Not sure if the quotes are recent or based on previous comments he had made when this subject came up before.
Another hold-out is Pan's Labyrinth director Guillermo Del Toro, who plans to make The Hobbit in 2D, according to producer Peter Jackson.
"Guillermo wants to shoot in 35mm, old-fashioned film," Jackson has said, "which suits me, because he wants to keep it in the same space as the original [Lord Of The Rings] trilogy".
Jackson has been keen not to over-emphasise the vogue for 3D, saying it "only adds to the experience" of watching a movie.
"The only thing I get annoyed about is the image being a little dull. It does feel like you're looking at the movie with sunglasses on."
I'm ninety percent sure that that quote about GdT wanting to shoot in 35 mm is old.
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
I agree. I don't recall seeing the other comments before, and they do seem less keen on 3-D then other comments by Jackson that I have seen. I am guessing that the whole 3-D debate is on hold until the MGM is resolved, just like everything else.
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
I'm coming down on the side of hoping they don't do 3D and GdT really does want to keep it in the same "space" as the LotR films in terms of filming.
I saw Avatar in 3D and enjoyed the experience, but the glasses do make the colors more dull. I just saw part of the Blu-Ray of the film and the consequence there is that the colors seem unnaturally bright—I wonder if they balanced them allowing for the glasses. It's still very pretty, but I definitely didn't miss the 3D.
One of my few visual gripes about the LotR film is that I think PJ overused the color processing; some long segments with a blue-gray "overlay" (or whatever you would call it) might as well have been filmed in black and white. The segments without so much color processing, such as the Shire and Rohan, stand out to me; visually I enjoy them much more. I hope GdT's effort to make the Hobbit films compatible with PJ's LotR doesn't extend to wiping out half the color spectrum in much of the film. A 3D version would produce that effect throughout.
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
If Hollywood believes - even partly - that 3D is a magic bullet which protects them from bootleggers, we will see more and more of them until they become the routine in the business.
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.... John Rogers
Mmmm that's an interesting point SF. At least for now, not that many people have a compatible 3-D setup at home, certainly not enough to make a bootleg worthwhile.
Prim--
Just watched FOTR for the first time with my son, so some of the color effects are fairly fresh in my mind. I like them for shorter scenes, especially when they're associated with an Elven location (Rivendell, Lothlórien), precisely because they evoke a certain faded, distant atmosphere. But they are also visually tiring, and the comparison to the saturation loss in 3-D is apt.
The Hobbit is mentioned in this article about directors resisting 3-D pressure from Hollywood
While Hollywood rushes dozens of 3-D movies to the screen — nearly 60 are planned in the next two years, including “Saw VII” and “Mars Needs Moms!” — a rebellion among some filmmakers and viewers has been complicating the industry’s jump into the third dimension.
It’s hard to measure the audience resistance — online complaints don’t mean much when crowds are paying the premium 3-D prices. But filmmakers are another matter, and their attitudes may tell whether Hollywood’s 3-D leap is about to hit a wall.
Several influential directors took surprisingly public potshots at the 3-D boom during the recent Comic-Con International pop culture convention in San Diego.
. . .
The crowds cheered, as they had in an earlier Comic-Con briefing by Chris Pirrotta and other staff members of the fan site TheOneRing.net, who assured 300 listeners that a pair of planned “Hobbit” films will not be in 3-D, based on the site’s extensive reporting.
“Out of 450 people surveyed, 450 don’t want 3D for ‘The Hobbit,’ ” a later post on the Web site said.
But in Hollywood, an executive briefed on the matter — who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicate negotiations surrounding a plan to have Peter Jackson direct the “Hobbit” films — said the dimensional status of the movie remained unresolved.
Asked by phone recently whether die-hard fans would tolerate a 3-D Middle Earth, Mr. Pirrotta said, “I do believe so, as long as there was the standard version as well.”
There is magic in long-distance friendships. They let you relate to other human beings in a way that goes beyond being physically together and is often more profound.
~Diana Cortes
Yes and no, yovargas. There are some techniques of cinematography 3D screws up, and others great for 3D that do little in 2D. Case in point would be switching from a shallow depth of field close focus on a face to shallow depth of field medium focus on a person standing nearby, which is a common way of moving emphasis from one character to another. Wonderful in 2D if done right, but in 3D it just looks funny.
Doesn't sound like much, but add up enough choices that the format makes for you, and you can end up with a movie with a subpar 2D version and a great 3D, or vice versa.
Last edited by axordil on Tue Aug 03, 2010 4:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.
But a film shot for 3-D viewing is going to contain some shots intended for that technique that might look jarring or even silly to those not watching in 3-D. (I keep thinking of a very old Saturday Night Live sketch, "3D House of Pancakes," where a sinister waiter keeps thrusting a plate of pancakes directly at the camera and hissing, "Have some . . . pancakes!" doik doik doik.)
My preference is for filming in a way that makes the camera "invisible," a window into Middle-earth, not a filter between me and it, no matter how amazing some of the effects might be.
ETA: Cross-posted with Ax. Wot he sed. And yes I did edit his post not mine first. Fixed it.
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
Not necessarily, I don't think. When I saw Avatar in 2D, there was nothing that distracted me, thinking that it looked jarringly "off". But when I saw it in 3D, it was obvious that was how it was shot. So I think it can be done.
That having been said, I'm completely ambivilent as to the 3D debate. I don't really care which way they decide to go (so long as they decide to go!). It amazes me how vehement (and downright nasty, at times) the discussions about 3D at TORN are.
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
Any 3D movie worth its salt should be conceptualized in 3D from the beginning, like Avatar, or even How to Train your Dragon. Movies they run through the Depth Injectorizer are the worst of both worlds.
Given that rethinking TH in that fashion would add even more time to production, I'm agin it.
My biggest problem with 3-D (other than wearing those dumb glasses that are annoying) is the sometimes obvious shot or scene that is filmed solely to make use of the 3-D, and does nothing to further the story or cinematography for that matter. Like nudity in a movie for the sake of nudity in a movie.
The last thing I want at PJ's disposal is another vehicle for him to be superfluous.
My son who's studying to be a cinematographer says seriously that 3D is a gimmick and a fad and will never be universally used. And he's too young, really, to be a fuddy-duddy.
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
Call me geeky, but I had to smile at the remark that the "dimensional status of the movie remained unresolved."
Filming in New Zealand was exotic enough. Filming in another dimension?
Take my hand, my friend. We are here to walk one another home.
Holbytla wrote:My biggest problem with 3-D (other than wearing those dumb glasses that are annoying) is the sometimes obvious shot or scene that is filmed solely to make use of the 3-D, and does nothing to further the story or cinematography for that matter. Like nudity in a movie for the sake of nudity in a movie.
The last thing I want at PJ's disposal is another vehicle for him to be superfluous.
3D Nudity for the sake of 3d nudity, maybe there will be some eye-poppin moments.
btw I am still waiting for PJ to produce a script that is anything more than one-dimensional
