I am a little bit late on the scene as regards Jeffrey’s and Brian’s exchange about 3D but owing to a busy schedule I just managed to catch Avatar a few days ago.
I have to say I find merit in what Brian says about the 3D in Avatar saving it from a story that left much to be desired but for the most part I have to come down on the side of Jeffrey in that I believe 3D will always be more of a gimick than an artistic device. And honestly, is it really an endorsement for a filmmaking technique to say that it distracted you from a woefully lacking story, certainly this is no endorsement of the film itself.
I will say that the 3D affect was more sucessful with the animated parts of the film than the live action and as I spent the majority of the film whiping the glasses on and off when I found something I liked or did not like regarding the success of the use of 3D I can say that the animated parts seemed to have been animated as 3D more than made 3D by the glasses.
Avatar itself fell victim to the cheesy gimmicky use of 3D that I remember back in the days of red and green glasses when I wanted an old Vincent Price classic (I think it might have been The House of Wax).
This gimmicky use that I refer to is when something comes out in your face and appears to almost hit you in the nose. The reason I find this effect so annoying is that it defeats what I see as the reason for 3D, to look more realistic.
The most successful use of the 3D in the film, I found was when there was ash falling after the big explosion and taking down of the HomeTree. The reason for this is that it looked so beatiful, like the real snow I remember seeing year after year when I lived in Michigan in the ’90′s.
It connected me to something I remember and associated a pleasant emotion with. And as a director, this is the aspect of filmmaking that I feel is the core of filmmaking itself.
In contrast, I have never had a blurry gun whipped past the end of my nose.
And that blurry aspect brings me to my next point. Depth of field and 3D. It seemed to me that there were times when the 3D effects technically failed with objects looking fuzzy and blurry in a way that offends the senses and looks less realistic than 2D film rather than more realistic.
I took note of when this occured, it was not hard because each time it happened I fell sick to my stomach, and I finally realised that it was a shallow depth of field that caused this offensive artifact.
It was especially nauseating, and I do mean this literally, not figuratively, when something was blurred in the foreground owing to shallow depth of field. Blurred objects in the background still looked unsuccessful but caused less of a physical response.
This may also be why the animated parts were more successful because they were more ‘physically’ 2D, using optical illusion to create a 3D effect, and as stated above, relied less on the 3D effect itself.
I think that 3D, if used only in the ways that it was successful in Avatar could be amazing for film if used in small does, it is not right for every film by far. But I think in combination with shallow depth of field it should be avoided until the technology improves.
Unfortunatley from the looks of the trailer I saw for the upcoming release of a new remake of the 1978 monster film, Pirannah, 3D is destined to banish itself to gimmicktry.
Shame.
In the end, what makes a film good is the story, and use of 3D whether successfuly used or not, will never make up for a recycled story.
