An article is making its way around the net today, a letter written to Roger Ebert by an Oscar-winning editor and sound engineer, Walter Murch, decrying a fundamental flaw in 3D filmmaking that he assures us ruins the entire idea. The author David Coldeway thinks that Roger was off the mark in this assessment. And he goes on to dispel some of the information he’s spreading via Ebert’s blog.

David Coldeway says "Murch names a few subjective complaints first: the glasses compress the movie-watching experience, the image is dark, and the everlasting complaint that you don’t need 3D to tell a good story. You didn’t need colour or sound to tell a good story in the 20s, of course, or movies in the first place, but that is something that is routinely overlooked by hasty critics of 3D."

"His main problem is the convergence/focus issue. I discussed it in depth here, along with most of the other problems faced by 3D, but the gist is this: our vision has been trained to both converge our eyes and focus them at the same point, and 3D breaks that rule. Your eyes must always have the screen in focus, but they move around and converge on different points, sometimes close to you (when something comes “out” of the screen) and sometimes far away, “behind” the screen. As I noted before, this causes fatigue in your eye muscles, and can cause disorientation and headaches."

From my own perspective, having seen number of 3D movies in the cinema like Avatar (the best one IMHO) and some with my Sister's latest 55 inch Sony Bravia in 3D, I think I must agree with the arguments against the present 3D technology.

3D movies also make money. They are strongly resistant to piracy atm. That means there’s a heavy incentive to make them and as they make more of them they’ll get better. I guess someone somewhere had to make the jump and to move envelop forward to firstly sell more TVs and to get more people to go to cinema. Both are much needed to give a much needed boost to an industry that has been hammered by piracy. 3D makes it very difficult for pirates to create copies. In the case of my sister, she phoned me and asked me should she spend another 1000 GBP on top of the same TV in 2D and I advised her to go for 3D since she is unlikely to change the set for the next 3-5 years.

However, to ignore the obvious problems is not advisable. This is my observations of the issues with the present technology.

3D Glasses
3D Glasses are only suitable inside a theatre or a TV room with popcorn at your side and the family sitting down to watch a movie on a very large Flat Screen TV. My experience of my 3D experience was to conclude that to get the best experience it should have been more like 100 inches. For the 3D wow factor needs much bigger screens as well as high resolution of at least 1080p (1920 x 1080). It is practically a joke to purchase a small TV (less than 55inch) and expect any form of viable 3D experience unless you get seriously close to the TV - may be a meter or so away from it. Watching 3D Satellite broadcast at 720p is also not ideal.

3D Glasses making the images darker is valid but not relevant as you could theoretically have your TV run bright enough to compensate. Cinemas can also ensure they have strong enough projectors to compensate.

3d Glasses are expensive. for example my sister has only bought 2 glasses and is reluctant to buy anymore as she thinks in a room with guests, she would switch to 2D. This is fair enough argument.

3d Glasses batteries don’t last long.

3D glasses are an obstruction and stop normal conversations about whatever family is watching inside one's living room. I

3D is exaggerated stereoscopic - Other than Avatar, other 3D movies that I have seen, exaggerate the 3D stereoscopic beyond the real world.

Vision Correction
I you wear contact then you will have a horrible experience while wearing glasses, therefore, no amount of “better film-making” will make this problem go away.

The Convergence / Focus Issue
It is not good to be asked to trade in a sharp, vivid picture for a lower resolution, semi-blurry one. Let’s face it, 3D movies look out of focus pretty frequently, even for people who enjoy them right now. Taking a step back in picture quality will ensure these remains a niche market.

Frame Rate
24FPS for 3D is not enough. Together with HD and 3D, the mind is now able to pick up the frames and something closer to 60 frames is needed.

Some brain Training is required for 3D
Currently one needs to “train” one's brain to re-think reality… This process takes time and unless you wear the glasses long enough and watch enough movies, the brain is unlikely to get accustomed to the language of 3D. BTW - Brain already has the ability to translate a good 2D image into 3D.

David Coldeway continues to expand some valid facts for 3D.
"The convergence/focus issue is a limitation to the technique of 3D filmmaking. There are many such limitations, and we have overcome them to make use of the associated technology many times before.

If a director or cinematographer works from the start with the idea of a movie being in 3D, and is aware of the risks and limitations of the medium, then the movie will be made well. If, however, as has been the case with many movies of the last year or two, the 3D is not considered during production (adding it on is just plain bad news), the movie will have been made poorly. Nobody likes poorly-made movies, and the overwhelming majority of 3D movies are poorly made. The quality of the movie is the issue, not the technology behind it.

Just imagine this complaint in the 20s: “Not only is synchronized sound unnecessary for the telling of a good story (we have title cards and emotive actors already), but it is totally unlike sound in real life. While the characters are in front of you, perhaps on the left side of the screen, the sound is coming from a single speaker in the centre. The location is off, the recording quality is bad, and the truth is that not many actors or directors are even enhancing their movies much by using this vaunted new technology. ‘Talkies’ will die out in a few years, and the greats (F.W. Murnau, D.W. Griffith) will retain their status as the foremost practitioners of filmmaking.”

At any rate, my defence of 3D is moot if people continue to make bad movies. I can’t defend the movies themselves, only the technology, which has already undergone great changes over the last two years, and further improvements are being looked into. Mr. Murch is perfectly right to point out the convergence/focus problem as a limitation of the medium, but for him and Ebert (whom I have rebutted before on the topic) to consider it fatal is, in my opinion, a lack of imagination and faith in the ingenuity of filmmakers.

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