Journey To The Center of the Earth Poster“Journey to the Center of the Earth” again used some version of the Pace cameras and on the whole was reasonably well aligned and binocularly symmetrical, with minimal 3D gimmickry (in fact- as often with 3D films-some people complained about the lack of out of screen effects). Though clearly shot on a modest budget with (by current standards) limited special effects, I found it enjoyable and pleasant to look at. Just don’t go expecting to see a $100M epic.

Dolphins and Whales PosterThe IMAX film “Dolphins and Whales 3D” by the Montello brothers was a very concise and moving (for those with sufficient higher nervous function to be affected by these giants, most of whom are likely doomed) documentary 3D catalog of a dozen or so species of Cetaceans. It was shot with a series of seven prototype underwater stereo cameras over a period of years under extremely trying conditions in many locations. Excellent 3D in most shots, which is amazing considering the filming conditions. Actually one should just say “large format film” since IMAX itself does not make films and everyone now releases the films in various formats all the way from IMAX film and digital down to DVD, unless they have an exclusive with IMAX.

3D Sun PosterAnother IMAX release, “3D SUN” by Minnesota filmmakers Melissa Butts and Barry Kimm was a short scientific documentary based on NASA’s stereoscopic pair of solar satellites. We saw the version narrated mostly by the scientists rather than a professional narrator, but it hardly matters as the stunning stereo views of solar activity dominate the film. Of course I wanted details on the stereo base, distance, imagers, etc. but these were not at hand.

Poster for Bolt in 3DDisney presented their animated film “Bolt” which met the new high standards for both stereo and animation. I am not an animation fan and normally you would have to tie me to the seat and glue my eyelids open to make me watch a 90 minute cartoon about a lost dog, but the 3D was good and it moved along so it was actually much more enjoyable than most Hollywood fare. The film’s failure to use the audience space (i.e., to pop things out of the screen) was commented on after the film and DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg said that most of his filmmakers felt this was good practice and he let them do as they liked. Most people I talked to felt this was a mistake and audiences demand to see at least some out of the screen effects for this kind of film. I think they are correct, though I have said many times that ideally 3D should not call attention to itself any more than color, contrast, resolution or smooth realistic motion.

Call of the Wild PosterThe modest budget indie "Call of the Wild", loosely based on Jack London's novel, shot by stereographer Jason Goodman with his 21st Century 3D camera rig, lacked the image quality of the Pace and 3ality cameras (though this was the world premiere and later image processing might fix this to some extent) but it was very well aligned on most shots. A few shots had excessive horizontal parallax but the overall impression was quite good and it should do well as a family film in both 2D and 3D.

. Fly Me to the Moon PosterBen Stassen's independent (nWave Productions) feature length animation "Fly Me to the Moon" was easily the equal in quality to products from the major studios--an amazing feat, but one which they have now pulled off several times with their previous IMAX releases (several available on field sequential DVD). Overall it was excellent, but they felt it necessary to use a lot of horizontal parallax in many shots, which caused eyestrain and will produce ghosting in most systems. As usual, I confirmed my impressions with judicious questioning of other attendees. In Malaysia a year ago, I saw a short version of this film that is shown with NASA’s touring space show and it was very well projected.

Jeffrey Katzenberg (the K in DreamWorks SKG) brought a short clip from his upcoming animated feature "Monsters and Aliens." Nice animation, but after a couple minutes I started to get a bad headache, which I told him about in the Q&A afterwards. It was the film and not some personal anomaly, since others agreed and I did not experience any serious eyestrain with as many as six consecutive full length 3D films on the other days, so I am sure it was major error in the image. This has been the nearly universal practice in 3D film and video--nobody who knows 3D well is overseeing the project. If there is a stereographer at all they usually have modest experience, they are not there from planning thru screening, and nobody has to listen to them anyway. Really too bad but I doubt it will change.

One thing I noticed in nearly every film—even several animated ones—was incorrect stereo windows in many shots. This means the vertical edges of the screen do not match, giving a black edge in one or both eyes which can be quite annoying. This is due to the way the images are filmed and/or aligned for parallax control in editing (though it can be due to projector misalignment in dual systems). I had to deal with this constantly some 20 years ago when I reduced horizontal parallax of 3D films I transferred to video. The simple solution is to blow up the entire frame of that shot (or the whole film) by a few %. At least some of the filmmakers did not know about this easy fix or perhaps they did not see it as a problem. I am reminded of some glaring stereo window errors in Cameron’s otherwise superb “Ghosts of the Abyss.”

Next Up: 3DX Singapore Part 4

Back to: 3DX Singapore, Part 2