The Amazing Spider-Man 3D Critique

[Sindre Saebo]

Just thought I'd chime in here. I saw the film in 3D a couple of days ago, and agree with you Clyde, that the narrative scenes were flat. I took off my glasses several times to see if there was any 3D at all, and would have liked more roundness in the actors' faces and more room volume in the dialogue scenes. I accepted it as the filmmakers' choice to separate the two worlds of Spiderman, but thought they didn't have to dial the 3D that much down. I also noticed that the director or DP obviously were used to compose shots for 2D. Many of the shots had foreground objects placed close to the camera, which would have worked fine in 2D, but unfortunately forced them to reduce the IA to an absolute minimum to make it work in 3D. Interestingly, I found the converted Avengers to have more shots that seemed planned for 3D than the native 3D Spiderman movie that was still using the 2D filmmaking vocabulary.

Sindre Saebo
Creative Director, ekteTV
Oslo, Norway

[Clyde DeSouza]

Thank you all for your participation in this discussion.
I think it's a tie (although the against shows 9 votes v/s the 8 "for", my vote does not count)

I'm a bit surprised, with the 8 votes of "for", but it's a good learning experience, that professionals in the business, I'd assume many who voted are actually using Cameras (ReD or other brands), and feel that the 3D was good enough on the narrative scenes.

As I mentioned, this kind of data is interesting to me, as it shows the divide between the older generation of stereographer, the newer gen, and also audience expectations from 3D.

I do hope more vote, either for or against, so the data gets more helpful.

Meanwhile, Sindre above put it well, particularly
>>I also noticed that the director or DP obviously were used to compose shots for 2D

To me, this is also where the Stereographer and DP are to blame. The Director (Auteur) maybe Stereoscopically illeterate, that's why the Stereographer is on board, and from the looks of it the DP didnt expand his/her vocabulary either.

Now all this is still fine, but what I object to (quite vocally) is the argument that this is what a, "Subtle 3D" look is.
It is NOT!

There is a big difference between using a carefully planned depth script to vary the depth (mood?) in scenes and what was done in TASM (again on the narrative scenes). Those were just plain Flat.

It was stereo illiteracy at it's best. Sorry I have to be blunt.

But it's not doing 3D any good if denial comes in, or politically correct answers and statements are made.
On a multi-million dollar shoot such as TASm it is the duty of the Stereo team to do test takes of the scenes, and project them in as near to final presentation size and "Show" the Auteur the difference.

Unless...the argument can be made... that the Stereo team on those scenes did not know the difference in the first place?

It is my hope that by calling this out, that future subtle 3d will be "motivated" and a clear understanding of Spatial framing and presentation will ensue. I'm actually positive (no pun) it will!

Will those who called out the errors such as Sidre, Keegan, Ramchandra....etc be given credit for vocalizing it? I highly doubt it.

But whatever the outcome, at least the winner will be better 3D and hopefully a medium that is here to stay as Audiences (who are getting 3D literate by the minute) are the ones paying our salaries in the long run.. NOT the Auteur!

Kind Regards
Clyde

[Clyde DeSouza]

A related article I wrote today titled "The illiterate 3D Auteur Theory" aims to address the notion that it was only the Directors wishes that are being complied with by the rest of a 3D film making teamhttp://realvision.ae/blog/2012/07/th...auteur-theory/

Best Regards

[Zhang Ming]

Prometheus and Hugo is great in 3D, SpiderMan is a 2D movie shot with 3D equipments, the scene design and the skill of telling the story didn't use much advantage of 3D(while Hugo is completely opposite and Prometheus did great). The cinema near my house uses very light projector, BARCO, so color problem never happened to me, 3D feels always better than 2D to me. (Some cinema use very dark projector, which sucks, and IMAX use old 70's liner polar glasses which is painful to me, who can tell me why they do not use RealD?)

To my opinion(do not bash me:P), 3D V.S. 2D is like movie with sound V.S. silent movie. One more axis definitely can do a lot for joy. If I can decide, I would like to push z-axis usage in the story to some extreme status, while I know it's difficult to control the side effects like dazzling the audience, at least there should be some try.