3D STAR WARS for the masses...has ARRIVED! — Page 11

xhonzi said:

Yeah, they've really raped that metaphor through cliched use.

 

 

*sorry*

lol!

See, I do have a sense of humor about this.  I'm just sick of hearing it applied to Star Wars.  It's just a movie (or series of movies if you aren't Anchorhead ;-)).  Yes, we love it, and it needs to be preserved, but I just want a little perspective here.

EyeShotFirst said:

ChainsawAsh said:

zombie84 said:

ChainsawAsh said:

Bingowings said:

it had a nice editorial comparing the 3Dising of classic 2D films to Ted Turner scribbling pastel shades over monochrome classics

That's good.  That's pretty much exactly how I feel about it.

 That's not the same. Ted Turner bought the films and changed them against the wishes of their owners. This is totally different--the owners are changing them on their own will.

Yeah, but I don't really care.  It wasn't shot that way, so I refuse to see it that way.  Even if a director chooses to colorize his own movie, as in your example, I'll never watch the colorized version, and I'll continue to wish it didn't exist, despite what the director says.

The same thing applies to 3D.

I still wouldn't have a problem with it if that was the case. It is the fact that each time Lazy Lucas and his goons make changes, they call it the definitive version and completely ignore all other versions. So 3D Star Wars will replace the SE and 2004 release as the hated version.

The Fanboys will say it is awesome though.

Well, I don't necessarily have a problem with directors doing that, so long as the original version is still available.  I'll just pretend the colorized/3D-ized versions don't exist.  It helps to not make me go crazy and kill people.  ;-)

ChainsawAsh said:

zombie84 said:

ChainsawAsh said:

Bingowings said:

it had a nice editorial comparing the 3Dising of classic 2D films to Ted Turner scribbling pastel shades over monochrome classics

That's good.  That's pretty much exactly how I feel about it.

 That's not the same. Ted Turner bought the films and changed them against the wishes of their owners. This is totally different--the owners are changing them on their own will.

Yeah, but I don't really care.  It wasn't shot that way, so I refuse to see it that way.  Even if a director chooses to colorize his own movie, as in your example, I'll never watch the colorized version, and I'll continue to wish it didn't exist, despite what the director says.

The same thing applies to 3D.

 This seems to me to be a rather rigid mode of thinking.

For example, editing. Often the craftiness of editing is to make things that weren't shot one way seem like they were in fact shot a certain way. You can manipulate a performance, create a camera move, or disrupt a camera move, you can even move around scenes and create a whole new story line.

The fact is, a film can be successfully re-shaped to take on characteristics it wasn't intended to have at the outset. Scoring brings the same thing. Maybe a director never intended a scene to have music, but the composer made music for it and suddenly the scene took on a quality and life that was completely different from what he was going for but liked it so much he used it.

This whole knee-jerk reaction against 3D perplexes me. It's a tool, just like editing, sound, music, colour and everything else in a movie. You can use these tools after the fact to enhance a movie very satisfyingly to achieve effects that you didn't have in mind at the time of shooting, or you can use them to screw up a movie that would have otherwise been fine. But its not the use of 3D itself, any more than the use of certain editing tricks to artificially manipulate the film can be blamed on the art of editing, or that films should be edited faithfully to the way they were written and shot. Bad 3D films ruin films, like Alice in Wonderland and Clash of the Titans, but good 3D is incredibly effective, like Avatar. I think it is a bit simplistic to write off 3D wholesale on the grounds of some "purist" argument.

I found the 3D version of Alice worked for that story and that film because it added to the distorted fantastic environment it was set in.

It didn't need to look realistic because the film was stylised to begin with.

It's the only modern 3D film I've seen and it wasn't originally intended to be in 3D but I enjoyed it.

Yeah, my problem with that film was that it often looked like 2D cut outs pasted on various layers. You are right that it does have a surrealistic effect that I found appropriate for the film, my main problem was that it had this blurry, messy quality to it that just was unappealing, it felt sort of unfinished or something.

So, this 2012's Phantom Menace will have the CGI Yoda? Regardless, I'll certainly put my money on it. Altered or not, it's Star Wars in cinemas again.

zombie84 said:

ChainsawAsh said:

zombie84 said:

ChainsawAsh said:

Bingowings said:

it had a nice editorial comparing the 3Dising of classic 2D films to Ted Turner scribbling pastel shades over monochrome classics

That's good.  That's pretty much exactly how I feel about it.

