In a fascinating article quoting a letter he wrote to film critic Roger Ebert, film editor and sound designer Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now, The English Patient, Cold Mountain) outlines why he believes 3D cinema to be fundamentally flawed.
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2011/01/post_4.html
Since my left eye is dysfunctional and I therefore can't perceive depth the way my binocular compatriots can I have a vested interest in halting the onslaught of 3D.
The picture is frustratingly dark (which compounds my nightblindness), the Stupid Glasses sit uncomfortably on top of my Smart, Stylish Glasses and the last experience I had with 3D cinema gave me such a headache I spent the second half of the movie squeezing my left eye shut. I plan to buy an eyepatch to help with this.
Maybe Apple sells a cutting-edge white iPatch.
I work for a company involved in television broadcasting, among other things, and there's a lot of buzz about 3D TV here. I'm not in a position to influence this, but where possible I voice my opposition. 3D tech is inconvenient, partly because of the glasses requirement, but more substantially because the 3D illusion works best when seated directly in front of the screen.
This makes the 3D experience impossible to share with larger groups of people, especially if the living room is arranged in the horseshoe formation so common here.
Murch, in this article, points out a few technical objections to 3D cinema based on his insight and experience in cinema editing, and the way images interact with the eye, the brain, and then the mind.
He points out confidently that 'strobing', the effect in which we're aware that we're watching a staccato sequence of images rather than continuous motion, occurs more quickly when viewing 3D film because the added stress and computational effort of decoding the illusion doesn't allow the brain enough time to smooth out the motion as it usually does.
But most important, he says, is the issue of convergence/focus. It's a little awkwardly explained in the article, but since I'm quite familiar with the workings of the eye, let me try to lay it down for you.
Convergence means that in order to look at a particular object, both eyes must be pointed toward it. Your eyes are never pointed straight ahead, they're always turned slightly inward -- it's especially noticeable when you look at something close to your face and go cross-eyed!
Focus is a more easily understood principle, as it works the same with eyes as it does with cameras. In order to see an object sharply, the lens in each eye must be calibrated to resolve the object's light correctly on your retina. In the picture above, the lens is calibrated for the salt shaker, and as a consequence the other objects farther (or nearer) are out of focus.
Whenever you look at anything your eyes must converge on it and focus on it, but in 3D cinema and television, says Murch, that's messed up. The screen is X meters away, so your eyes must focus on that distance. But the 3D illusion places the virtual objects closer or farther away, and in order to look at those, your eyes much change their point of convergence.
In 600 million years of evolution, says Murch, no eye-equipped animal has faced this problem. We're not built to do it, so we'll never do it easily.
Why put ourselves through this persistent mental stress? Sure, it can be a fun diversion, and probably a tremendously exciting experience, but that experience should be short enough that it ends before we start to suffer from the strain we're placing on our eyes and our brain.
A good script, good acting and good cinematography will draw you into a picture far more than a clumsy illusion.
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