There was a time when I thought it would be a sign of success when reviewers no longer bothered to mention the 3D in a movie — that it would mean 3D had become so ubiquitous and accepted as a part of the process that it would cease to be mentioned in the same way that HiDef is not mentioned much in reviews of TV shows anymore.

Scott Hettrick

Well, 3D is hardly being mentioned anymore but I fear it’s because it is barely worth mentioning. In fact, that’s exactly what one of the few reviewers said who even noted 3D at all in his analysis of “Megamind,” that the 3D was so minimal that it wasn’t notable.

While some filmmakers may take that as a compliment, thinking that it means the audience (and reviewers) may be enjoying the experience but no longer perceiving it as distinctive, I think it’s a very concerning trend. Particularly in light of the fact that my local AMC theater just raised the 3D ticket price premium to $4 for RealD 3D presentations; the IMAX premium is $6. (Two-thirds of “Megamind’s” $46 mil. opening weekend was from 3D showings, including more than 6% of the overall from IMAX 3D screens.)

A couple months ago when the 3D premium was only $3, a friend of mine went to see “Toy Story 3″ in 3D. It was his first 3D movie experience, and last. He said he spent the whole time taking his glasses on and off trying to distinguish the difference. He seldom noticed a difference. The only distinction he noticed was that the picture was much brighter without the glasses, which he prefered. So, he asked, why should he pay $3 more for a darker image that offered such minimal 3D depth?

Why indeed. Even moreso now that the difference in ticket price is $4 or $6.

The 3D in “Megamind” is better than some but not even as noticeable as DreamWorks recent “How to Train Your Dragon.” And that wasn’t particularly impactful either. “Megamind” is an amusing enough film but nothing especially noteworthy. The trailers for upcoming 3D films like “Yogi Bear” looked even less compelling, not only to me but to others in the theater who were literally yawning.
Reviewers generally dismissed the 3D in recent films like “Jackass 3D” and “Saw 3D,” not to mention “Pirahna 3D.”

Not long ago 3D alone was reason enough to go to a movie you might otherwise not be inclined to see. I’m afraid the conservative approach to pushing 3D off the screen into the audience is now creating a stigma about 3D that could soon cause audiences to specifically stay away from the 3D version of a movie in order to save $4 to $6 per ticket and enjoy a superior picture quality.

– By Scott Hettrick

Another week and another 3D movie tops the weekend boxoffice charts. This time it was Lionsgate’s “Saw 3D,” the seventh and supposedly final episode in the series, with an estimated $24.2 million. That’s $10 million more than “Saw VI” and represents nearly the entire run of “Saw VI,” despite some pretty justifiably poor reviews of the newest installment in terms of content and 3D effects.

Scott Hettrick

Meanwhile, another 3D movie, “Jackass 3D,” picked up another $8.4 million on a slow weekend to top the $100 million mark.
Both movies enjoyed a staggering 90-plus percentage of their grosses from 3D showings, with “Saw 3D” at a whopping 92% due to 2,100 of its 2,808 overall locations being 3D venues, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
That’s two of the last three weekends with a 3D movie atop the rankings, and the next two weeks are likely to bring two more with DreamWorks Animation’s “Megamind” opening this Friday, Nov. 5, followed by Disney’s “Tangled” Nov. 12.

Critics complained about the poor quality story in this one but I have never been the target audience for this long-running and succcessful franchise so I won’t comment on that.
But I will comment on yet another disappointing 3D experience, which was highlighted by the 3D Lionsgate logo at the beginning and went quickly downhill from there. This may be the first, or at least worst example of blurriness I’ve seen yet, right from the start when the camera was panning or moving in any direction.
It was extra disappointing because the trailers have made it appear as if it would be well-done 3D, not unlike the most “Final Destination” last year. But even the gratuitous and obvious gore and splatter shots were unimpressive.

– by Scott Hettrick

Remember when the first HiDef TVs came out in the 1990s and one of the most instantly eye-pleasing elements was the much wider screen that allowed us to see so much more of whatever was being shown — more of the NFL football field in those first CBS HiDef broadcasts, more of Jay Leno’s set and audience on “The Tonight Show,” one of the earliest network programs in HiDef.

Scott Hettrick

Nearly all of that additional visual real estate, and perhaps even more, appears to have been slowly and subliminally hijacked by network marketing and promotional people. It seems like the area of the screen featuring the program itself is often smaller than the image that filled my old analog set.

