie.

But I'm probably odd.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

i!ve just booked the imax dark knight 3d!