Although I completely understand Jeffery’s point of view, there are many examples in film history where technological gimmicks were marketed to the masses and used by a spare few films and eventually became integrated into the film makers canon of tools to tell a story.
Now believe it or not I wrote a good two pages about this and brought up Cinemascope and it’s history and marketing to boost sagging ticket sales due to TV and Sound Design and Walter Murch, and Coppola building a specially designed theater in the middle of Kansas that would show nothing but “Apocalypse Now” for 20 years, but I lost it all (i’m blaming the horrible work computers I am on and IE 6, which should have become extinct from all computers by now) So instead you get less passionate but better researched articles from Rotten Tomatoes and Time Magazine.
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/avatar/news/1859528/the_gimmicks_that_changed_cinema_part_1
http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1888264,00.html
Avatar
What I will rewrite is my experience with Avatar. For me the 3D aspects drew me into the world James Cameron created which was an amazing feat considering how mediocre the story was. A basic rehashing of “Dances with Wolves” and “Fern Gully” Never did I feel that any item in the frame was thrown at me to show off the 3D effect. Instead I felt it was a valuable tool that created a rich environment that is like nothing I have ever seen before.
Now it wasn’t perfect, 3D suffers from it’s long history of it being used for it’s own sake and never to further the story. For me Avatar without the 3D would have been a suffering bore of a film with flat characters and generic story. 3D was what brought me into a new world that was worth exploring.
The fact is 3D is here to stay and there will be better film makers who use this tool and create amazing works of art that we could not phantom seeing in 2D. Technology in film making has always had those who abuse it…cough cough George Lucas and those who use it to their advantage to tell a story that wouldn’t have been possible without it’s use…Peter Jackson.
Join the Discussion!
3D is the future because higher ticket prices drive up box office grosses. That said, it’s unlikely we’ll see a live action comedy in 3D. It’s the same reason dramas in the 50s were all in black and white.