It’s getting harder and harder to enjoy a primetime TV series without being visually assaulted with an array of increasingly larger and more prominent pop-up promotions for upcoming shows. (Another advantage of watching TV series and movies on Blu-ray Disc, which have no pop-ups and no forced commercials that are nearly impossible to avoid online.)

I feel like I’m trying to monitor all the lights and digital readouts in an airline cockpit when I watch any sporting event these days, from football to NASCAR, with all manner of data and colorful updates flickering and scrolling horizontally across the top and bottom of the screen and even vertically on the sides.

President Obama somewhere amidst the on-screen graphical clutter during a CNBC Town Hall program

But the worst are the news channels, especially CNBC during stock trading. The tickers, alerts, program promos, network branding, HD logos, and headlines are flying in all directions all over the screen to the point that only about 60% of the actual program is visible vertically and less than 75% horizontally.

Even President Obama didn’t compel CNBC to push any of the clutter off the screen during his recent Town Hall presentation. Flanked by a double-line of fast-moving stock tickers on the bottom of the screen, market sector updates on the right side, revolving market index prices across the top, a much bigger visual presentation in the middle of the screen duplicating the same second-by-second market index movements flashing on the top of the screen, and two giant graphics of Presidential seals bookending a caption of “A CNBC Town Hall Event with President Obama” that was topped with the title “Investing in America” that crept most of the way up the tie of the President (and also duplicated from an even bolder version of that same title a few inches to the right), there was precious little room for Obama himself.

No matter, there was still room to squeeze in another little graphic near his face noting the event was “Live,” in addition to cramming in a promo for the show to follow the President’s Town Hall, and two more graphics letting you know, in case you couldn’t see his face, that the program you were trying to watch featured “President Obama.”

– By Scott Hettrick

HBO is planning to launch a 3D on-demand channel early next year.

The channel would feature 3D movies such as three that Warner Home Video recently announced for 3D Blu-ray, “Clash of the Titans,” “The Polar Express,” and “Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore” for a per-play fee.

Scott Hettrick

There has been no official announcement and no launch date has been set but an HBO spokesperson confirmed the plans when I explained that a source had provided me the information.

A source also told me that HBO was going to present the world premiere of a 3D version of “Inception” from sister studio Warner Bros., or possibly the home debut of the 3D movie after a limited 3D theatrical re-release.
A second source told me he had also heard that “Inception” was being considered for a 3D conversion but although the strategy would provide a huge launch marketing coup for the new HBO 3D channel, I have not been able to substantiate this plan with anyone connected with filmmaker Christopher Nolan or the studio directly.

Both the HBO spokesperson and a spokesperson for Warner Bros. Pictures say there are no such 3D plans for “Inception” at this time.

Although Nolan is a big fan of his movies being presented in IMAX, it was reported that he resisted efforts by Warner earlier this year to convert “Inception” to 3D in time for its initial theatrical release in theaters.
That was shortly after Warner’s “Clash of the Titans” was being bashed by critics and filmmakers for a poor quality after-the-fact conversion that was rushed at the last minute.

Even without 3D, “Inception” is the fifth biggest movie of the year with nearly $300 million in domestic grosses alone, and is one of only three of the top eight movies this year that was not released in 3D. “Clash of the Titans” is tenth with $163 million, according to BoxOfficeMojo.com.

Personal and artistic preferences aside, most filmmakers say that properly converting a movie to 3D requires nearly as much time by the filmmaker to consider every shot as shooting the movie in the first place.
Even if he was interested in a conversion, Nolan has a lot on his plate at the moment. He is co-writing the story for a new Superman movie and is writing and directing the third Batman movie, both of which are in pre-production and scheduled for release in 2012.

Prevailing opinions at Warner are that Nolan will not enjoy the luxury of taking a pass on 3D for the new Batman movie, which will surely be set up for 3D from the beginning.

– By Scott Hettrick

Disney is quietly converting “The Lion King” to 3D and readying a double-barrel blitz of the 3D version of “Beauty and the Beast” in theaters and on Blu-ray next year, according to a knowledgeable source.

Scott Hettrick

Meanwhile, the first Blu-ray edition of “Beauty and the Beast” was announced for Oct. 5, but no 3D version there either. (The studio has been a little unpredictable with its 3D Blu-ray strategy — announcing a 3D Blu-ray version of “A Christmas Carol” for Nov. 16 but no 3D version of “Toy Story 3″ with the Nov. 2 Blu-ray of that title and no 3D versions of any of Disney’s other 3D titles from “Chicken Little” and “Nightmare Before Christmas” to “Bolt” or “Up.”)

