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My own prejudices go along with this completely, but ... (Arthur C) Clarke's First Law: "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is po

by gjm11 16y ago

My own prejudices go along with this completely, but ... (Arthur C) Clarke's First Law: "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; when he states that something is impossible, he is probably wrong." ... has turned out to be correct often enough that I wouldn't want to place large bets on this. (Digression: there's an obvious difficulty in assessing Clarke's First Law. When someone says something is impossible and is wrong, we can tell because, lo, someone else does it. But when someone says something is impossible and is right, we'll never really know for sure; the most we can say is that no one has done it yet. So: time travel? teleportation? faster than light travel? Plenty of eminent (and in some cases elderly) scientists have said, and doubtless will continue to say, that these things are impossible; for all we know they really are; but even if they are we'll never know for sure that Clarke's First Law is wrong for them.) [EDITED in response to two comments: If the claim is "3D done just like it is now will never work" then I agree that CFL isn't very relevant. If it's "3D movies will never work", which is what I think "3D doesn't work and never will" ought to mean, then I think CFL applies. So maybe I'm really only criticizing Ebert and not Murch, who does embed into his comments the sentence 'Nothing will fix it short of producing true "holographic" images.'. I do wonder whether the quotes around "holographic" are trying to define it to mean "anything that fixes this problem" rather than strictly "something close to full-wavefront reconstruction using coherent light", in which case I guess he's right by definition and therefore vacuously. I would certainly not want to bet that actual literal holograms are the only way to solve the problem.]

