2) It's actually German; Die 3D Movies, die.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/30/bu...r=3&ref=movies
Quote:
LOS ANGELES � Has the 3-D boom already gone bust? It�s starting to look that way � at least for American moviegoers � even as Hollywood prepares to release a glut of the gimmicky pictures.
Ripples of fear spread across Hollywood last week after �Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides,� which cost Walt Disney Studios an estimated $400 million to make and market, did poor 3-D business in North America. While event movies have typically done 60 percent of their business in 3-D, �Stranger Tides� sold just 47 percent in 3-D. �The American consumer is rejecting 3-D,� Richard Greenfield, an analyst at the financial services company BTIG, wrote of the �Stranger Tides� results.
One movie does not make a trend, but the Memorial Day weekend did not give studio chiefs much comfort in the 3-D department. �Kung Fu Panda 2,� a Paramount Pictures release of a DreamWorks Animation film, sold $53.8 million in tickets from Thursday to Sunday, a soft total, and 3-D was 45 percent of the business, according to Paramount.
Consumer rebellion over high 3-D ticket prices plays a role, and the novelty of putting on the funny glasses is wearing off, analysts say. But there is also a deeper problem: 3-D has provided an enormous boost to the strongest films, including �Avatar� and �Alice in Wonderland,� but has actually undercut middling movies that are trying to milk the format for extra dollars.
�Audiences are very smart,� said Greg Foster, the president of Imax Filmed Entertainment. �When they smell something aspiring to be more than it is, they catch on very quickly.�
Muddying the picture is a contrast between the performance of 3-D movies in North America and overseas. If results are troubling domestically, they are the exact opposite internationally, where the genre is a far newer phenomenon. Indeed, 3-D screenings powered �Stranger Tides� to about $256 million on its first weekend abroad; Disney trumpeted the figure as the biggest international debut of all time.
With results like that at a time when movies make 70 percent of their total box office income outside North America, do tastes at home even matter?
After a disappointing first half of the year, Hollywood is counting on a parade of 3-D films to dig itself out of a hole. From May to September, the typical summer season, studios will unleash 16 movies in the format, more than double the number last year. Among the most anticipated releases are �Transformers: Dark of the Moon,� due from Paramount on July 1, and Part 2 of Part 7 of the �Harry Potter� series, arriving two weeks later from Warner Brothers.
The need is urgent. The box-office performance in the first six months of 2011 was soft � revenue fell about 9 percent compared with last year, while attendance was down 10 percent � and that comes amid decay in home-entertainment sales. In all formats, including paid streaming and DVDs, home entertainment revenue fell almost 10 percent, according to the Digital Entertainment Group.
The first part of the year held a near collapse in video store rentals, which fell 36 percent to about $440 million, offsetting gains from cut-price rental kiosks and subscriptions. In addition, the sale of packaged discs fell about 20 percent, to about $2.2 billion, while video-on-demand, though growing, delivered total sales of less than a quarter of that amount.
At the box office, animated films, which have recently been Hollywood�s most reliable genre, have fallen into a deep trough, as the category�s top three performers combined � �Rio,� from Fox; �Rango,� from Paramount; and �Hop,� from Universal � have had fewer ticket buyers than did �Shrek the Third,� from DreamWorks Animation, after its release in mid-May four years ago.
�Kung Fu Panda 2� appears poised to become the biggest animated hit of the year so far; but it would have to stretch well past its own predecessor to beat �Shrek Forever After,� another May release, which took in $238.7 million last year.
For the weekend, �The Hangover: Part II� sold $118 million from Thursday to Sunday, easily enough for No. 1. �Kung Fu Panda 2� was second. Disney�s �Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides� was third with $39.3 million for a new total of $152.9 million. �Bridesmaids� (Universal Pictures) was fourth with $16.4 million for a new total of about $85 million. �Thor� (Marvel Studios) rounded out the top five with $9.4 million for a new total of $160 million.
Studio chiefs acknowledge that the industry needs to sort out its 3-D strategy. Despite the soft results for �Kung Fu Panda 2,� animated releases have continued to perform well in the format, overcoming early problems with glasses that didn�t fit little faces. But general-audience movies like �Stranger Tides� may be better off the old-fashioned way.
�With a blockbuster-filled holiday weekend skewing heavily toward 2-D, and 3-D ticket sales dramatically underperforming relative to screen allocation, major studios will hopefully begin to rethink their 3-D rollout plans for the rest of the year and 2012,� Mr. Greenfield said on Friday.
I for one dislike the 3D gimmick for movies, it adds very little to the experience except added nausea and is only a way to get more money out of the pockets of moviegoers for the same movie, except with added blur. It has potential, but needs to be developed further before it's actually a good gimmick IMO. I'd rather see them developing my Ultra HD TV's than 3D ones though.
