The Next Dimension: Does 3D Really Work?

The Next Dimension: Does 3D Really Work?

Posted on Friday May 15, 2009, 10:56 by Dan Jolin in Empire States

The Japanese call it shoboshobo. The technical term is asthenopia. I call it 3D red-eye. And it’s the main reason why I remain skeptical — I’d like to think respectfully skeptical — about the burgeoning 3D revolution.

Some time ago I went to see Beowulf at the London IMAX. This was my last 3D experience, and for a while I was determined that it would remain my last 3D experience. I had no problem with the film itself; I enjoyed it primarily due to Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary’s script, a bold new take on one of the oldest of legends. But the 3D itself failed to make it anything more of an immersive entertainment than it would have been in 2D. In fact, it was a barrier to enjoyment. Sat, as I was, very slightly off-centre in the auditorium, everything on-screen blurred at the edges. I found myself having to lean leftways very slightly to minimise the effect as much as possible. Then, afterwards I realised my eyeballs felt like they’d been glasspapered. I looked at my wife and my friends. They blinked blearily back through bloodshot peepers, as if they’d just woken up from an all-night tequila binge in a smoke-filled room. The general gist of the journey home was: “Yeah, that was quite fun, but fuck my eyes hurt.” All agreed we’d have had a better time if we’d seen the monoscopic version.

Since then I’ve read more and more — from filmmakers I’ve long respected (Spielberg, Jackson, Cameron, Lasseter), and especially from format cheerleader Jeffrey Katzenberg — that 3D is soon going to be the industry standard and that we’ll all one day posess our own polarized glasses. (No doubt the coolest kids will be wearing their special Oakleys. As a glasses-wearer, though, I will just have to plump for the naff big ones that sit uncomfortably over my own specs and make the bridge of my nose hurt.)

But it seems even the much-touted, new-school ‘RealD’ results in visual fatigue. Last month, in his excellent blog on Slate (check it out here), Daniel Engber lucidly explained how our eyes work, and how the very process of 3D causes them to react unnaturally — this being the prime suspect in the crime that is 3D red-eye. He, like me, has suffered ocular discomfort during stereoscopic entertainments, right up to and including Monsters Vs Aliens, now the biggest 3D movie ever released.

Engber, naturally, has only entrenched my skepticism, which even extends to the bigger question: do we even really need 3D? Never underestimate the power of empathy and the imagination — otherwise how would the written (or indeed spoken) word have become such a potent entertainment form? If a movie is well-shot, well-written and well-performed enough, then we feel the depth. We are transported into a world as three-dimensional and, for that matter, tactile as our own. Shooting in stereo has as much a chance of pushing its audience away rather then pulling them further in. Of course, I’d love to be proven wrong, and intend to resume checking out 3D films in an effort to be so.

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with the words of Sam Mendes — one of our smartest film-makers — who, when asked in our 20th Birthday Issue if he was ‘going 3D’ responded: “I have. It’s called the theatre.”