Why 3D Movies Are Not Immersive

 

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Wendy Marcini, Elvin Vanguard "Lost In Translation"
pär, "My Sweet Ding-Didely-Dey "

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The Nerdwriter is a series of video essays about art, culture, politics, philosophy and more.

[yricktube]

An additional problem is if you watch the movie with subtitles, because i am dutch and we never translate the audio (which i think is a good thing, because the voice is a part of an actor performance) we have subtitles for all foreign movies (and in the theater without personal choice). For a 3D movie the subtitles are in a sharp 2D plane of it's own, which is on-changing and often not the same plane where the focus point in the picture is. So then there are two sharp planes to switch between if you are reading and looking at the action. Having to adjust even more and thus breaking the emersion even more.

[XjackX]

On the topic with the smaller screen: I don't think the screen itself is shrinking in 3D. The problem ist that the "stage" for the action is not a rectangle that extends the screen towards you, but rather a cone that gets smaller with less distance to your eyes. Therefore the closer the objects are to you, the less space is available for them. Making it hard to feel immersive when you are just a bit too far away from the screen. This was the case for me when watching the new Avatar and I could see the 3D space ending outside of the cone instead of having it "surround" me. Sitting closer might solve this by moving the edges of the cone more in the peripheral field of view.

[blooshine]

Hard, hard disagree with this whole video. I felt super immersed in the world of Pandora when I watched Avatar 2. I think it's one of the best uses of 3d as a format since its inception. One of the other best instances of 3d is Henry Sellick's Coraline, a movie that changes the distance of focus when Coraline travels to the other world. You can feel the space between the characters. It's so difficult to explain, but something I'm so glad I got to experience.

[elsa_g]

I had a very different experience. For the river childhood fishing scene, I even noticed myself moving my head to try and see around the tree that was in front of part of the scene (which the camera then panned around). I thought that was very clever and immersive. I do wish they’ll improve the lighting technology though so the color perception can be improved.

[kowru]

I'm a VR developer and stereographer

1. The convergence speed of your eyes is very quick, most movies dont even have as much depth as real life. 3D actually help you identify items faster and tricks your brain into thinking its seeing more resolution and it comes out as more detail as shown in studies.

2. its dark, but some theaters or 3d tech have different luminance, so its not a problem of 3D itself. if you watch a 3D movie in VR, its perfectly bright.

3. your depth of field arguement I'm not sure i understand why it traps you? your eyes dont actually try to focus the blurry image, just as your eyes would not try to focus a blurry picture in your actual life. if you have a blurry photo on your phone and hold it behind something else in front of you, your eyes do not look at the blurry photo and try to sharpen it.

I'm not sure this subject is researched enough on your part. if you dont like 3D, cool, but i wouldn't make a video that comes off as factual, when it isn't. if anything, you might put off someone else from trying it who might otherwise love it.

[MCSolaireBro]

These are good and well researched reasons which I agree with, but I still thought the 3d in Avatar was very immersive! it actually changed my mind that in some circumstance it's more than a gimmick, I usually actively avoid 3d. It was a very large imax theatre so that does directly negate some of points mentioned, the image was very bright and the screen was so massive it did not shrink with glasses on.

[cdreNightshift]

I am fascinated how much this video contradicts my own experience.

1. After at most 20 minutes, I get used to the focus/convergence situation and adjusting for it becomes instant and automatic. No eye strain, no headaches. (Then again, I don't get headaches or motion sickness, ever, so maybe I've got an advantage there. Still, this shouldn't be an issue with normal length movies at least.)

2. I've never noticed any problems with the brightness. While a brighter projector might enhance my experience, the current setup does not deny me any immersion.

3. I have no idea what you are talking about the screen feeling smaller. I can't imagine what could cause this. I'm used to wearing glasses, maybe the unfamiliar frame in your peripheral vision tricks your perception? Anyway, whenever I switch between 3D glasses and no glasses to compare the differences, apparent screen size was never an issue.

4. Modern movies have become a lot better at using deep focus as much as possible when they are made for 3D. Even so, I do not feel any discomfort while looking at blurry 3D and I do find your description of your experience quite puzzling.

I suspect the issue lies with what you said near the beginning: You have not watched any 3D movies for 10 years or so. Your brain is just not used to the setup. These are novel circumstances for your visual system and it is simply lacking the training to deal with it.

Right now, you are like a person, well into their adult life, who never before watched any movie on any screen, and then went to the cinema for their first time to see a ("normal" 2D) movie, only to complain about all the cuts being confusing. How jumping from one persons face to the other during dialogue was making them dizzy. How a panning shot gave them vertigo.

