Tips and tricks on making and viewing 3D movies

Around about this time last year I did a roundup of movies slated for release in 2010. Since then movies like Avatar, Up and Toy Story 3 have done a lot to change the landscape of cinema going. Compared to a couple of years ago, 3D movies are no longer oddities that show up rarely. Most multiplex cinemas probably haven’t had a week in 2010 where they didn’t show a 3D movie.

The good news is that this trend is showing no signs at all of slowing down. With the promise of 3D viewing becoming popular at home, movies should have a life after their theatrical release. Which means more money, for the studios, which means there’s less risk involved in 3D.

I’ll start with the next blockbuster on the starting block, technically it comes out on December 17th, but I’m sure TRON: The Legacy will continue to play well into the new year. Aside from Avatar, I’d say this is possibly the most anticipated 3D movie or the new age of 3D, at least for those of us that saw the original.

TRON: Legacy

Next in the pipeline is a tale of playboy turned vigilante hero, The Green Hornet with Seth Rogen and Cameron Diaz. Due for release January 14th, the movie looks like some fun family action. It will no doubt upset true aficionados of the original 60s TV series, or the radio series from the 30s, for it’s lack of authenticity. But Seth Rogen should add a bit of humour for what has always been a pretty corny show, so it should be fun all the same.

The Green Hornet

Interestingly, The Green Hornet was initially supposed to star Nicolas Cage, but he dropped out. However he does make his 3D debut in Drive Angry, an action thriller that comes out February 11th. If action and violence isn’t what you lok for in a 3D movie, perhaps Justin Bieber: Never Say Never is more your pace, out on February 11th.

Drive Angry

March 25th will see Sucker Punch! released. A fantasy action thriller described as Alice in Wonderland with machine guns by the director Zack Snyder. Snyder also directed two previous comic book based movies, Watchmen and 300, and Sucker Punch does have a very comic book feel about it. The jury is still out as to what rating it will get when it is released, as the trailer doesn’t seem to suggest the PG13 the director claimed he was aiming at.

Sucker Punch!

May 20th will see the fourth in the Pirates of the Caribbean, On Stranger Tides. Jack Sparrow goes in search of the fountain on youth, with much ahaaaarrrring along the way. This will be the first 3D outing for Jack Sparrow, and looks to be another fun romp. Also showing in May will be Kung Fu Panda: The Kaboom of Doom, and another comic book hero Thor will make his 3D debut (directed by Kenneth Branagh).

PIrates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

June will see a return of Lightning McQueen and Mater with Pixar/Disney’s Cars 2. This time, is the teaser is anything to go by, they have become spies. Joining Cars 2 in a June release is The Green Lantern, yet another comic book super hero to get the 3D treatment.

July has a couple more 3D summer blockbusters, with the last in the Harry Potter series Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: 2. Given the success of the first part, and indeed all the other Harry Potter movies, this looks like a mega blockbuster in the making.

August will see another 3D movie featuring blue characters suffering the onslaught of dark forces. It’s not Avatar 2, it’s the Smurfs battling with Gargamel. The movie sees the Smurfs turfed out of their village into Central Park New York. The cast includes Neil Patrick Harris, with Smurf voices supplied by Katy Perry (Smurfette), Alan Cumming (Gutsy Smurf), Paul Reubens (Jokey Smurf) and Hank Azaria as Gargamel. For the adults though, there is also 5nal Destination, and Darkest Hour.

Not much happening in September, the only 3D movie scheduled for release is Dolphin Tale, starring Morgan Freeman and Harry Connick Jr, Ashley Judd and Kris Kristofferson.

October has one for the adults, a thriller called Contagion, and one for the kids, Three musketeers 3D.  While November and December promise a rather predictable Christmassy selection of movies like Puss in Boots, Happy Feet 2, Arthur Christmas and The Adventure of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn.

In all there are over 30 3D movies in production for 2011, and already 16 gearing up for 2012. So if anybody is wondering if 3D is going to catch on, this certaibnly seems to indicate that Hollywood still has confidence that it will.