The unofficial word from the studio about the theatrical delay was that Disney wanted to rerelease it during the movie’s 20th anniversary year in 2011. Insiders say that worked out conveniently to give the non-3D Blu-ray release this fall enough of a sales window before the movie came out in theaters next year, which will then set up a holiday 2011 release of the 3D Blu-ray version of the movie. It’s not unlike Fox’s even tighter windowing of “Avatar,” first on Blu-ray April 22 and then a theatrical rerelease in late August to be followed by an as yet unannounced “Avatar” special edition Blu-ray in November (and a quiet 3D Blu-ray release on Dec. 1 exclusively with purchase of Panasonic equipment) and an eventual retail release of the “Avatar” 3D Blu-ray in 2011.

Meanwhile, it’s encouraging to hear that Disney still feels strongly enough about 3D and converting its library titles that it has set to work on the studio’s modern-day masterpiece, “The Lion King.”

– By Scott Hettrick

Early this year media pundits were declaring that 3D was revolutionizing the industry.
Now those same people are declaring that it was only a novelty that is already fizzling out.

Scott Hettrick

As usual, neither is true and both are exaggerations and over-simplifications of the natural evolution of the format. 3D is not dying; it is maturing.

When the first couple of movies with sound and the first couple of movies in color bombed at the box-office, those prone to superficial assessments back then no doubt dismissed sound and color as merely passing fads. It’s as if once a new technology is introduced, every film using that technology must be a major hit or the technology will be blamed rather than the movie. That’s as ludicrous as pinning the disappointing performance of “Charlie St. Cloud” on the fact that it was filmed in traditional 2D instead of 3D.

And how come those journalists who were quick to point out that the 3D percentages of box-office grosses have dropped from 71% on “Avatar’ and two-thirds of movies like “Alice in Wonderland” to 45% of “Despicable Me,” didn’t use that same barometer when claiming that the weak opening of “Step Up 3D” confirmed that the plug is being pulled on 3D. In fact, more than 80% of the grosses for “Step Up 3D” were from 3D ticket sales.

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Once again, the truth is too nuanced or not sexy enough for quick-hit pundits looking for a headline, a quote, and a booking on a TV program. Only responsible and knowledgeable reporters like Carl DiOrio at The Hollywood Reporter took the time and responsibility to note that there are many factors contributing to the decline in overall boxoffice for 3D movies and the percentage each generates from 3D. First and foremost is the limited number of 3D screens which becomes a critical issue when multiple 3D movies are released at once, as is happening now with four major studio films released in the past six weeks, and all those shortly after the summer’s biggest 3D movie, “Toy Story 3″ was still in theaters. (By the way, TS3 is now the biggest animated film in history and 56% of those grosses came from 3D, according to Paul Dergarabedian of Hollywood.com Box-Office — you want to dismiss 56% as being small when that represents more than half a billion dollars?)

Do the math: the fewer available 3D theaters, the smaller the percentage of your overall gross.

Further, as I pointed out in an interview with Patrick Seitz of Investor’s Business Daily, the loss of IMAX in the equation has been a major factor. The chain that consistently accounts for a disproportionate percentage of all 3D business of any release (7% – 12%) due to its lure of the most rabid movie aficionados and its higher-than-average ticket prices, has not showcased any of the last four 3D releases and was contractually bound to bail out on “Toy Story 3″ after only two weeks in order to present “Inception.” 3D represented 59% of TS3′s record-setting opening weekend grosses when IMAX was in the mix.

The bottom line, as I told Patrick, is that 3D has already become mainstream to the point that people are continuing to show that they will pay a premium price to see quality 3D, as was clearly evident with more than 80% choosing to see the very good 3D in “Step Up 3D.” And I have no doubt that the 3D percentage for upcoming films such as “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1” and “Tron: Legacy” will be back up near two-thirds or more. But moviegoers will not pay extra to see poor quality 3D; they won’t go see a movie they wouldn’t otherwise see just because it’s in 3D; and they won’t wait to see a movie in 3D if it is not available in 3D when they want to see it but it is showing in 2D.

And none of that has anything to do with the consumer losing interest in 3D technology. Just the opposite; it means that a 3D movie is being judged by the same standards as any other movie.

And that’s how it should be.

– By Scott Hettrick