Sorry for the pun in the title, I couldn’t resist.

I’ve always loved 3D technology, it’s been around for more than 100 years so it’s near enough the steampunk of video, and every few years it’s revitalised and filmmakers have another crack at trying to ignite excitement in the old ways. 2009 is a landmark year for it’s advancement, with all major animation studios bringing out a new 3D movie, including Pixar’s ‘Up’ and Dreamwork’s ‘Monsters vs. Aliens’ but will this attempt to bring 3D into the modern age be successful?

There are a variety of ways that 3D works, the common feature in all is studios film two different views of the same thing (much how human eyes see objects), then the process that follow depend on the type of glasses that will be used. Some flick the view from each lense on and off continuously so that the eyes keep seeing two different aspects which the eyes will translate into one image and thus 3D. Other ways, including the one I used for my test, include colourising each view if the glasses have certain colours (such as my test glasses, pictured) which used a red/cyan setup. In the latter example, the colour of one aspect is washed out by the lens so that the viewer sees two slightly different views in either eye, again translated into one image by the brain.

The technology aside, it’s application in our everyday lives as much as TV and film is now is a point of consideration. This technology has been around for so long yet never been taken mainstream on a regular series of movies. In the past decade, any 3D movie has been either kids films with a lot of (or even consisting entirely of) CGI backgrounds or animations, other than ‘My Bloody Valentine 3D’ which was released last year with a barrage of grizzly horror in 3D. Perhaps then, the advancement of such digital technology will allow filmmakers to perfect the art of 3D film, the problem then is focusing too much on showing off the technology rather than story, worsened by the cost of making such a film.

Sky recently announced that they would try and take 3D technology to mainstream television with their subscription service and their own (and other) channels as they did with HDTV over the past few years. The problem is that a lot of television programmes, particularly ones on channels that will be the quickest to join this like the BBC, have no call for their shows to be in 3D. Who would want to watch Eastenders in 3D? Also, what does this mean for HD, a newly introduced and somewhat luxury television product becomes almost at odds with this new “format”. Sure they can give you 3D in High Definition, but what sort of technology and costs is that going to incur, and will anyone actually care enough to pay for it? When I was testing 3D content (I rented a godawful kids movie that was made in 3D) I found that quality, and certainly colour, was badly affected when watching in 3D, and the view was far from perfect. Most commonly, objects in the far background became blurry and objects in the close foreground were too difficult for my eyes (with their immaculate 20:20 vision) to focus on and so the two different images became just two different images. Only images that were, for lack of a better word, in the middle of the action were clearly visible AND 3D, which gave a horribly pointless view that simply looks like an image on a card that’s been pushed out in places to give it a 3D effect and doesn’t look in anyway realistic. The effect of having only visible things in the middle makes the whole point of 3D redundant, as filmmakers love to show it off and have objects seem to come out at you, but when you consider that by the time it gets close enough to take it realistically and be fooled, it’s split out into two blurred images and loses it’s threat quite quickly.

The barrage of problems continue when you consider that for the casual TV watcher won’t want to have to stick on a pair of glasses just to watch TV, meaning that Sky will probably introduce this as a premium package as I have mentioned, which itself will be it’s downfall as no-one will pay for this or want to stick on headache inducing glasses (the distribution and maintenance of these will be tricky, though not impossible for Sky) and have to be constantly focusing their eyes on different objects, particularly when fast-action stuff keeps cutting shots very quickly and disorientates the viewer. The glasses are, indeed, 3D’s most debilitating factor and there is no way of getting 3D to work without them, unless you get a viewer to keep blinking each eye in rapid succession, something which kinda detracts from watching the film. Granted, over the years they’ve become a lot less nineteen-eighties, though the resurgence of the Buddy Holly shades look may help, and (in the case of gaming, see below) even become cool, but they still greatly effect the casual viewers ability to watch a show comfortably. Interestingly, the test pair of glasses I was using (pictured) meant that whenever I took them off, closing one eye gave everything a red tinge and closing the other gave a blue tinge for a brief time (that wore off thank god) and I couldn’t watch more than 20 minutes of the film before the eye strain and a minor headache forced me to take a break.

Having said that, 3D gaming has become quite successful, mainly through NVidia’s technology making pre-existing games into 3D instead of releasing a limited number of games themselves which will be expanded too late to interest the public. But then again, gamers traditionally want the most immersive experience from their games and would welcome this, where the average TV viewer has little need or want for a more in-depth view of Anne Robinson, but does that mean that they might want 3D when it’s used in the right places, such as feature films? I would love to see The Dark Knight in 3D simply because how epic the action is (if you ignore, for the moment, the criticisms of cutting shots) but I don’t give a shit if I see the Queen Vic in 3D because the whole point of it is the story. The Dark Knight is about the story, unfortunately it was a kack story so the visuals are begging for 3D.

Web content is an entirely different matter. Minoru have just bought out a 3D webcam that has two different camera’s mounted on a set that records two different views and stiches them together into one on the fly. But at the moment this product is completely useless unless one distributes 3D glasses to their friends, which is a bit excessive just to turn it on, wave your hands around and point your finger at the screen for a moment and then get bored. It costs £40 but you’d get bored of it in 40 seconds. YouTube have been testing out 3D content on their videos and some users have even set up their own 3D recording system and made videos of their own (my favourite one is embedded below)……

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RKI0mtedZw&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00]

…but in the most part, it’s not really necessary other than to have hands waving around at you in a slightly more realistic way than HD, the novelty of which will wear off fast.

Perhaps then, if applied in the right places and using the correct technology, it can be a very good feature, but the fact remains that it’s mostly a gimmick used by filmmakers of films that might not be successful without a gimmick like this, hence why only kids and horror films have used it in the past ten years. Gamers and horror fans like the idea of a more immersive experience and kids like the idea of it, and certainly in the kids films does the story require such a hook as this. Consider that history has shown 3D going mainstream to have failed at least 3 times in the past, but as technology advances it can improve the way that 3D is conducted and hopefully we will stumble upon a way to I remember saying a few years ago that HD was pointless, nobody would pay for it and I saw no difference, and I was wrong. So perhaps, and I really hope, that I will be wrong again, but it has a LONG way to go before anyone will take 3D in mainstream media seriously. Staying in the realms it currently inhabits may be the best way for it to slowly become more and more featured, but it will certainly never become the standard way of broadcasting on ANY television channel or media.