henrikschroder 16y ago
Except it doesn't apply in this case. He is saying that true 3D, some sort of holographic display would work fine, but the current fake 3D has a lot of problems. It places constraints on the cinematography, and it doesn't always enhance the end result.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- vacri 16y ago
  Except that it does apply in this case. If your director can keep away from close foreground shots, you don't get this problem. The angles between the eyes and the focusing power of the lens differ minimally once you get several meters away on out to infinity. From several meters to your nose, yes, heaps of variance is required and it would be very hard to do. This is just Ebert being an idiot and saying "This is my opinion, stated as fact, case closed. I won't enter into any discussion because I might be wrong", just like he said when he declared video games weren't art. It is /profoundly/ unscientific to dismiss something as unfactual simply because you don't like it. Back in the day, my honours degree was specifically involved in investigating ocular vergence (research jargon as 'angle between the eyes' as opposed to the /action/ of converging), comparing between a collimated image (= light coming to the eye in 'parallel' - from a military helicoptor pilot's HUD) and a real image (= light coming in 'non-parallel') displayed at 3m. At that distance there is already not much difference between focusing or vergence at 3m and at infinity (ie collimated), though discrepancies slightly increase as you move towards the periphery of your vision, though this may have been an artifact of the presentation of the HUD. I am not an expert in 3D and don't proclaim it to be 'there yet'. I do think that 3D is doable if the director stops the temptation of the 'power' closeup to showoff the 3D. So yeah, I think within constraints, 3D is doable. All film has constraints though, and those constraints are gradually eroded over time - such as night-time filming. Fifty years ago we would have heard Ebert proclaiming that it's impossible to film in natural light at night because film needs a certain amount of light, case closed, yet we've seen some amazing cameras arrive recently that can film at night using natural light. EDIT: Another example constraint is limiting yourself to a 'viewing box' - you can't turn your head for a full view of the scene in a movie. You're limited to a particular forced view. Despite this rather incredibly limiting constraint, film has managed to do some pretty amazing stuff.
- tintin 16y ago
  But the title states it will never work. But I think over time the software will enhance. So editing 3D movies will be just as easy as 2D movies. The part about focus of the eye is much more difficult to overcome. I think it has to do with resolution. And maybe a movie with a resolution of let's say 16.000 x 9.000 will give a better result because your eye can focus on details just like in real life.
krschultz 16y ago
Except that Clarke was referring to technology problems. I agree that with enough time, will, research, money etc many technical problems can be solved that were thought impossible. But constraints of human beings don't change much. If our brains are not wired to really get the current 3D format, then I think that is a pretty good indictment of the technology. The post isn't saying 3D movies won't exist someday, it is saying the current 3D can't work well because of a limitation in the human mind.
- brudgers 16y ago
  It's not just the viewers mind, it's the film editor's as well. Murch says, "Consequently, the editing of 3D films cannot be as rapid as for 2D films, because of this shifting of convergence." OK, so 3d films have to be edited differently - since when have constraints been an issue in art? But more importantly, the 600 million years of evolution argument doesn't hold the water he is putting in it. 600 million years of evolution did not prepare humans for traveling at 60 mph (much less controlling two tons of steel and insuring the safety of their children, while doing so), nor did it prepare humans for sitting in front of a bright light pecking at keyboards for hours and hours on end. Focusing on one point while converging on another may require practice, but so does operating an RC car. But the fact that a broad swath of the population can readily do it the very first time, speaks against it. Essentially, the case against 3d movies is an appeal to authority, and the article is really a rejection of the art form (3d is the rap music which is replacing their beloved rock and roll). That's not to say that there isn't a lot of schlock 3d - who really expected Green Hornet to be great cinema? - only that there is nothing inherently wrong with the medium.
  - GrandMasterBirt 16y ago
    Except there are studies coming out about the harm to developing eyes and such. The point is that we're not meant for 3D. 3D though is a great way theaters try to "add value" to movies forcing us to pay more. Tangled was playing ONLY in 3D in theaters around me xept for like 1 showing. Guess which is the only showing I could take my daughter to. She would throw the glasses off in 15 minutes due to headache an thats the end of the movie for her. Was that worth an extra 10 bucks a ticket? Like any new tech, makers want to convince us this tech is the way to go. So study more, and give us the old school alternatives.
axod 16y ago
Surely 3d only makes any sense if you can move around the environment - a holo-deck. 3d movies, where we're all sat down in a fixed chair makes absolutely no sense. It's a gimmick that adds nothing - apart from headaches, crappy dark image and occasional crude "THIS IS 3D" in your face 'effects'. Sitting in a chair looking at a screen we already see 3D. We have all the cues necessary for our brains to reconstruct the scene. Didn't work in the 50s, didn't work in the 80s, didn't work in 2010s. I guess every generation has some people who think it's a great idea to try it again.
- cryptoz 16y ago
  > didn't work in 2010s Hah! You wish. For example, Avatar made more than $2,000,000,000. That's $2 billion. And a huge part of the Avatar revenue comes from its 3D sales. Maybe it didn't work for you, but it sure worked for most people who went to see it.
  - Splines 16y ago
    But given a choice, would moviegoers pick the 2D version over the 3D version? In a universe where Avatar 3D never existed, would the 2D version alone have sold as much? Remember, they would have also been able to deliver the movie earlier (I don't know how much, but making a 3D movie can't be free - at least not yet). I'm reasonably certain that there are only a very small number of people who saw Avatar for the sole reason of it being 3D (in other words, if the 2D version was the only option, they would have skipped it).
    - dagw 16y ago
      I don't know anybody who went to see Avatar because they thought it would be a good movie. I also don't know anybody who went to see the 2D version, despite it playing at the same time and a few bucks cheaper. Everybody went because they wanted to see what could be done with the cutting edge in CGI technology plus insane amounts of money and to see what this 3D cinema thing was all about. I have as little evidence as you do, but I imagine that skipping the 3D version wouldn't have gotten the film anywhere near as much hype (and thus money).
relix 16y ago
Here's one way to solve it: include in the glasses dynamic focusing. We're already wearing glasses. I'm not sure how it would work, but the idea is to change the dioptry to the inverse of the distance of what's supposedly on the screen, so that our eyes need to focus at the same distance as the converging, effectively nullifying the inverse focus.
- igrekel 16y ago
  The focus issue is related to the focus of the camera that shot the film in the first place.
  - relix 16y ago
    It is not. The eyes need to focus on the cinema screen, this has nothing to do with the camera. The problem is that the eyes need to keep the focus at the same distance, while the converging changes distance.
- astrodust 16y ago
  You can see how James Cameron paid careful attention to depth of field in Avatar. If the foreground or background are blurry in a 3D film it seems to cause confusion as you can't focus on these things even though, given it's 3D, you might think you should be able to. It's theoretically possible to produce some kind of hologram-like 3D that would side-step this problem.
stanleydrew 16y ago
"[EDITED in response to two comments: ...]" Why not respond to those comments in child comments rather than in the parent? Surely that makes the most sense? It's very difficult to read a discussion where I have to read responses to comments I haven't read yet.
- gjm11 16y ago
  Because those comments made me realise that what I originally wrote was (1) not quite right and (2) not perfectly clear. The extra paragraph I added, so far as I can tell, makes just as much sense if you haven't read those comments; I just wanted to acknowledge that it was other people's comments that led me to add it. Given the choice between a discussion where some bits have been clarified in the light of later comments, and a discussion where some bits are needlessly confusing or wrong, I choose the former. (I might take a different view if there had been lots of replies, which might have been invalidated as as result of the edit. But there weren't; just those two.)