 That's not the same. Ted Turner bought the films and changed them against the wishes of their owners. This is totally different--the owners are changing them on their own will.

Yeah, but I don't really care.  It wasn't shot that way, so I refuse to see it that way.  Even if a director chooses to colorize his own movie, as in your example, I'll never watch the colorized version, and I'll continue to wish it didn't exist, despite what the director says.

The same thing applies to 3D.

 This seems to me to be a rather rigid mode of thinking.

For example, editing. Often the craftiness of editing is to make things that weren't shot one way seem like they were in fact shot a certain way. You can manipulate a performance, create a camera move, or disrupt a camera move, you can even move around scenes and create a whole new story line.

You misunderstand me.  By your logic, I shouldn't like any film, since they're all edited, and thus not presented the way they were shot.

I equate the conversion of 2D films into fake-3D to the cropping of widescreen movies, or the colorization of black-and-white films.

Look, I don't hate 3D.  3D is fine when it was shot with stereoscopic lenses, like Avatar, or Tron Legacy.

In fact, I just thought of a much better comparison: turning mono into fake stereo.  It never sounds right, and it destroys the original intent of the mix, regardless of whether the artist chose to make it that way or not.  I'm not talking about going back to the stems and making a new, true stereo mix - I'm talking about taking the mono mix, and running it through EQ and such to make it sound like it's in stereo.

Turning a 2D image into a 3D image is the same thing.  You're right about Toy Story and Toy Story 2 - Pixar was, in effect, able to go back to the "stems" and make a true "stereo mix," in that, since they had all the original files, they could just add a second camera to make a true 3D image.

You simply can't do this for something that was shot with a single lens.  It's trying to add something to the image that was never there to begin with.  Kind of like those 120/240Hz displays that add in fake frames to try to make things look "smoother," when really it just gives everything a very artificial, speed-up-then-slow-down effect.

And I will have no direct issue with modern films being converted from 2D to 3D in post, so long as the 2D version is released alongside the 3D version (like the next Harry Potter films).  I wish they wouldn't make the fake-3D versions, but that's their prerogative.  I have the option of not seeing them, and I take that option.

You will never get me to watch a 2D-to-3D conversion, just as you'll never get me to watch a colorized film or listen to a fake-stereo audio recording.

And not House Of Wax, It Came From Outerspace, Creature From The Black Lagoon, Blood For Dracula and/or Flesh For Frankenstein?

Some of these films haven't had a 3D release for many decades and they were designed to be seen in 3D.

Making them 3D again is to some degree restoration.

ChainsawAsh said:

zombie84 said:

ChainsawAsh said:

zombie84 said:

ChainsawAsh said:

Bingowings said:

it had a nice editorial comparing the 3Dising of classic 2D films to Ted Turner scribbling pastel shades over monochrome classics

That's good.  That's pretty much exactly how I feel about it.

 That's not the same. Ted Turner bought the films and changed them against the wishes of their owners. This is totally different--the owners are changing them on their own will.

Yeah, but I don't really care.  It wasn't shot that way, so I refuse to see it that way.  Even if a director chooses to colorize his own movie, as in your example, I'll never watch the colorized version, and I'll continue to wish it didn't exist, despite what the director says. 

The same thing applies to 3D.

 This seems to me to be a rather rigid mode of thinking.

For example, editing. Often the craftiness of editing is to make things that weren't shot one way seem like they were in fact shot a certain way. You can manipulate a performance, create a camera move, or disrupt a camera move, you can even move around scenes and create a whole new story line.

You misunderstand me.  By your logic, I shouldn't like any film, since they're all edited, and thus not presented the way they were shot.

I equate the conversion of 2D films into fake-3D to the cropping of widescreen movies, or the colorization of black-and-white films.

Look, I don't hate 3D.  3D is fine when it was shot with stereoscopic lenses, like Avatar, or Tron Legacy.

In fact, I just thought of a much better comparison: turning mono into fake stereo.  It never sounds right, and it destroys the original intent of the mix, regardless of whether the artist chose to make it that way or not.  I'm not talking about going back to the stems and making a new, true stereo mix - I'm talking about taking the mono mix, and running it through EQ and such to make it sound like it's in stereo.