You are so new to this experience, this might as well have been your first time. No wonder you are overwhelmed and disoriented. This is a new thechnology with new challenges for your brain, for your visual perception, for the interplay of all the muscles in your eyes. You need to get used to this first, before you are able to enjoy the benefits. Go and watch a 3D movie once a month and before the end of the year, at least half of your complaints will have vanished.

[pawned]

First time I noticed the forced focus was when I saw Prometheus in 3D and two characters were standing around a kitchen island covered in bottles, and I was curious what wine they had been drinking. Some of the bottles on the island were actually closer to the camera than the actors were, but yet I couldn’t see them.

[mbrochh]

all nice in theory, but I must say I experienced none of these issues. Got no headache, the colors of Pandora popped like crazy, the screen was as huge as it should be and I didn't have any problems to focus on whatever I wanted. I feel like you went into the movie specifically looking for all these issues because you know the theory behind them well. I doubt most normal people would attest that they had any of these issues in Avatar.

[daniellaing]

I saw Avatar on a huge IMAX Laser screen, and I have never felt more immersed in a film. It was like I was looking through a window

[packman]

I think there's also a level to which 3D fails to be immersive (at least to me) because the problem its gimmick exists to solve is already one that cinema has lots of solutions for. Depth is created in set design, in the shot composition and so on. We're already experts at creating depth illusions in film so adding 'real depth' just isn't much of a selling point. That and my brother is completely unable to get 3D films to work for him (he has a thing with his eyes where making them do too much work causes one of them to stop sending feedback [like a lazy eye, but seemingly random as to which eye stops] so he gets at most 2 minutes of 3D, then watches the entire rest of the movie through one eye, which tends to make him feel ill) so that soured me against them.

[MeatyGorak]

I didn’t seem to have any of these problems. I felt really immersed throughout the whole movie and loved seeing the depth of field in some scenes. And the movie looked plenty bright when I watch it. Never once thought any of the scenes were too dark.

[Catwoman]

I went to an Imax in the Berlin Sony Center once and was blown away by the immersive Documentary about Dinosaurs. It was simple 3D animation but everyone in the cinema would flinch whenever something charged towards them. It was great, unfortunately it has been disassembled and a 2D cinema put there instead. I will never forget how good the effects were.

[t.s.a.d]

The best movie I've ever seen in 3D was Bi Gan's "Long Day's Journey Into Night", which only uses 3D for the second half of it. All of the drawbacks you mentioned, though, like the darkness, the 'shrinking' of the screen, the flattening of focus, all end up suiting what's happening in the movie. The movie becomes a lot more surreal / dreamlike in the last hour, so watching in 3D helps solidify the difference between the realism at the start.

[Dexter]

It's funny that you use this exact movie as an example because I actually thought the 3D on Avatar 2 was the best I'd ever seen done on a movie - it really made me jump a few times when things were coming towards the camera and I also didn't lose the feeling of the third dimension during the entire run. Something I've never felt since the first time I watched a movie in 3D.

[joepiekl]

For me, the main issue is that it constantly reminds you that you're watching a movie. I even went to watch a 4D movie once, with the moving chairs stuff. It was just really distracting, because you're focused on the technology over the story.

[entropyme]

slightly different take here: Avatar the way of water is probably one of the (if not the) most immersive 3D movies I've ever seen. Cameron really figured out how to do it right. Agreed on all your points applied to other subpar 3D movies though

[piralos]

Honestly, one thing I would LOVE is for a film to use that final issue, the one about depth of focus and the inability to focus on things in the background, deliberately. I don't know exactly how, but in something like a character experiencing a dream and not knowing, or them being manipulated by something to alter their understanding of what is - and using that lack of ability to even focus on what isn't in focus to draw the audience in more. Possibly even have the character noticably be unable to focus on anything other than the other person, things deliberately not lining up correctly in a shot reverse shot. Taking this thing that is absolutely an issue, and using the very issue it causes as a technique.

[SanguineThor]

This made me think about how you can focus on an object in the "distance" in VR games. I started to desensitize myself to motion sickness, and one of the aspects that helped me was learning to focus (or not focus) on a distant object while moving in VR. The vignette effect while teleporting in VR is also a massive help with these things. It closes off your peripheral vision and makes it comfortable to move.

[houston-coley]

I've actually gotta disagree with this one, at least in the case of Avatar: The Way of Water. Most 3D is tacked-on and gimmicky, and falls into many of the traps you describe here - but with Avatar is made explicitly and intentionally for the 3D format and thus, for me anyway, works way better than anything else. The underwater stuff in particular was probably the most immersed I've felt in a movie in ages.