Screen Machine

Feature: In defence of the third dimension

In the aftermath of Avatar, we can most surely say that we are in the midst of a stereoscopic renaissance. Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland 3D made a bucket-load at the box-office breaking the record for biggest March opening ever in the United States. And there seems to be no slowing up of 3-D releases in the near future with Shrek Forever After, Toy Story 3 and Tron Legacy on the horizon. However, the technology has not fared well with film critics. And admittedly there is good reason for this: Most films released in 3-D are simply not good films. But what is surprising is how critics have gone beyond their usual practice of calling out bad films to vehemently campaigning against the 3-D technology itself that is being adopted by filmmakers.

Take for example the tired snark of The Playlist who incessantly accompany the term “3-D” with the words “gimmick” or “fad”:

No offense, but the day we’re sitting at home wearing 3D glasses is the day we’ve given up on everything.

Meanwhile, Devin Faraci of CHUD undermined some otherwise intelligent writing on the economics of 3-D and why it might fail to be adopted by audiences by casting his analysis as wish-fulfilment fantasy:

I won’t be sorry to see 3D sunk by the greed and stupidity of Hollywood; I think it’s a gimmick and even when used well isn’t that interesting beyond the most base spectacle level.

And finally, the ridiculous hyperbole of respected Twitter user, Roger Ebert:

It’s always a bit weird to see Ebert, the screenwriter of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, take a stance against low-brow cinema. What’s even weirder is how unmindful Ebert is of history. Here he is, acting as if Scorsese making a 3-D film is some apocalyptic cultural catastrophe but of course Ebert knows that Scorsese would not be the first “serious” auteur to experiment with 3-D. Dial M for Murder,  the 1954 suspense classic from Alfred Hitchcock, the auteur par excellence, was originally shot stereoscopically. When one watches the film with this in mind, it is evident that the film was designed and framed to take advantage of the medium – the incredible attention to foreground and background, the indelible image of Grace Kelly reaching out towards the camera for the scissors as she is being strangled by the home invader.

So what is the source of this technophobia, this amplified rejection of 3-D technology?

Perhaps these commentators are clinging to a purist conception of cinema and see 3-D as an alien medium that will destroy the art form. But any student of film history knows that cinema has always been evolving technologically. Cinema has changed drastically from its origins in early silent cinema with the adoption of sound in the twenties evolving into surround sound; the introduction of colour; the expansion of screen sizes to the reaches of the audience’s peripheral vision and then screen size’s diminishment with the advent of torrents, Youtube and iPhones. There is no “pure cinema”. The only constant throughout film history is that cinematic technology has always pushed to engage the audience’s senses as fully as possible. One might even argue that if cinema is a predominantly visual medium, then the development of 3-D is even more important than sound (which is just silly talk, I know).

Perhaps the fear is that 3-D will reduce cinema to empty spectacle as illustrated by Devin Faraci’s lament that “we’re moving ever closer to a theatrical world where the line between amusement park ride and movie is blurred”.  This is again, to twist film history. As Tom Gunning has explored in his research on the “Cinema of Attractions”, cinema from its inception has been fascinated with the image itself, that is, its “ability to show something”. You only need to think of the Lumiere Brothers’ The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station, a 50-second film from 1895 consisting of a single shot of a train moving towards the camera as it pulls into the station. According to legend, the audience ran screaming to the back of the room, so convinced were they of the image. Almost a century earlier, Robertson would be holding magic-lantern shows, whereby images of ghouls and ghosts would be projected on walls and in smoke to terrify the audience.

An illustration of one of the legendary "magic lantern shows"

If you think about some of your favourite movie moments, a great many of them are there because of that quality of being spectacular. I remember being awed by the sheer spectacle of cinema watching Jurassic Park at the cinema when it first came out, gasping at the first sight of the brachiosauruses, finding it hard to deny their existence when they were right there in front of me. More recently, I found myself at Hong Kong Disneyland a few years ago watching a 3-D film, basically a medley of Disney songs re-animated in 3-D. Ariel floated into screen to sing “Part of Your World” and swam out of the screen into the audience. Almost every man in attendance roared with delight and reached out in an attempt to touch her. As I watched the men trying to cop a feel of Ariel’s animated clam-shell-supported breasts, I could not help but feel the lineage 3-D shares with Lumiere and Robertson.

