Article: 3D Movies?! What's Next? Bring Your Kid to War Day?!
It blows my mind that so many people, and astonishingly, artists, share this same naive opinion of 3D; that it needs to "go away." Let me guess, high-definition and color were fads, too? 3D is here to stay just like color and sound. And just like color and sound, 3D is a WHOLE other palette to paint with in order to better our experience and the films we love. Or why don't we go ahead and go back to black & white silent films if you idiots hate innovation so much? Even in the very unlikely chance that 3D goes away, it will inevitably come back again. It's ubiquity in film is unavoidable. Mark my words.
What many people don't understand is that there are a lot of tools for film makers to play with in manipulating depth. Just like lighting, color, sound, and CGI, 3D can be used to accentuate just one object, a few, give something immense depth or shallow depth, reverse depth, and who knows what other tools will become available to artists 5, 10, 20 years down the road? If it isn't already, 3D will be embraced as a very serious artistic element to a film that brings an entirely new plane of thought to how symbols and cues are applied in any project.
I'll give you one quick example. Let's say in a drama a man has just seen his wife die in a crowded subway. She was murdered discreetly and he can't find the killer in the crowd. A powerful use of 3D would be to perhaps make the man and his wife nearly flat images while the rest of the crowd was an endless sea of bodies stretching far into the depths of the subway. Just like clever use of lighting, 3D was used to not only highlight, and most importantly symbolize, the utter hopelessness of ever finding who just killed his wife, but also the now deathly fear of being alone and without his love with her killer still loose. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you have no idea how films are made or especially how important symbols are to the world of film -- every film -- even bad ones.
The massive potential for this medium remains untapped and people are so quick to scoff at this new form of 3D technology as if it must utterly blow our minds from the get go or it's not worth a damn. Besides just an aesthetic tool, 3D provides another incentive to bring people back to the theater for an experience uncommon in the home. You know what else it does? It opens up several dozen or more new jobs for any given film! See? It even helps the economy! But who wants a great economy? I know I don't. Shit's overrated anyway.
I mean, really. Seriously think about what you're saying. If 3D was done right -- emphasis on the "done right" -- you would still prefer to see films in two dimensions for the remainder of the foreseeable future? Really, pull your head out of your ass and think about it. "These damned whippersnappers and their films made in three-dimensions. I mean it's like they want us to use both of our eyeballs! You hear that? BOTH! Ya ever heard such codswallop?!"
"Hurrp durrp! Well, not everyone is capable of seeing the 3D!" Whoa! Hold the phone! We've found a genius who just put the kibosh on this new fangled 3D fad! STOP. EVERYTHING. Quickly, let's stop putting sound in films because some people are deaf. Hurry! Let's remove color because some people can only see shades of grey! Fuck it! Let's stop making movies all together because some people are blind!
You're right. 3D will probably never evolve or get better whatsoever. What were they thinking? It's probably going to give people headaches forever. We'll probably have to wear these silly glasses...forever. It will probably be a gimmick...FOREVER! Since we live in a world where a better version of the next Android phone comes out every six months, yeah, you're probably right. Pft! Technology. Getting better! Ha! Who's ever heard of such sorcery?!
There is too much -- and there will never be enough to explore with 3D -- and the ones who put the honest effort into it are the ones who also see the same potential in the future for not only film making, but gaming, and any other form of digital art. 3D is here to stay and it damn well should be. It might be a mixed bag now, but sooner or later every single film we see will be in 3D. It's bound to happen. It's unavoidable. Try as you might, you can't stop innovation. So, shut up and enjoy it. Put your money where your mouth is and show Hollywood that we won't settle for crap. Do your research and pay for the good ones -- all it takes is a Google search -- and let the bad ones sink at the box office.