From the sounds of it, that didn't go well - "The test was not great. It was discombobulating and we discovered that the things that we find exciting about 3-D just didn't apply to a 'Fast' film. The way we shot the movie and, more importantly, the way we cut it does not lend itself to 3-D" says Universal co-chairman Donna Langley.

Langley is referring to one of the issues that has emerged with 3D - fast editing. The hyperkinetic, quick cut editing techniques and shaky cam aesthetic that modern filmmakers seem to love is anathema to both the technology and audience comfort using it. Long takes with limited movement of the frame tend to work much better and reduce eyestrain.

The hyperkinetic, quick cut editing techniques and shaky cam aesthetic that modern filmmakers seem to love is anathema to both the technology and audience comfort using it. Long takes with limited movement of the frame tend to work much better and reduce eyestrain.

I find that's true even without the 3D. Fast cuts really do my head in.

+1, there's just no need for it, and it's ruined many potentially great films

Or, alternatively, it's a useful way of building tension and creating movement.
Horses for courses. I think it's a perfectly valid technique.

Dear Three-Dee: How do I loathe thee? Let me count the ways. One dimension. Two dimensions. Three dimensions! ;P
The inimitable Walter Murch detailed many of the problems with 3D in cinema. You can read his damning indictments in Roger Ebert’s article: “Why 3D doesn't work and never will. Case closed.” Nevertheless, I’d like to reiterate them, and chuck in a few additional gripes. And since I can’t squeeze all of them into 140 characters without overloading twitter feeds, I thought I’d scribble a list here. Of course, if you google “3D” together with “puke”, “pain” and “debilitating migraine”, it might return a bajillion more links to information on the matter, but hopefully this list will serve as a handy summary:

•Not everyone has 20/20 vision.
•Not everyone has the same shape of head. Those glasses can hurt your ears!
•Not everyone can sit in the middle row, middle section, and middle seat for optimal 3D viewing.
•Dim images: Those polarising lenses block out an awful lot of light.
•Evolution: My brain already interprets 3D from parallax movement, vanishing points and light.
•I love bokeh and the use of shallow depth of field to draw the eye to what’s significant. Ironically, 3D can be pretty flat.
•Every different focal length of lens has a different vanishing points: Uh-Oh! Careful cutting from one shot to another, it might make your audience sick... Literally! We need standardised health guidelines for 3D, like we have for epilepsy sufferers.
•The problem of what the eye should focus on are compounded if subtitles are required.
•All of the above is a distraction from story: Verfremdungseffekt! (Distancing effect)

Perhaps when the ‘Star Trek’ holodeck finally arrives, 3D will have better resolution and faster frame rates than real life. But until 3D is no longer a suffix to a film title, when it’s simply a norm that audiences can take for granted and, even more importantly, when it’s something that we do not even notice, I’m keeping it old school 2D.

Hello Roger,

I read your review of "Green Hornet" and though I haven't seen the film, I agree with your comments about 3D.

The 3D image is dark, as you mentioned (about a camera stop darker) and small. Somehow the glasses "gather in" the image -- even on a huge Imax screen -- and make it seem half the scope of the same image when looked at without the glasses.

I edited one 3D film back in the 1980's -- "Captain Eo" -- and also noticed that horizontal movement will strobe much sooner in 3D than it does in 2D. This was true then, and it is still true now. It has something to do with the amount of brain power dedicated to studying the edges of things. The more conscious we are of edges, the earlier strobing kicks in.

The biggest problem with 3D, though, is the "convergence/focus" issue. A couple of the other issues -- darkness and "smallness" -- are at least theoretically solvable. But the deeper problem is that the audience must focus their eyes at the plane of the screen -- say it is 80 feet away. This is constant no matter what.

But their eyes must converge at perhaps 10 feet away, then 60 feet, then 120 feet, and so on, depending on what the illusion is. So 3D films require us to focus at one distance and converge at another. And 600 million years of evolution has never presented this problem before. All living things with eyes have always focussed and converged at the same point.

If we look at the salt shaker on the table, close to us, we focus at six feet and our eyeballs converge (tilt in) at six feet. Imagine the base of a triangle between your eyes and the apex of the triangle resting on the thing you are looking at. But then look out the window and you focus at sixty feet and converge also at sixty feet. That imaginary triangle has now "opened up" so that your lines of sight are almost -- almost -- parallel to each other.

We can do this. 3D films would not work if we couldn't. But it is like tapping your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time, difficult. So the "CPU" of our perceptual brain has to work extra hard, which is why after 20 minutes or so many people get headaches. They are doing something that 600 million years of evolution never prepared them for. This is a deep problem, which no amount of technical tweaking can fix. Nothing will fix it short of producing true "holographic" images.

Consequently, the editing of 3D films cannot be as rapid as for 2D films, because of this shifting of convergence: it takes a number of milliseconds for the brain/eye to "get" what the space of each shot is and adjust.

And lastly, the question of immersion. 3D films remind the audience that they are in a certain "perspective" relationship to the image. It is almost a Brechtian trick. Whereas if the film story has really gripped an audience they are "in" the picture in a kind of dreamlike "spaceless" space. So a good story will give you more dimensionality than you can ever cope with.

So: dark, small, stroby, headache inducing, alienating. And expensive. The question is: how long will it take people to realize and get fed up?

All best wishes,

Walter Murch

Or, alternatively, it's a useful way of building tension and creating movement.
Horses for courses. I think it's a perfectly valid technique.

This business of talking pictures though, it's a nonsense. Give me a nice black and white, static, silent cinematograph.