by gjm11 16y ago

henrikschroder 16y ago

Except it doesn't apply in this case. He is saying that true 3D, some sort of holographic display would work fine, but the current fake 3D has a lot of problems. It places constraints on the cinematography, and it doesn't always enhance the end result.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
vacri 16y ago
Except that it does apply in this case. If your director can keep away from close foreground shots, you don't get this problem. The angles between the eyes and the focusing power of the lens differ minimally once you get several meters away on out to infinity. From several meters to your nose, yes, heaps of variance is required and it would be very hard to do. This is just Ebert being an idiot and saying "This is my opinion, stated as fact, case closed. I won't enter into any discussion because I might be wrong", just like he said when he declared video games weren't art. It is /profoundly/ unscientific to dismiss something as unfactual simply because you don't like it. Back in the day, my honours degree was specifically involved in investigating ocular vergence (research jargon as 'angle between the eyes' as opposed to the /action/ of converging), comparing between a collimated image (= light coming to the eye in 'parallel' - from a military helicoptor pilot's HUD) and a real image (= light coming in 'non-parallel') displayed at 3m. At that distance there is already not much difference between focusing or vergence at 3m and at infinity (ie collimated), though discrepancies slightly increase as you move towards the periphery of your vision, though this may have been an artifact of the presentation of the HUD. I am not an expert in 3D and don't proclaim it to be 'there yet'. I do think that 3D is doable if the director stops the temptation of the 'power' closeup to showoff the 3D. So yeah, I think within constraints, 3D is doable. All film has constraints though, and those constraints are gradually eroded over time - such as night-time filming. Fifty years ago we would have heard Ebert proclaiming that it's impossible to film in natural light at night because film needs a certain amount of light, case closed, yet we've seen some amazing cameras arrive recently that can film at night using natural light. EDIT: Another example constraint is limiting yourself to a 'viewing box' - you can't turn your head for a full view of the scene in a movie. You're limited to a particular forced view. Despite this rather incredibly limiting constraint, film has managed to do some pretty amazing stuff.
tintin 16y ago
But the title states it will never work. But I think over time the software will enhance. So editing 3D movies will be just as easy as 2D movies. The part about focus of the eye is much more difficult to overcome. I think it has to do with resolution. And maybe a movie with a resolution of let's say 16.000 x 9.000 will give a better result because your eye can focus on details just like in real life.

krschultz 16y ago

Except that Clarke was referring to technology problems. I agree that with enough time, will, research, money etc many technical problems can be solved that were thought impossible. But constraints of human beings don't change much. If our brains are not wired to really get the current 3D format, then I think that is a pretty good indictment of the technology. The post isn't saying 3D movies won't exist someday, it is saying the current 3D can't work well because of a limitation in the human mind.

