Roger Ebert's 3D Lies

http://www.digitalcinemareport.com/node/1718

 

Submitted by Nick Dager on Fri, 05/14/2010 - 15:52.

 

You can hardly turn around these days without finding someone with an opinion – and usually a loudly expressed opinion – about stereoscopic 3D. The latest and most notable comes from respected film critic Roger Ebert who wrote an opinion piece in Newsweek magazine entitled Why I Hate 3D (and You Should, too). He makes nine key points in the article and calls them heresies; I call them lies because almost all of them are inaccurate or irrelevant at best and, at worst, untrue.

I suppose what upsets me the most about his position is the fact that he is a person I admire and respect; he’s one of my go-to critics when I want insights about a movie. His depth of knowledge about films and film history is sometimes breathtaking. He seems to have seen every movie ever made, at least once. I enjoy his writing about film and have for many years.

Still, it should come as no surprise that Ebert has such strong feelings about 3D. He has always been a film purist and has only recently – and begrudgingly – apparently started to embrace the notion of digital cinema in any form. What I find particularly frustrating is that by the time Ebert concludes his rant he, in essence, acknowledges he may be wrong about the whole thing. Here are his nine points and my thoughts on each:

It’s the waste of a dimension.

He’s, of course, correct when he writes, “our minds use the principle of perspective to provide the third dimension.” But he’s wrong when he says, “adding one [dimension] artificially can make the illusion less convincing.” To take just one example, I’ve seen Up in both 3D and 2D versions and the sensations that movie evokes, especially in the mountains and when the house flies through the sky are much more powerful in 3D.

It adds nothing to the experience.

“Recall the greatest movie going experiences of your lifetime,” he says and he asks, “Did they need 3D?”  This strikes me as irrelevant and, to a certain extent, intellectually dishonest. The answer to his question is, obviously, no, but that’s only because the tools to create something worth watching are relatively new. I count U23D, Up and Avatar among the favorite movie going experiences of my life and digital 3D added immeasurably to them all.

It can be a distraction.

Ebert writes, “In 2D, directors have often used a difference in focus to call attention to the foreground or the background. In 3D the technology itself seems to suggest that the whole depth of field be in sharp focus.” This is true as far as it goes but, to me, he seems to be talking only about 3D in the hands of people who don’t understand how to use it. Remember how poorly sound was used in early talking pictures? Part of that was the fault of the technology but much of it has to do with the fact that filmmakers were finding their ways. As the creative community embraces 3D and learns its nuances any so-called distractions will be gone.

It can create nausea and headaches.

Ebert quotes several authorities that briefly explain how many people become physically ill when they try to watch 3D. Of all the points Ebert makes, this one is the most valid, although other credible authorities such as professor Martin Banks of the University of California at Berkeley, who has studied this issue for years, believes many of those people may over time adjust. Again, these are the early days of digital 3D. Everyone involved has a lot to learn. This includes filmmakers and exhibitors but it is entirely possible that some people may never be able to enjoy the 3D experience.

Have you noticed that 3D seems a little dim?

Again, a reasonable point but it fails to mention the fact that filmmakers, exhibitors and manufacturers are all well aware of the problem and are aggressively addressing it. I believe this problem will be solved by a combination of technique and technology and will not be with us long.

There’s money to be made in selling digital projectors.

Ebert boils down the last decade of digital cinema development into a single sentence: “There was initial opposition from exhibitors to the huge cost of new equipment and infighting about whether studios would help share these expenses.”  This is fair as far as it goes but doesn’t begin to offer a coherent idea of all the serious and complex issues that are finally essentially resolved. It’s clear from his thoughts on this point that Ebert knows next to nothing about the business of exhibition. Ebert, like all major film critics, usually sees a movie in a screening room where the attention to detail, for obvious reasons, is unsurpassed.  Fair enough. But the average person, until a few years ago, was often to subjected to a film print that was scratched and smudged and sometimes all but unwatchable. Digital projectors change that and audiences have taken notice.

Theatres slap on a surcharge of $5 to $7.50 for 3D.

Ebert asks, “Are surcharges here to stay, or will they be dropped after the projectors are paid off?” No one knows the final answers to that question but, in the meantime, when given the option and despite an often-significant surcharge, audiences continue to choose 3D in big numbers. This was true in 2005 with Chicken Little and it remains true almost five years later.

I cannot imagine a serious drama, such as Up in the Air or The Hurt Locker in 3D.

For me it’s ironic that he chose The Hurt Locker because, of all the movies in the running for major awards last year, it was the one I wished had been shot in 3D. I can only begin to imagine the added tension of the bomb sequences in 3D. And Ebert himself concedes that, in the right hands, 3D can and will be a powerful creative tool.

He wrote, “I once said I might become reconciled to 3D if a director like Martin Scorsese ever used the format. I thought I was safe. Then Scorsese announced that his 2011 film The Invention of Hugo Cabret, about an orphan and a robot, will be in 3D. Well, Scorsese knows film, and he has a voluptuous love of its possibilities. I expect he will adapt 3D to his needs. And my hero, Werner Herzog, is using 3D to film prehistoric cave paintings in France, to better show off the concavities of the ancient caves. He told me that nothing will ‘approach’ the audience, and his film will stay behind the plane of the screen. In other words, nothing will hurtle at the audience, and 3D will allow us the illusion of being able to occupy the space with the paintings and look into them, experiencing them as a prehistoric artist standing in the cavern might have.”

Whenever Hollywood has felt threatened, it has turned to technology: sound, color, widescreen, Cinerama, 3D, stereophonic sound, and now 3D again.

Here, too, he presents half-truths. While it’s true that Hollywood has sometimes acted when threatened, that is only part of the story. As with any competitive endeavor, Hollywood has always strived to make its product better and many times, as with this one, the main threat came from other movie studios. Of the examples he listed, the shift to sound and the shift to color come closest to mirroring the current shift to 3D and neither of those were simply responses to an outside threat. When the studios made the switch to sound, the movies were already a widely popular form of entertainment and, although radio broadcasts were gaining ground, movies were still king. And while it’s true that the studios shifted to color almost exclusively by the late Sixties to combat the success of television, many movies had been in color for almost half a century.

Ebert confuses me when he says, after all the ranting, that he isn’t actually opposed to 3D as a creative option. His anger isn’t directed at technology but, instead, is focused on the current generation of studio executives who, in Ebert’s view, care more about money than movies. Perhaps, but he seems to be suggesting that Walt Disney, to name just one famous studio head, didn’t enjoy his financial success.

Ebert concludes by writing, “Hollywood needs a projection system that is suitable for all kinds of films—every film—and is hands-down better than anything audiences have ever seen.”