Creating a 540m2 silver screen

Britain's BFI IMAX screen, the biggest of its kind in the UK, just had a major overhaul. They documented the process in amazing detail on this site here. The team responsible went to enormous effort to make sure the screen, all 500m2 of it, could take advantage of the latest and greatest in projection systems. The end result will surely look stunning, and - thanks to a laser-guided paint job - will glisten bright silver. The silver coating applied will ensure that light from the projector is reflected in straight lines from the screen, lessening refraction. 

So, why are we writing about this here at 3Defence? Well, firstly because the photos are so damned cool. And secondly, because we love it whenever a cinema goes to great lengths to supply the brightest and clearest image in town. Brighter screens and projector bulbs are key to the ongoing success of the 3D format, and it's nice to see world-class theatres like the BFI London IMAX leading the way forwards for the rest of the world.


PS: Cheers to @DJMC for letting us know about this!

The Amazing Spider-Man: How Good Is Its 3D?

We at 3Defence have decided that film critics aren't giving audiences enough information about the usage of 3D in modern-day cinema. As such, we've been working on an ongoing series that can help you decide whether to fork out a few extra dollars or not to see the latest and greatest blockbuster while wearing glasses. Today we're looking at The Amazing Spider-Man, the fourth webslinger film, and the first to get the stereoscopic treatment being heavily pushed by Sony. You'll notice the article below is separated by sections; we've standardised these sections, to help regular readers compare one film's usage of the 3D technique to another. Let us know if you think of anything else that'd be useful in the comments section!

Native 3D:

Like Prometheus, The Amazing Spider-Man was filmed using Red Epic cameras, in 'native' 3D. In 2012, we've seen a string of high-quality post-production conversions, and we were hoping that Spidey webslinging in three-dimensions would blow them all out of the water. Much was made in the lead-up to the film's release of how much real-world filming was completed (see the photo nearby as an example of leaked images from the film's shoot), so in theory we were due to see the most vivid superhero scenes yet seen in 3D. Indeed, whenever Spider-Man has his suit on, the shots are busy, shot from interesting angles and broad in their scope. Bizarrely though, if Peter Parker's at school or home, the 3D footage is some of the most boring we've ever seen. Considering how much Peter Parker features in this film, we were left wondering why they filmed in native 3D at all.

Does the 3D 'pop'?

Incredibly rarely. The odd holographic image in the Oscorp Labs reaches beyond the screen, and every once in a while Spidey's legs break the artificial 'wall' of the theatre's screen, but these are the exceptions to the rule. In comparison to, say, Men In Black 3's 3D, which felt like there was no plane of depth left unexplored, The Amazing Spider-Man's action takes place well beyond your seat. Until the last shot, you're not going to see webs fly out at the audience, or Lizard tails flaying about over the front row's seats. Check out the image nearby as a wasted example, where a key scene involves the Lizard... behind a shuttered door. If it were us making the film, we'd have had the Lizard stalking his prey in a way where you were terrified his head would jump out at you without warning. Instead, in this scene, he was overtly restricted from doing so! Boring.

How's the depth of the 3D?

As mentioned above, when Spider-Man's swinging like a pendulum over the New York city skyline, the depth is fantastic. It's the most vivid depiction of Manhattan we've ever seen on the screen. Much of the action is shot at night-time though, so it's hard to visualise the gaps between individual skyscrapers. Instead, we see the differences of city blocks, or long avenues that culminate in a gigantic building like Oscorp's tower. Mostly though, the film is set in a fairly bland looking suburbia, and the frame is focused on the foreground and midground, with an out of focus background. This means that depth is restricted to the first couple of metres, with a universal background of blurriness that lacks any sort of visual interest (or reason to have glasses on). In comparison to the deep-focus of Avatar, or the intensely layered shots of Hugo, Spider-Man's interior scenes utterly failed to justify the extra admission fees that 3D cost. Check out the image nearby as an example of a wasted shot composition: two characters in the foreground and a blurred background.