If you aren’t lucky enough to have perfect vision, you may have problems watching 3D movies. Given that somewhere north of 70 per cent of people have less than perfect vision, it could cause problems for the accessibility of 3D. Fortunately most of that 70 per cent have eyesight that is easily corrected, either with glasses or contact lenses. But it still leaves some people with problems. In particular, when one eye has a different condition to the other, the brain favours the image from one side. This is obviously going to affect depth perception, which lets face it, is pretty key to 3D.

Fortunately the current trend for 3D movies has spawned a growing fashion for third party 3D glasses. Recently sport eyewear specialists Oakley announced it would be offering 3D glasses to coincide with the release of TRON: Legacy, with polarised lenses. But more interestingly, Polaroid now offer 3D glasses with prescriptions, certified by RealD. Prescription 3D glasses mean that people that wear glasses normally don’t have to go through the technically possible, but usually embarrassing, process of balancing the 3D glasses over their own prescription glasses. Of course you’d have to be a pretty big 3D fan to buy glasses especially for movies, but if it means you keep your cool while getting the most from the movie it might be worth it. Pricing isn’t yet announced, but the Polaroid glasses should be available here from early November.

For home viewing the story is a little different. 3D TVs usually use an LCD shutter system, rather than a polarised screen. This means the glasses worn are active, rather than passive polarised ones. I suspect that this makes it impractical to make prescription versions, with the regular ones usually costing over £100. At least the ones available are usually designed to allow glasses to be worn underneath.

For video eyewear, like the Vusix and the relaxView, you either have to wear glasses underneath, or buy a prescription insert. The Carl Zeiss Cinemizer caters for varying eyesight in a much better way. Each eye has a built-in diopter which can be adjusted from -3.5 to + 3.5D. That’s enough to mean the vast majority of users will get crystal clear images without needing glasses.

As regular readers will possibly already know, I’m a fan, and an owner of the Carl Zeiss Cinemizer Plus. So I was thrilled to get a glimpse of the next model on their roadmap, the Cinemizer OLED. The ship date is still in the distant future, somewhere in 2011, and the official specs are still under wraps. Though Übergizmo have had a rather inaccurate guess at the resolution, followed by Engadget, parroting the same misinformation. Come on guys, do your homework, people look to you for information, not just being first!

So as a 3D enthusiast, I made a bee line to the Zeiss Cinemizer booth at IFA to get a first hand look at the upcoming model. They were at pains to point out that this is still a prototype, and they weren’t announcing specifications at this point. Which suggests production will be some distance away. The resolution however is definitely higher than the previous model, the Cinemizer Plus. The Cinemizer Plus has a 640-x-480 screen resolution, which for video is actually fine so long as the media quality is decent. The Cinemizer OLED is measurably better, and is in a wide screen format to boot. Although the Zeiss people on the booth were unwilling to say exactly the resolution, I would say it seemed at least 720p.

One of the Zeiss crew getting carried away playing MotorStorm 3D

The main reason is that the prototype they were demonstrating was hooked up to the output of a Sony PS3, and they had a 3D version of MotorStorm. I’ve tried playing games with my Cinemizer Plus, and while it works to a certain extent, not being able to see scores, range maps and other smaller onscreen graphics is a problem. The new Cinemizer OLED is a much different experience, bigger looking screen, sharper images. I don’t know for sure what the new resolution will be, but it will definitely be better than the 640-x-480 the other blogs are quoting.

There are also changes to the compatible 3D formats the Cinemizer OLED will play. They were demonstrating a 3D DVD playing through a laptop, and into the screens of the Cinemizer. I checked the format, and saw that it was over-and-under 3D, as opposed to the side-by-side 3D Cinemizers usually use. So hopefully this means more compatible media to watch, which is fantastic news (as soon as more 3D DVDs are available).

One final treat was a whole custom 3D virtual reality system on show. It was very much in the prototype stage, much more so than the Cinemizer OLED. The regular Cinemizer had a small module attached above the screens, which monitored position and direction. The video feed was from a PC running what looked to be some sort of architectural software. Wearing the Cinemizer, you could look around and tilt your head in any direction, and the landscape would appear static, as if you were actually there.