Another possible claim against 3-D is that it is incapable of furthering cinema as an art form, otherwise known as the “gimmick” charge. I really disagree with this. The real problem, as I see it, is not that 3-D has nothing substantial to contribute to cinema. It’s that critics have not yet found a language to discuss 3-D perception in the same way that we talk about how, say, colour affects us. I’m not at all arguing that the use of 3-D in films thus far constitutes some kind of major artistic achievement. I’m well aware that The Final Destination is not 8 1/2. But that’s beside the point. It’s not hard to see that 3-D has potential to be used in poetic ways unattainable by 2-D representation. What 3-D uniquely provides cinema with is the illusion of physical presence, of space, of form.

Le Corbusier

The key to unlocking the expressive potential of 3-D might be gained by looking to other art forms that deal with presence, space and form, be it sculpture, architecture or theatre. 3-D may be the difference between sculpture and painting; between a photo of the Parthenon and the experience of walking amongst its columns. Disney hit it right on the mark with the release of Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience. If I was a tween girl, of course I would want to feel the sensation of being in the very presence of Joe, Nick and Kevin as they hang out in their change-room.

And at the same time, have we forgotten all the gimmicky cliches that the other technological advances have brought to cinema? The introduction of sound alone has brought us the wonders of expository dialogue, over-use of voiceover and manipulative music cues. Yet no-one in their right mind would argue that sound has not extended film’s expressive potential.

And the thing is, filmmakers are already beginning to use 3-D in an expressive way that directly informs their film’s narrative. I’ve written previously on how the audience’s experience of 3-D effects in Avatar was symbolised in the narrative by the character Jake Sully’s technologically-enabled experience of Pandora. I almost wish James Cameron had chosen for the 3-D effect in Avatar to kick in only once Jake Sully’s consciousness was implanted into the body of a Na’vi à la the transition to colour in The Wizard of Oz (Cameron’s favourite movie) to make the point that much more obvious to 3-D naysayers.

If you saw Rob Zemeckis’ A Christmas Carol in a cinema and were paying special attention, you’ll have noticed that whole acts of the film were presented in long takes, giving the audience a similar feeling to being on the “Pirates of the Caribbean” ride at Disneyland. This was not a bad thing. It evoked a very particular feeling of being within the diagetic universe of the film coupled with an acute awareness of being unbearably powerless to have any effect on the scenario. This was not at all gimmicky or meaningless – it was also symbolic of the protagonist Ebenezer Scrooge’s emotional state as he is led by the spirits of Christmas through his own past, present and future. He is re-feeling these moments so keenly yet also aware of his lack of agency.

These films are far from perfect, yet the point I want to make is that the use of 3-D was far from empty. They were integral to the films as artistic expressions. With this in mind, hearing Scorsese talk about his interest in shooting in 3-D is actually heartening:

The director told ShortList: “I’m very excited by 3D. I was always excited by 3D. I was 10 years old when the first 3D wave occurred in 1953. Why should we be limited? I mean, I’m seeing you and the space is real. Time isn’t real. Time is abstract. Space is real.”

Earlier at the LA County Museum of Art, Scorsese told an audience:

“I said ‘I really would [like to shoot in 3D] and one of the [filmmakers I was talking to] pointed to space [motioning between the screen and the audience]. I said, you’re right, I would have to know how to utilize that space in the script — when to use that [camera] move or when to reveal that thing in 3D. Now, I don’t know if I could do that. But I said maybe my daughter’s generation will. They’ll just know by naturally because of the technology they have at their disposal.”

Stereoscopic film has a long way to go before it reaches its real potential. This is not just a case of filmmakers exploring how to use it in an interesting way. Technological advancements also need to be made. The technology does still give people headaches and it is jarring to experience 3-D yet be forced by the filmmakers to focus on some particular part of the frame. I’m of the mind that 3-D filmmakers should start focusing on longer shots and using deep focus. But even now, engineers are already looking into how to create an image that allows the audience’s eye to direct focus. Call me geeky if you will, but that’s pretty exciting.

As commentators on film, it is too easy to militantly position oneself against 3-D. The danger there lies in becoming as conservative as an art critic preaching that collage has no place in the world of painting (or a music critic preaching that Auto-Tune has no place in pop music). The challenge for the film critic is to find the language to articulate the qualities of 3-D, to become part of the process (along with filmmakers) of discovering its expressive potentials.

Brad Nguyen is a co-editor of Screen Machine. He studied Cinema Studies at the University of Melbourne, was the film reviewer for Triple R Breakfasters and has written for Senses of Cinema.

→ more articles by Brad Nguyen