Did it make sense to add 3D to this film?

Sure. On paper, it sounds like a done deal. Spider-Man is the 'daylight hero', wearing bright blue and red colours, framed against brownstone buildings, hundreds of feet in the air above the world's most dynamic city. For some bizarre reason though, the studio (I'm loathe to blame the film's director) set the majority of the film at night-time, darkened the suit, and adjusted the physics to be so realistic that Spider-Man needs the assistance of the city's engineer-folk to swing a few metres at a time. So, if brightness and depth are the priorities, they compromised both in favour of a "more realistic" Spider-Man that feels untrue to the comic's roots.

If we had to archive one version, should we save the 2D or the 3D?

The 2D. Without a doubt. Bear in mind that we here at 3Defence are massive fans of the Spider-Man books, the 3D technique, native 3D films, director Marc Webb, and many of the key creatives who made The Amazing Spider-Man. So when we say the 2D version of this film is the only one to keep, we mean it, and it hurts to say it. Bummer!

How good is the 3D in MIB3?

Men In Black 3, in 3D. Too much e-ink has been spilled over the fact this is the second needless sequel in a series that should have remained in the 90s. Very little ink has been spent discussing the film's post-converted 3D job, and even less has been spent talking about how it was implemented. MIB3 just never attained 'event film' status this year, but we're keen to ask the hard questions anyway: how good is the 3D? Is it worth seeing the 3D version?

Conversion:

The film-makers made a conscious decision to film in 2D, and then convert it after the fact. It seems they could have filmed in native 3D, had the key creatives preferred to do so. Ultimately they settled on post-conversion for a number of reasons. The most compelling is that the director, Barry Levinson, has always shot with really wide lenses, and usually frames the 'hero moments' dead-centre, just like the images you see to your right (Levinson is the dude in the right-hand corner). If you'd like to hear MIB3's director argue a bunch of well thought through reasons for post-conversion, then click this link here. As far as what's on screen is concerned, this is surely one of the best conversion jobs we've seen. We'll stick our necks out and say we preferred it to the work performed on The Avengers from a few months ago. Simply put, studios and the pros working for them are getting better and better at this technique.

Does the 3D 'pop'?

Yes. Often. Men In Black 3's director, said that films like Hugo and Avatar "put a lot of the depth behind the screen and put the convergence at the screen. I find that actually more distancing for the audience than if they’d actually released it in 2-D. What we did with convergence and depth is bring it much closer to the audience. So I loved the process—loved it—and what I’ve always visualized in 3-D was very easy for me." What he's saying is; he wanted things to jump out at you. He wanted debris to fly out in explosions; he wanted light to fill the theatre when Will Smith fires his neuralyzer; and he wanted lots of bugs to crawl out of things to disgusting effect. There is no screen!

How's the depth of the 3D?

Put it this way; the biggest set-pieces are set atop massive structures, hundreds of feet in the air. If the Agents aren't battling bad guys atop a building or a crane, then the villains are on the moon itself... looking at Earth far away in the distance. In the first two Men In Black films, the series had a lot of fun with the idea of depth, zooming from something the size of a marble outwards to the edge of the universe itself. The third film is a lot more earth-bound, but it revels in the opportunity to give us (and the characters) vertigo. Without wanting to reveal too many spoilers, there's a sequence set around the launch of an Apollo mission that took 3Defence's breath away. To visualise the enormous size of those rockets for the first time was a real treat for space-nerds like us. You can read a bit about how they did it here. So, the depth is great, well handled and executed!

Does it make sense to have added 3D to MIB3?

When we think back to the colour palette of the first two films, we think of a lot of brightly lit images set at night time. Typically, we'd not advocate for a 3D film in that type of environment (at least not until projectors get brighter). For Men In Black 3 though, much of the action is set during the day. Interesting stylistic choices have been made that give this film a bright and contrast-laden sepia quality, and this suits the tinted colours that 3D glasses offer. As a bonus, this film has many guns and aliens in the extreme foreground, and has a ton of interesting chameos and Rick Baker-created awesomeness in the background; it's worked out perfect that it's in 3D.

