Like someone recently said on either the message boards or the talkbacks (probably both, and probably more than a few someones), it isn’t a question of what articles to do about 3D anymore, but rather what articles not about 3D. Case in point, a recent story by writer Mike Fleming over at Deadline concerning Michael Bay and James Cameron and 3D…or the lack thereof:
“I shoot complicated stuff, I put real elements into action scenes and
honestly, I am not sold right now on the conversion process,” says
Michael Bay. Paramount and DreamWorks are pressuring him to allow Transformers 3
to be dimensional-ized after the fact, because there simply isn’t
enough time to shoot with 3D camera and post the film between now and
its July 1, 2011 release date.
Bay went on to elaborate on his preference for the process when it comes to his own films: “I am trying to be sold, and some companies are still working on the
shots I gave them,” Bay said. “Right now, it looks like fake 3D, with
layers that are very apparent. You go to the screening room, you are
hoping to be thrilled, and you’re thinking, huh, this kind of sucks.
People can say whatever they want about my movies, but they are
technically precise, and if this isn’t going to be excellent, I don’t
want to do it. And it is my choice.”
Furthermore, said Bay: “I’m used to having the A-team working on my films, and I’m
going to hand it over to the D-team, have it shipped to India and hope
for the best? This conversion process is always going to be inferior to
shooting in real 3D. Studios might be willing to sacrifice the look and
use the gimmick to make $3 more a ticket, but I’m not. Avatar took four years. You can’t just shit out a 3D movie. I’m saying, the jury is still out.”
There’s plenty more, including some thoughts by Cameron on how his process for Avatar differed from the quickie post-2D-to-3D process. You can click over for the whole story. But I’m just glad that not everyone is shooting their load over the whole 3D phenomenon as the rest of Hollywood already seems to be.
Thanks to Joshua for the tip.