Do you really want 3D films?
I make no secret of it but I hate 3D films, partly because of the need to throw things at the camera and utilise the 3D effects at every opportunity, and partly because of the need for coloured glasses, hindering the usual view of a film on a big screen or my high definition television.
However I know people out there really do enjoy 3D films, and a recent survey suggests that fans of 3D want more films and television to leap out at them. However is that really the case? Do you want to see more and more films in 3D at home and in the cinema? Do you want to wear those glasses for everything you watch?
Interestingly I just read on EngadgetHD that the Consumer Electronics Association and the Entertainment and Technology Center at the University of Southern California completed a survey of U.S. adults and found the following statistics.
Nearly forty-one million of them reported seeing a 3D film, and of those some forty percent said that they would rather watch a film in 3D than in 2D.
Now hold up a second. I did a quick check on the current population of the U.S. and that came in around three hundred and five million. A quick calculation revealed that this means that only thirteen and a half percent of the U.S. population have seen a 3D film.
Forty percent of those that have seen a 3D film would rather watch 3D than 2D, well calculate that round and it's just over a mere five percent of the U.S. population.
So five percent would rather watch a 3D film than 2D, and over half of the people questioned (that's everyone asked apparently) said that having to wear special glasses or hold your head still throughout the entire film would have no affect on them buying a 3D television.
What?! That figure immediately stops me in my tracks, and while I was thinking I could believe the survey up until then, I really do now have trouble believing that half of the people interviewed, whatever that figure would be, have no qualms about making their viewing experience more uncomfortable and reducing picture clarity and definition?
Would you seriously be happy sitting with coloured lenses between you and your TV, not moving your seating position or perhaps even your head throughout the performance? Not me.
My problem with 3D films are two-fold. The first is the biggest, the fact that in making a 3D film the studio, writer, director, editor, and whoever else is in control behind the scenes, has to exploit the fact that it is a 3D film, the gimmick of 3D itself.
So despite the film or the story, the camera has to either fly towards and through the action, or objects and/or characters within the film have to fly at the screen, and it has to happen regularly in the film or the 3D is just a waste of time.
This means that the story and/or screenplay has to be written specifically to include scenes like this, the story has to be written around these scenes, or at the worst case scenario, the story has to be rewritten to include these scenes within the screenplay.
The second reason that 3D films really annoy me are the glasses. For so long technology and studios have pushed to get higher and higher definition in cinemas and at home on television, and we wanted that technology, we still do. We're clamouring over the high-definition televisions and Blu-ray, we want HD in everything we can, and providers are supplying it more and more.
Yet now that we've reached this 1080p high nirvana, the studio's are telling us that we need to slap cheap cardboard or plastic spectacles in front of our eyes, spectacles with different coloured cheap see-through plastic “lenses”, and enjoy once again the spectacle of high-definition.
Quite frankly I don't want the quality that has been built over the years to be ruined by these silly glasses. I'm more than happy with the high-definition and superb big screen quality that we're getting in the cinema and at home in the HD televisions, why do I want to cover it up with multi-coloured plastic see-through material?
I've paid for a high definition television and I want to see the high definition, not have it obscured and reduced by mutli-coloured filters between me and the screen.
What are your views on 3D films both in the cinema and at home? Is it something that you want to see more of? Would you like to see all films offered in this way and viewed with 3D glasses?
Or are you more like me, and don't want your view obscured by the 3D glasses and the odd coloured picture, or the screenplay manipulated to include things flying at the camera?
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