Turning a 2D image into a 3D image is the same thing.  You're right about Toy Story and Toy Story 2 - Pixar was, in effect, able to go back to the "stems" and make a true "stereo mix," in that, since they had all the original files, they could just add a second camera to make a true 3D image.

You simply can't do this for something that was shot with a single lens.  It's trying to add something to the image that was never there to begin with.  Kind of like those 120/240Hz displays that add in fake frames to try to make things look "smoother," when really it just gives everything a very artificial, speed-up-then-slow-down effect.

And I will have no direct issue with modern films being converted from 2D to 3D in post, so long as the 2D version is released alongside the 3D version (like the next Harry Potter films).  I wish they wouldn't make the fake-3D versions, but that's their prerogative.  I have the option of not seeing them, and I take that option.

You will never get me to watch a 2D-to-3D conversion, just as you'll never get me to watch a colorized film or listen to a fake-stereo audio recording.

 The thing about this is:

Natively 3D filming (i.e. Avatar) in theory can be exactly the same as 2D-3D conversions. It's all an illusion anyway, it's all two-dimensional images projected in such a way as to trick the optics of your eye. The imaging technology is exactly the same as conversions however, 3D cameras film in two dimensions and project in two dimensions. With conversions, the only difference is if the makers take the time to put the layering details into the 2D conversion, and make it sophisticated enough. That's the clincher--3D lenses put all this dimensionalizing data into the image as it's captured, so it's free work. With 2D conversions you have to sit there and do the same thing manually that the 3D camera does automatically, and it takes a lot of work to do it convincingly "by hand", as it were.

That is essentially the only difference. In effect, there basically is no difference between a "native 3D" (which is a misnomer: its 2D, converted) and "converted 3D" (which is also a misnomer: in "native", the camera converts, in "conversions", VFX artists do it with computer software).

Which is why when you have 2D films that are decided to be converted to 3D at the last minute, like Clash of the Titans, it looks bad--they never had close to the amount of time that was necessary to convert the 2D image manually. A couple months. But to do it in a way that rivals the automated processes involved with a 3D camera and lens set takes years. Which is why James Cameron and George Lucas have been prepping their conversions for so long.

Which, again, is why I don't understand the hostility. 3D films are just 2D conversions captured with a camera and lens system rather than manually composited by VFX people. But in theory, a manually converted film could basically rival a native 3D capture, provided there is enough time and resources.

But it will be half-assed anyway, from what is known about Lucasfilm's treatment of the movies on DVD.

Now I'm thinking the reason Lucas made the OOT so great just so he could strangle it to death 20 years later out of pure, sadistic, cruelty. He is the Pol Pot of cinema.

We need Star Wars in 3D as much as we need a sequel to Thelma and Louise.

Whatever the gimmick, it is just another cash sucker and it is my choice to not participate.  It is more blatantly obvious than ever that we will never receive the OUT, which is the real travesty in the whole mess.

Being a Star Wars fan can be a most exasperating experience that can cause someone to just give up.

Not really. He has done everything in his power to ensure the OOT never gets seen in decent quality beyond even his won life. He has no regard for the damage he is doing to these films, but is rather proud of it. Now he sinks to another low point by releasing the films in 3-d, hoping to destroy 2d filmmaking- by stretching out a fad that should not have been revived twice in the last 50 years! Hell, the asshole who invented 3D should have left that idea on the drawing board and never look back.

Back to Lucas, he ranted about colorization 20 years ago, but now he is committing an act that is hundreds of times worse than the issue he complained about. He has said in countless interviews that the OOT is nothing more than a rough cut that he was ashamed of, and he doesn't care that that is the only version that is important, not the PTSE bullshit that has been shoved down our throats for the last 13 years. He is a revisionist in the same vein as any communist dictator hungry for power and recognition at the expense of everyone else save himself.

To Lucas, the OOT is on the same level as the SW Holiday Special:a thing that should be smashed with a hammer.

As I say rape as an exclusively sexual term is a modern parlance artifact, extreme as it may sound it is a correct use of the word from a certain point of view.

Actually, rape is more about power than it is about sex.

But anyway....

I never implied that Lucas raped my childhood. I personally did know who he was until I was 10 years old. But I knew SW long before I knew Lucas.

It sure would be nice if Lucas would stop putting my childhood in a gay parade.

;-)