If we had to archive one version, should we save the 3D or the 2D?

The 3D version. The first two MIB movies already have 2D well covered. The third film seems to have deliberately changed locations, eras and colour-schemes to make this an enjoyable 3D experience. Ultimately, this series is meant to please, and the usage of 3D in this film adds to its 'theme park ride' quality. You're going to be places where you need not be, and see things that you need not see... so you might as well have fun doing it. The 3D version is just plain fun. Archive it!

Can we compare 2012's 3D movies to early (2D) Technicolor classics?

Over the weekend I bought the Blu Ray for the gorgeous film The Red Shoes. Since its restoration in 2009, it has grown in its reputation amongst cinephiles, so the movie's remembered as a Technicolor gem. The colour used is painterly in tone, with vibrant reds that seem to pirouette off the screen. Glorious hues and fluid movement in a film like The Red Shoes remind us that 3D isn't needed to make movies seem 'alive'.

I mention this, because regular reader Andy tipped us about a great Tumblr post written by Rian Johnson. The post is partially about the "polarised polemic" being used in the 3D "debate". Johnson's opinions are worth considering, because he's a good director and writer (he made indie-hit Brick, followed it up with the under-seen Brothers Bloom, and he's about to kick our asses with the upcoming Bruce Willis / Joseph Gordon-Levitt time-travel thriller, Looper). Anyway, Johnson suggests that we should frame the discussion on 3D by looking back in time at the development of... colour.

Johnson recalls that, in the early days of cinema, we were happy enough to see colour hand-painted onto black-and-white images. As time went on though, we ditched that particular technique, but we didn't ditch the intent it represented. We came up with new tools and better applications of the technique - like The Red Shoes' gorgeous usage of Technicolor - but we never forgot the core goal was to provide beautiful images in colour to rapt audiences. It took us until 2001 to finally get full control over the tone of a feature film, when The Coen Brothers unleashed the computer-assisted O Brother Where Art Thou. That movie will be long remembered for its stunning, autumnal, yellow glow:

The Tumblr post by Johnson starts pessimistically about the way we're collectively discussing 3D, but he ends his post with the optimism of a gleeful fan-boy. The reason for his newfound enthusiasm is the realisation that we've got a long way to go. If we can agree that, in principle, 3D is something that most people agree is visually arresting... then we're going to have a wild ride in the next few decades. Johnson's comparison to colour allows us to compare where we're at with our usage of 3D in 2012. He suggests we might be at a point where our 3D is as blunt as the hand-painted films of the early 20th Century. If that's true, then the next stage in the development for 3D is likely to be as ground-breaking a shift forward as the difference between the image of Charlie Chaplin above and those around it from The Red Shoes. To Johnson, this upcoming evolution seems like a reason to be darned excited about the future of 3D cinema. To us here at 3Defence, it just makes us glad we live in an age where we can have our cake and eat it too. We can watch Men In Black 3-D in the multiplexes, and then return home to Blu Ray images like this as well:

Just in case you missed it the first time, you should read Johnson's full post here: http://rcjohnso.tumblr.com/post/24693276556/some-thoughts-on-3d

How good is the 3D in Prometheus? (spoiler-free!)

Prometheus is the most eagerly awaited sci-fi film since Inception. Geeks around the world have been losing their mind with the release of each new trailer, and it's subsequently taken on "Event Film" status. Despite all this, Prometheus is saddled with a lot of baggage. It's Ridley Scott's first science fiction film since Blade Runner; it may-or-may-not-be a prequel to Alien; it's Fox's biggest film since Avatar; it's Scott's first 3D movie; it's hopefully Michael Fassbender's home-run performance and.... well. You get the picture. Let's put that all aside, and focus on the 3D. Because this article's aimed at people who haven't seen the film yet, I'll try and keep it relatively spoiler-free. If you want the experience to be completely pure though, disconnect the internet, and run to the nearest big screen you can find!