brudgers 16y ago
It's not just the viewers mind, it's the film editor's as well. Murch says, "Consequently, the editing of 3D films cannot be as rapid as for 2D films, because of this shifting of convergence." OK, so 3d films have to be edited differently - since when have constraints been an issue in art? But more importantly, the 600 million years of evolution argument doesn't hold the water he is putting in it. 600 million years of evolution did not prepare humans for traveling at 60 mph (much less controlling two tons of steel and insuring the safety of their children, while doing so), nor did it prepare humans for sitting in front of a bright light pecking at keyboards for hours and hours on end. Focusing on one point while converging on another may require practice, but so does operating an RC car. But the fact that a broad swath of the population can readily do it the very first time, speaks against it. Essentially, the case against 3d movies is an appeal to authority, and the article is really a rejection of the art form (3d is the rap music which is replacing their beloved rock and roll). That's not to say that there isn't a lot of schlock 3d - who really expected Green Hornet to be great cinema? - only that there is nothing inherently wrong with the medium.
- GrandMasterBirt 16y ago
  Except there are studies coming out about the harm to developing eyes and such. The point is that we're not meant for 3D. 3D though is a great way theaters try to "add value" to movies forcing us to pay more. Tangled was playing ONLY in 3D in theaters around me xept for like 1 showing. Guess which is the only showing I could take my daughter to. She would throw the glasses off in 15 minutes due to headache an thats the end of the movie for her. Was that worth an extra 10 bucks a ticket? Like any new tech, makers want to convince us this tech is the way to go. So study more, and give us the old school alternatives.

axod 16y ago

Surely 3d only makes any sense if you can move around the environment - a holo-deck. 3d movies, where we're all sat down in a fixed chair makes absolutely no sense. It's a gimmick that adds nothing - apart from headaches, crappy dark image and occasional crude "THIS IS 3D" in your face 'effects'. Sitting in a chair looking at a screen we already see 3D. We have all the cues necessary for our brains to reconstruct the scene. Didn't work in the 50s, didn't work in the 80s, didn't work in 2010s. I guess every generation has some people who think it's a great idea to try it again.

cryptoz 16y ago
> didn't work in 2010s Hah! You wish. For example, Avatar made more than $2,000,000,000. That's $2 billion. And a huge part of the Avatar revenue comes from its 3D sales. Maybe it didn't work for you, but it sure worked for most people who went to see it.
- Splines 16y ago
  But given a choice, would moviegoers pick the 2D version over the 3D version? In a universe where Avatar 3D never existed, would the 2D version alone have sold as much? Remember, they would have also been able to deliver the movie earlier (I don't know how much, but making a 3D movie can't be free - at least not yet). I'm reasonably certain that there are only a very small number of people who saw Avatar for the sole reason of it being 3D (in other words, if the 2D version was the only option, they would have skipped it).
  - dagw 16y ago
    I don't know anybody who went to see Avatar because they thought it would be a good movie. I also don't know anybody who went to see the 2D version, despite it playing at the same time and a few bucks cheaper. Everybody went because they wanted to see what could be done with the cutting edge in CGI technology plus insane amounts of money and to see what this 3D cinema thing was all about. I have as little evidence as you do, but I imagine that skipping the 3D version wouldn't have gotten the film anywhere near as much hype (and thus money).

relix 16y ago

Here's one way to solve it: include in the glasses dynamic focusing. We're already wearing glasses. I'm not sure how it would work, but the idea is to change the dioptry to the inverse of the distance of what's supposedly on the screen, so that our eyes need to focus at the same distance as the converging, effectively nullifying the inverse focus.

igrekel 16y ago
The focus issue is related to the focus of the camera that shot the film in the first place.
- relix 16y ago
  It is not. The eyes need to focus on the cinema screen, this has nothing to do with the camera. The problem is that the eyes need to keep the focus at the same distance, while the converging changes distance.
astrodust 16y ago
You can see how James Cameron paid careful attention to depth of field in Avatar. If the foreground or background are blurry in a 3D film it seems to cause confusion as you can't focus on these things even though, given it's 3D, you might think you should be able to. It's theoretically possible to produce some kind of hologram-like 3D that would side-step this problem.

stanleydrew 16y ago

"[EDITED in response to two comments: ...]" Why not respond to those comments in child comments rather than in the parent? Surely that makes the most sense? It's very difficult to read a discussion where I have to read responses to comments I haven't read yet.

gjm11 16y ago
Because those comments made me realise that what I originally wrote was (1) not quite right and (2) not perfectly clear. The extra paragraph I added, so far as I can tell, makes just as much sense if you haven't read those comments; I just wanted to acknowledge that it was other people's comments that led me to add it. Given the choice between a discussion where some bits have been clarified in the light of later comments, and a discussion where some bits are needlessly confusing or wrong, I choose the former. (I might take a different view if there had been lots of replies, which might have been invalidated as as result of the edit. But there weren't; just those two.)