It is a custom solution built by a German company, presumable to sell into Architectural vertical markets. It was a bit of a gimmick I suppose, but if that was hooked up to a proper gaming platform, the results would be spectacular.

So that’s as much information as I could squeeze out of the crew on the booth. I think the price quoted by other sites seems about right, at €400. But I’m sure if this product sees it’s full potential, the price will come down, as volumes go up. Not that I’ll be waiting for that of course, I’m saving already!

After testing the market for 3D by showing 3D football in pubs across the country, Sky has announced it will launch a 3D channel on October 1st. It will be a mix of sport and movies, with golf’s Ryder Cup being the first event to launch the channel. Customers subscribing to the Sky+ HD package will have access to the channel.

3D fans have been waiting for consumer 3D with great excitement

Viewers will of course have to have invested in a new 3D TV, but this summer has seen a model from LG, Panasonic, Samsung and Sony, launched in earnest. Most manufacturers have both active and passive viewing options, and Sky will support both types. The Sky+ HD box will enable recording of 3D content.

This is a great leap for consumer 3D, there’s no denying that. But I can’t help wondering if this is what the Hollywood studios were hoping for. Initially 3D movies looked like a way to get people back into movie theatres, after giant flat screen TVs and Dolby Digital sound were becoming normal consumer items. But after the initial activity in the theatres, the studios were losing out on the followup DVD or Bluray release. So 3D movies have been stacking up, with no way for consumers to see them unless a movie theatre decided to show them again.

It seemed like the consumer electronics industry were ready to help out, by building 3D TVs and supporting 3D Bluray players. It seemed Hollywood had a new outlet for it’s 3D catalogue. However only a fraction of the movies out there have made it to 3D Bluray, probably because the audience is so small.

So the Sky announcement is great news, but I don’t see how this will help Hollywood get new revenue from it’s movies. It doesn’t seems to indicate any of the companies involved having a a fully fledged 3D game plan. But hats off to Sky for getting the scoop on the first broadcast 3D TV.

Currently there is a lot of speculation that Steve Jobs’s hobby, the Apple TV, is about to get an overhaul. Most rumours speculate that the box will become more reliant on cloud services, forgoing the internal hard disk for flash memory. But none of that really pushes the device ahead of the crowd, now that some TVs, Bluray players and gaming consoles are getting access to on-demand movies. In fact in 3D Apple is unusually behind the curve.

It would make sense then, that a new version of the Apple TV should get up to speed with 3D. The basic hardware requirement for 3D TVs is a dual HDMI connection, something not terribly difficult to implement. There are already devices, like the Samsung BD-C6900, which can play 3D discs, and also access movie download services like Love Film or Netflix. However there is still a missing piece of the puzzle. None of the services out there offer the ability to download 3D movies.

Here’s where Apple could potentially steal a march on the competition (albeit a short lived advantage), by offering the first downloadable, on-demand 3D movies. One of the biggest drawbacks to the 3D capable hardware out there is the lack of movies available. Meanwhile Disney/Pixar has been racking up lots of 3D movies, so as Disney’s biggest individual shareholder Steve Jobs might well have access to some of the biggest 3D titles for iTunes.

So how likely is this to happen? Well, Steve Jobs is not a fan of discs, still refusing to add Bluray to any Macs. He clearly doesn’t see a future in them. So what of 3D? Well the plethora of 3D coming from Pixar appears to suggest he is comfortable with the idea. I would say that if the next version of the Apple TV doesn’t have a 3D capability it would show an uncharacteristic lack of vision from the Apple founder.

Incidentally an accepted 3D digital download standard could also give a green light to new portable 3D devices. The Carl Zeiss Cinemizer can already display 3D in the side-by-side format. But a lack of standards for 3D has until recently meant that content is thin on the ground. So a 3D standard that’s easily downloaded from iTunes or elsewhere could give the head mounted display industry a great shot in the arm.