Discuss 3D, it's future, it's potential, the article, etc. Because I command it. And because it's a slightly serious topic unlikely to derail in political arguing. Unless it turns out Obama or Republicans are heavily in favour of one side...|||I'll spring for a novelty 3D flick every few years, like I did with Avatar, but there's no way I'd pay extra on a regular basis. It has to be an "event" film that actually benefits from it. And for the home tech, there's no way I want to sit around with glasses to watch the effect on my TV.|||Blah, I hate 3D. I don't want to be watching a movie, especially a scary one, and have something randomly jump out at me. And I scream loud; I'd be arrested for disturbing the peace, or the cops would show up thinking I was being attacked. Not to mention it's bad for your eyes, especially kids' eyes, and I don't want 3D on my TV, DS, computer games, etc. If others want to watch it, fine, but I won't be joining them unless I can watch it without that feature even if it's just removing the glasses.|||I HOPE they go the way of the Dodo! I have said this before: I am so unimpressed by 3D.
"That's actually German for... Live, Bart, Live!"|||I dont mind 3d movies, but I also don't really pay extra for them...
My friends bullied me into buying the ticket to avatar 3d, i would've just watched the regular one if it was up to me. hehe.|||Quote:
I dont mind 3d movies, but I also don't really pay extra for them...
My friends bullied me into buying the ticket to avatar 3d, i would've just watched the regular one if it was up to me. hehe.
Bullies are mean
Speaking of that Obama...|||My opinion of 3D is that it sucks. There, I feel better now.|||If they made movies that didn't suck, didn't cost too much, and weren't held in crappy cinemas, people would probably see more of them.|||I view 3D as nothing but an extra gimmick to try and get in more revenues, nothing more.|||My view is that 3D is in a bad spot. Allow me to explain.
Firstly, 3D can be used as a gimmick. This is how it has been used for years, and it's still used that way by a lot of people. All those amusement park 3D movies certainly qualify, for example. Something jumping out of the screen at the viewer. "Cinematic" 3D should treat the screen as a window, and something coming through should be treated the same way as something hitting the camera in a 2D movie - used sparingly at best. Having too many things pass through the screen or ANYTHING coming right at the viewer (and thus breaking the fourth wall) is a gimmick. The other major gimmick is a "3D" movie that was shot in 2D and post-processed into 3D.
But saying that 3D "doesn't add anything" just makes me think of color. What does color add to a movie? Is it really worth it to pay extra to see a movie that was shot in Black and White and had color added? 3D doesn't add a huge amount, but it's easy to imagine a day where people marvel that only a few years ago we were watching "flat" TV, where 2D is as rare as Black and White is today, and for similar reasons.
Next, 3D has some problems. A lot of people get nauseous or headaches when watching 3D movies, and must either suffer or watch the film in 2D (which is possible, with the right glasses, even if everyone else is watching in 3D). There's also the fact that you have to wear glasses in the first place, the loss of definition, and the difficulty with depth of field/focus.
But these can be overcome. A lot of the nausea and headaches are from the "fake" 3D where a computer has gone in and guessed the distances to various objects, or poorly shot "real" 3D. Either way, things aren't quite right and people suffer for it. The loss of definition is what happens when you have to put two images in the same number of pixels, and will be compensated for eventually with higher definition screens.
The depth of field/focus bit is harder, though. In "reality" your eyes choose what is in focus, and everything at a different distance gets blurry. In 2D, directors choose the focus distance for you and everything else is blurred. Everything appears to be (and really is) at the same distance, and your eyes are automatically drawn to the in-focus part. But in 3D, there is the illusion of depth. Your eyes think that if they change their focus distance, they ought to be able to bring something in the background into focus, but they can't, because the cameras didn't capture the image in focus at that distance. Problem. The director could use a wider depth of field so that everything *was* in focus, but then they can't draw your eye to the right part of the screen, and you still have the problem that while things appear at various distances, they're all actually at the same distance with regards to how the lens in your eye should adjust. There's no good solution. And glasses are an inherent part of the technology.
But there *are* other technologies out there that can fix this. It's hella more expensive - you basically have to track each eye individually and both eyes together in order, and then beam the correct image directly into each eye - but the basics are there. And that's the problem. Current commercial technology isn't up to snuff, it will never be worthwhile (IMO) to pay extra for the current 3D technology. But if they just give it up as a flop, customers aren't going to be tempted to try it again when the "real thing" is ready, if it happens any time soon. That plus the desire to make people upgrade TV's every few years means that they're going to push 3D as hard as they can, and hope like hell that either it catches on or the technology improves before it flops.
No comments:
Post a Comment