Warner Bros. incurred the wrath of James Cameron once again with its handling of the 3D on this month’s “Harry Potter Part VII,” which the studio recently abandoned.
“They blamed it on quality but the inside report on that is that the shots just weren’t done,” he said during a session at the Blu-Con home media conference at the Beverly Hilton Tuesday morning to tout his Extended Collector’s Edition of “Avatar” coming on Nov. 16. “It’s the same studio making the same mistake (as ‘Clash of the Titans’).”
<More talking points of Cameron below following video highlights of Cameron’s comments:>
Cameron talking points:
- “Another stumble with the most recent ‘Harry Potter’ movie from the same studio, making the same mistake, except really getting spanked for it now because they didn’t get the film done. They announced it in 3D; they threw a bunch of money at it, trying to convert it to 3D in post-production and it simply didn’t work. They just didn’t get it done.”
- “I maintain that you can’t do a 2D-to-3D conversion of a two-hour movie with high quality in a few weeks like they tried to do with ‘Clash of the Titans‘.”
- “They’ve tried to shoehorn this entirely new process into post-production without opening up the schedule of the movie.”
- Realistically, studios should build in additional six-months into post-production schedule for 3D conversion of a major release, and that six months of expense should be the comparison factor to determine whether to budget for 3D shooting or 3D conversion in post-production.
- “My personal philosophy is that post-conversion should be used for one thing, and one thing only…”: library titles.
- “3D shouldn’t be forced down from the studio onto the filmmaker by being tacked on or slapped on as a layer after the fact. It should be an integral part of creating cinematic art.”
- Live 3D TV programming such as sports and concerts will be the primary drive of home 3D.
- “I haven’t seen anything yet that didn’t benefit from 3D. I hate golf, but I watched the Masters Tournament in 3D and it was great.”
- Launch of 3D is a bit like the launch of HiDef. Now it’s ubiquitous.
- Color came to movies in the late 1930s but only selected movies were produced in color for decades until the mid-1960s when competition from color TV sparked all movies to be made in color.
— By Scott Hettrick
Over a year ago and some 8000 visits later..this now infamous document still holds true..http://www.slideshare.net/clydd/2dto3dconvertedmovies
the reason is, I just (finally) saw Piranha 3D. Why or why can’t they just shoot the damn thing in proper 3D? If it wasn’t a TnA movie, I’d call it a horrible “Stereo 3D” attempt.
It was supposedly shot 2D for 3D, and even had one of the best stereoscopic consultants, the much respected Lenny Lipton as supervisor and advisor, and maybe that’s just the reason it got saved from disaster.
Scenes such as in the beginning, the mother walking out of her son’s room and into a “flat” wallpaper like passageway, or scenes such as the “sculpted” sand at the child feet as she enters the water on the island… all show that 2D to 3D conversions should be buried once and for all.
Like Cameron says, it should be only for older masterpieces.
Just as I would enjoy going to an art class and watching young “,masters” hone their skills on replicating the works of the great masters (Renoir, VanGogh)… I would thus enjoy an older classic converted.
I will still give leeway for using 2D to 3D for what it is.. a VFX tool to be used on some scenes in a movie, not as a blanket conversion policy for a shot for and framed for 2D movie, because of an incompetent Director and DP who does not want to take the time to learn a new “language” yet wants to pretend to speak it fluently!
Regards
Clyde
While Piranha wasn’t perfect by a long shot, the cinemascope presentation I saw at the 3d film festival was easily the best stereoscopic conversion to date. Since that was compared with the atrociously converted Last Airbender and Clash of the Titans films, that isn’t saying *that* much, but still this industry is in its infancy and things will only get better going forward.
For example, I just saw some internal tests by a company called inner-D. This new work was as close to something really shot in 3d as I have seen to date. And honestly, I preferred the decisions they made regarding depth, respecting the source material, etc. In other words, there was real artistry in their conversion when compared to everything else out there today.
Those tests didn’t suffer from the crazy surreal CGI look I just saw in the new NARNIA3 trailer. Apparently, the same company that did this horrible fake-looking work was also working on the new Harry Potter. If that’s what Warner Brothers saw, no wonder they decided to release in 2d. Eeesh!
The best source is clearly one rendered for 3d as CGI, whether it be HOW TO TRAIN A DRAGON or AVATAR. But I suspect that stereoscopic conversion will come of age over the next year.
Bravo to James Cameron for blasting the rotten 3D that is being foisted off on a public that doesn’t remember real 3D. But he should have gone further. He appears to be saying that converting a 2D film to 3D takes a lot of time and resources. In actual fact it can’t be done at all.
Remember when stereo recording had just come out, and record companies were “re-channeling” their old mono tapes for “stereo”? And charging $1 extra for the privilege (ring a bell?). Public protests finally put a stop to fake stereo. Here’s hoping protests will do the same to fake 3D.
To Gerard Rejskind:
I could’nt have said it better myself!!
There is TRUE 3D and FAKE(simulated) 3D!
Obsviously Avatar is TRUE 3D!