Movies, in the first decades of the 20th century, were considered humble, inferior quality goods for the masses. Though cinema was packing the crowds in, upper classes, more educated people did not acknowledge film as art. Only in the beginning of the 40’s did universities take film seriously, and started to deal with the fact that film became part of the modern culture. Motion picture became the seventh art.
Film has always been a product, but in most cases the director wanted to say, express something. Cinema came full circle and returned to the first image it had in the beginning, from the upper classes point of view. Today, it is only a product. The arrival of the new 3-D technique is like adding a catalyst to the process of depreciation of cinema.
Though 3-D is the most significant turning point in cinema’s history, film esthetes and critics should separate this new phenomenon from cinematic art. Besides, they should start a new chapter for three-dimensional motion pictures. Hollywood movie studios, such as Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, Disney, Paramount
3-D or S3D (stereoscopic 3-D) is not a completely new technique, though; it had been invented in the 50s. Two special motion picture cameras recorded the same scene from different perspectives, which gave the illusion of depth perception. People had to put on special glasses (with a blue and a red lens) during screening. These glasses tired people’s eyes out, some also felt dizzy and sick. The technique was rudimentary; nevertheless, in 1953, more than a hundred movies were made with this procedure. The studio owners were excited about this new form, and also trusted in it.
However, not only was the audience’s opinion negative, the directors were inexperienced and did not know how to shoot a film in this utterly different way. Though Alfred Hitchcock, Douglas Sirk, Raoul Walsh, André De Toth, and John Farrow made experiments (just to mention the greatest), they later gave up. None of the movies were good, and the technology was undeveloped.
Through the last decades of the 20th century, 3-D made a significant improvement. Aficionados call the last ten years the second golden era (the first one was back in the 50’s), or the rebirth of 3-D. Theaters, after boycotting the new technique for 50 years, invested more than $100,000,000 in 3D projectors, because the developed system was promising. The production budget of Spy Kids 3D: Game Over, directed by Robert Rodriguez, was 38 million dollars, and its total lifetime gross (domestic and foreign together) was almost 200 million dollars.
Studios claim that 3-D is not only a spectacle, but financial necessity: the last hope of the biggest Hollywood movies studios to fight against pirates and entice back the audience to the theaters. Jaffrey Katzenberg (co-founder of DreamWorks) states that 3-D is the third revolution in the history of cinema, after movies were in color, given sound. "I predict that within five to seven years, all theatrical release films are going to be done in this new 3D to bring audiences into the movie-making experience”, says Katzenberg. "It's not a secret that movie theater attendance is down as more people look to the home entertainment experience, but this 3D film process gives the moviegoer a reason to return to movie theaters."
The problem is that 3-D is an obstacle not only for the pirates, but also for the rest of the world’s filmmakers, who do not have the money to produce 3-D movies. The budget difference between a normal and a 3-D film is more than 15 million dollars. No wonder only the greatest Hollywood movie studios (DreamWorks, Fox, Universal, Disney, Warner) can afford to produce a motion picture in 3-D. Even for them, the switch to the new system is very expensive; still, they are the only ones who have enough money for it. Thus the gap between Hollywood
The highly anticipated directors of cinematic art (Milos Forman, Woody Allen, Roman Polanski, Jean Pierre Jeunet, Pedro Almodóvar, Terry Gilliam, Mike Figgis, Wim Wenders, Jim Jarmush) can hardly make their films, because none of the producers want to finance a motion picture that, although it has a lot to say about modern world, history, politics, or relationships, will not gross the production budget. Art film can only depend on the government’s help, as they do in all over Europe . Controversially, James Cameron got 400 million dollar credit for Avatar 2. He even attained a whole studio in Manhattan Beach.
People like all the 3-D movies, because they have fun, enjoy themselves. Millions of people all around the world announced that Avatar was the best movie ever made, that it was a milestone, and started a new chapter in the history of cinema. This is where the problem starts. The unusual, stunning experience made them forget that what the movie was really about is a mixture of Matrix and Pocahontas. Without the 3-D effect, the movie would have been an average adventure movie.
2-D films are already the third dimension of life. It gives a greater understanding of an issue, a political event, or human life: it is an essence, a structured look from above. 3-D does not give more than an extra chance to make the viewer feel closer to an extremely dangerous situation. Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park
Though there is a visual difference between 2-D and 3-D, the latter does not show anything that is not part of a 2-D film. If a character in the movie reaches out towards the screen in 3-D, it gives no extra information that a viewer would need. The editing of the two kinds of motion pictures is different, because a 3-D movie is only good for totals, and quick scenes make people lose track. “When you put the glasses on, everything gets dim”, says J. J. Abraham, producer of LOST series. People who wear glasses in everyday life cannot enjoy 3-D movies, because even if it is possible to put on two pairs of glasses, it is uncomfortable, and not precise. It would not be rational to say that 3-D motion pictures are negative discrimination though, because every movie is available in 2-D.
3-D might be only a periodical phenomenon. “Whenever Hollywood Chicago
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