Despite the news that The Avengers will be shot in 3D instead of resorting to a fake 3D upgrade in post production is good news. At least the 3D has a better chance of looking right and contributing to a better effect.
But Captain America Director Joe Johnston doesn’t feel that is accurate. He thinks post 3D is fine.
Get the Big Picture quotes Johnston:
“Conversion has gotten a bad rap because of pictures that have done it badly. If you shoot the movie and decide at the 11th hour to convert it to 3-D, you don’t have the necessary information to process what we call the ‘left eye’.”
“We’re shooting a whole separate pass on every setup to record the information necessary to convert to 3-D in a seamless and undetectable way. When conversion is done right, you can’t tell the difference between it and full 3-D,” Johnston adds.
Now to some extent I think he is right. Now there might be more weight to his argument if more films that converted to 3D in post were done well. But they are not universally bad, which suggests it can be done better and the real question is why are they not bothering to do it better?
Consider a film like X-Men Origins Wolverine, and the embarassingly bad “claws” in the bathroom scene. CG is a great tool, but if its not done right it is going to look like crap. I imagine like any effect there are better ways of doing it.
I am not against 3D any more than I would be against any visual technique. It just has to be done well to appreciate it. I honestly think a lot of the anti-3D movement is purely because of the upgraded cost. If they brought out this wave of 3D films (and still offered 2d alternatives) and didn’t charge more, people wouldn’t care.
Of course then they would be bitching that they couldn’t get into the 3D presentation and had to settle for 2D because the other ones were sold out.