Native 3D:

3Defence has already written an article about how Prometheus was shot in native 3D. What we've learned since though has been - pun intended - illuminating. The biggest problem for the crew was that the wider Alien series is famous for it's dark shadows, and 3D 's infamously low light levels don't play particularly well with that aesthetic. The team apparently solved this problem in a cunning way: they filmed the sets quite brightly, and dialled that brightness back down again in post production. As Scott himself put it, it's better this way so that, "when I grade it, the digital grading will have something to pick up. If there’s nothing to pick up, there’s nothing to pick up." After all, it's easier to add darkness to movies than it is to add light. So, when you see sinister black hallways in Prometheus, they're the darkest shade of it you've yet seen in a 3D film. The good news is, where there's meant to be light (this, after all, being a thrill-ride of a movie; you're only meant to see what Ridley Scott wants you to see), you'll see it, and it'll look glorious. The better news is, this film was shot by the gifted cinematographer Dariusz Wolski, who is most famous for his pioneering work in native 3D done for the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film. He's taken his previous work to a whole new level with Prometheus though!

Does the 3D 'pop'?

Rarely. There are a few moments where debris breaks through the imagined wall of the screen, but not with the intent of 'coming out at the audience'. If anything, this technique is used to show as much depth as possible in one frame, usually helping heighten the story in a meaningful way. If anything 'pops' from the screen it's likely an interactive hologram, jet exhaust, flames or falling pieces of removed to make sure I don't reveal spoilers.

How's the depth of the 3D?

Immersive. Wonderous. Cavernous! Hallways stretch for miles into the background. The planet the crew land on is a barren and wide-open wasteland, the likes of which we've not yet seen in 3D. Some shots set in space are superior to the opening minutes of similar footage in Avatar. The humans in this film are often dwarved by removed to make sure I don't reveal spoilers objects that are gigantically bigger than themselves, and the 3D effect helps heighten a bizarre sense of claustrophobic agoraphobia. It's like you're terrifingly confined in a massive space. Meanwhile, the ship Prometheus itself is brightly lit - to contrast the claustoagrophobicnes, no doubt - but the ship hides many darkened spaces inside that constantly make you aware there's more to it than meets the eye. All in all, the added depth to this film makes you really feel like you've been to a real place in a distant and faraway land. What more could you ask for from a science-fiction film?

Does it make sense to add 3D to this film?

No. At least, not on paper. If anything, making this film in 3D could have been seen as a ruthless money-grabbing ploy. In hindsight though, it was a genius decision. After a long few months of post-converted 3D films being released to our multiplexes, it's refreshing to finally see a film of Prometheus' quality, planned to be shot in the format from the start, and delivered to us by a cinematic master. Somewhat ironically - considering the film itself is about the cycle of creation, and a will to survive - Ridley's delivered a movie that re-writes the rule-book of how a 3D film can look. For a long time I thought a 3D movie needed either over-saturated colours (Avatar / Tron: Legacy) or brightly lit interiors (Hugo) to look great... turns out it can look good in relentlessly dark hallways, filled with dark shadowy removed to make I don't reveal spoilers things too .

If we had to archive only one version, should we save the 3D or the 2D?

I'm going to go with the 2D option on this one. Perhaps that's a controversial choice, given I've just raved about the 3D for several paragraphs. Allow me to explain: the images of Prometheus are so crisp, so pristine, that you don't need to add glasses to make them perfect. Each shot is so well framed that depth is implied, and when things explode (and they do, frequently) you will be covering your eyes with your hands anyway. So, in a hypothetical "the house is on fire, you can only save one version of the film" moment, I'd grab the 2D print and hope I could come back to save the 3D one afterwards. In this case, the overall strength of Dariusz Wolski's cinematography is so striking that I think the film will continue to be remembered as a defining moment in sci-fi/horror history, regardless of the medium used to screen it.