Walter Murch tells why he thinks 3D movies need to be better

http://www.today3d.com/2011/01/walter-murch-tells-why-he-thinks-3d.html

 

Jan 25, 2011

 

I found this article extremely interesting. Walter Murch does point to some fundamental, biological reasons why 3D experiences are problematic to some people. I reject the conclusions, yet every 3D artist should be aware of these problems in order to make sure that 3D quality is kept. 3D quality is the only way to go.

 

Writing to film reviewer Roger Ebert, who posted the e-mail Sunday on his Chicago Sun-Times blog, movie sound editor Walter Murch outlined a number of 3D's downfalls. First off, 3D movies appear a bit darker (about an F-stop, for you photographers out there) than their 2D cousins, Murch said, and horizontal movements cause more noticeable strobing or jerkiness around the edges of objects.

The biggest problem with 3D, though, is the "convergence/focus" issue. A couple of the other issues -- darkness and "smallness" -- are at least theoretically solvable. But the deeper problem is that the audience must focus their eyes at the plane of the screen -- say it is 80 feet away. This is constant no matter what.

 

But their eyes must converge at perhaps 10 feet away, then 60 feet, then 120 feet, and so on, depending on what the illusion is. So 3D films require us to focus at one distance and converge at another. And 600 million years of evolution has never presented this problem before. All living things with eyes have always focussed (sic) and converged at the same point.

 

In his e-mail, Murch uses the example of a salt shaker sitting on a table in front of a window. Imagine you are sitting in front of the table and focus your eyes on the salt shaker -- both of your eyes converge on the salt shaker and focus on the same spot. Now imagine you shift your focus out the window, looking at, say, Mount Rainier -- your eyes converge and focus off in the distance.

But if you are watching a 3D movie of the salt shaker, the salt shaker may appear closer to you than the movie screen, but your eyes must still focus on the screen. Your eyes are converging and focusing at different distances.

 

Murch continued:

We can do this. 3D films would not work if we couldn't. But it is like tapping your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time, difficult. So the "CPU" of our perceptual brain has to work extra hard, which is why after 20 minutes or so many people get headaches. They are doing something that 600 million years of evolution never prepared them for. This is a deep problem, which no amount of technical tweaking can fix. Nothing will fix it short of producing true "holographic" images.

 

That's a chief reason why many people get headaches while watching 3D movies -- their eyes and brains are working in overdrive, trying to make sense of what they're seeing, Murch said. Even if you've seen a 3D movie but didn't get a headache, you might know what he's talking about; it can take several minutes for your eyes and brain to adjust to the unnatural combination of mismatched perspective and focus.

 

A recent survey by the American Optometric Association found that 3D movies make as many as one in four people sick or uncomfortable. Headaches, blurred vision and nausea are common issues.

Nintendo also recently issued a warning that children 6 and younger shouldn't play the company's new 3DS handheld video-game system, saying the 3D could harm vision development. After that December announcement, eye specialists told The New York Times that Nintendo's warning may have been excessively cautious.

 

"The fact you'd watch 3-D in a theater or a video game should have zero deleterious impact whatsoever," Dr. Lawrence Tychsen, pediatrics and ophthalmology professor at Washington University in St. Louis, told the newspaper.

 

Regardless, Ebert and Murch question the longevity of 3D as a Hollywood moneymaker. On Sunday, Ebert wrote that Murch's observation "ends, as far as I am concerned, the discussion about 3D."

Murch has three Academy Awards under his belt: one for mixing sound in "Apocalypse Now," and one each for sound editing and sound mixing in "The English Patient." He also has worked on one 3D movie, "Captain EO," a space opera starring Michael Jackson that was shown at Disneyland during the 1980s and '90s (with a revival in last year after Jackson's death in 2009