Cinema Blend kinda slams Amazing Spider Man 3D (you guessed it: oh, noes they di'nt!)

Ok, so I've posted this kind of comment elsewhere a couple of times. I'm not what you might call a 3D enthusiast for reasons not worth getting into. I have seen several features in 3D and have been mostly unimpressed with all of them except one, The Avengers. In full disclosure, I did not see Avatar in 3D, which I understand sets the bar, but the films themselves aren't really my point. All of the the 3D presentations I've viewed have been in Real 3D, whereas, The Avengers was in IMAX 3D, which was my first time. I also saw The Avengers in Real 3D and the experience wasn't even remotely close to the IMAX experience.

My point is this, which format is the "critic" basing his assessment on? Real 3D (or something similar) or IMAX 3D? Should it matter? The Avengers in IMAX 3D changed my whole perspective on what 3D COULD be and while I won't buy a 3D television nor will I go see every movie in 3D, a moving like The Amazing Spiderman is one that I would definitely consider springing for another IMAX "treat" so to speak. But a review like this one would make a person think twice about that. Again, what's the norm here? What's the expectation? Should there be a difference? I really wish people would disclose this information so we know what they are basing it on.

James Cameron spent years honing 3D as a tool to enhance his movies and can teach people that are willing to learn a great deal about how to shoot in 3D. He has always said that 3D enhances intimitate dialogue scenes just as much as it does with action scenes and yet it would appear that the people responsible for the Amazing Spider-Man movie have completely failed to understand that resuting in an inconsistent and dissapointing 3D movie. A pity!
Edited by cbcdesign - 7/3/12 at 8:29am

Just my opinion, but most theatrical film review websites are pretty amateur when it comes to reviewing 3D. They're good at reviewing stories, but their opinions on 3D mean very little. CinemaBlend is no exception even though they're the only site I'm aware of with dedicated theatrical 3D reviews. If you want better 3D impressions, look first in the 3D section of a blu-ray or movie forum like this one. Most 3D enthusiasts around here watch 3D weekly, if not daily, and know what good content and proper calibration looks like a little better than most film website reviewers. Sometimes reviewers will exaggerate things as well to push an agenda or try to be funny to get more views.

As far as RealD vs. IMAX goes, I would say projector calibration matters the most for seeing the 3D the way it was intended to be viewed. IMAX has higher calibration standards for their theaters, so they are usually better than RealD in that regard. However, projection is highly dependent on individual theater owners and the projectionists they hire. A larger screen can make a difference for better-looking 3D too because it makes the image separation larger. I'm pretty skeptical of CinemaBlend's theater choices after reading their review about Brave's brightness score.

3D content quality, however, is very dependent on the filmmakers themselves. Some filmmakers know how to consistently make nice-looking 3D, but many others do not. It's a learning process for Hollywood as most directors are professionals at shooting in 2D but just learning 3D.
Edited by BleedOrange11 - 7/3/12 at 9:57pm

I could careless what some theatrical film review website says, all I care about is how I like the movie. They can take their opinions and shove it. Everyone is different and has their own views on things. I don't need some turd telling me a movie isn't this and that when I can judge on my own.

I'm probably an exception, but I've enjoyed the 3D for every 3D movie I've see in my home environment (Epson 6010, Hi Power 120" screen, Oppo 93) with the one exception being Clash of the Titans. Due to the criticism of 3D found here and in professional reviews I go in with low expectations and find myself pleasantly surprised. Keep up the good work so I can continue being pleasantly surprised!

I'm talking about theatrical 3D. Most people don't really get that attached to their one-time movie ticket purchase do they? I'm not so sure this is true with BD3D movies either though. Those really aren't expensive enough to defend 'til death.

Regardless of what people think about Cinema Blend, the glasses off test they use is a perfectly valid way of confirming that 3D is absent in a scene. The low score they have awarded this movie in the glasses off test speaks volumes to me and is enough to put me off buying the more expensive 3D ticket.

Not really. If the camera is converged on someone who is sitting at the plane of the screen/stereo window, that individual can have depth and volume without much obvious "blurriness" or image separation. Their whole review process is flawed.
Edited by BleedOrange11 - 7/5/12 at 10:16am

There is a world of difference between a 3D image with depth and volume without much obvious seperation (Tron has many such examples) and the total absense of any depth and volume and no seperation. The lack of any apparent 3D was evident in some scenes and removal of the glasses confirmed the presence of a 2D image with no image seperation visible whatsoever. The test was perfectly valid as they conducted it and indeed you have yourself confirmed in another thread that some scenes are in 2D in this movie, particularly dialogue scenes.

I don't agree with some of the scoring they use but I have seen enough 3D to know that if a scene doesn't look like its 3D and you remove your 3D glasses and see a perfectly decent 2D image, its in 2D, end of story!

I completely agree that Spider-Man needed more depth and stronger image separation in the Peter Parker scenes (and the same for TRON in the 2.35:1 scenes). I just think the "glasses off test" is a terrible way to make that assessment. It's obvious with the glasses on. I exaggerated a tiny bit when I said "2D dialogue scenes" in my review. I meant 2D-ish or 2D-style or flat 3D. Nothing is literally 2D except for some close-ups of some photographs. Sorry, probably should have made that clearer.

But there's still the issue mentioned above. The amount of "blurriness" seen with the glasses off depends not just on interaxial distance but on the camera convergence angle or where the director placed the stereo window in the scene. There were several instances in Spider-Man where they zoomed in on a face that was at the stereo window, and the face took up most of the screen. One or two of these moments had nice volume with glasses on, but most didn't. Even if they had increased image separation for better volume in all of them, these moments still would have looked 2D-ish or not very blurry with glasses off. Items placed at the stereo window are where the two stereo images overlap, so there's not much blur there, relative to items in deep depth or extending pop-out, no matter what the parallax is, meaning the "glasses off" test is not valid for every kind of shot.

http://www.dabiri.8m.com/Stereo-Window/ (Sorry, this is a really primitive example. Hopefully it gets the point across though. Look at the various shots of the kid with the shovel, and notice how picture 3 at the stereo window is much less blurry than picture 1. Two identical shots like this can have similar 3D volume, but the amount of blurriness with glasses off is very different.)

Most of TRON had very low convergence with entire scenes behind the stereo window. Because of that, the "glasses off" test might work better for that movie. Not so much for Spider-Man though.
Edited by BleedOrange11 - 7/9/12 at 11:33am

I haven't seen Spider-Man yet, but from what you guys have described, it sounds like the director made a conscious decision to have minimal 3D effect during dialogue and non-action scenes, and really only "open up" the film to 3D in the action scenes, much like The Dark Knight or Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol expand the aspect ratio to IMAX size during their action scenes.

Is this consistent throughout the movie? If so, then it doesn't seem fair to knock the movie for a deliberate artistic decision, any more than you should knock The Dark Knight for not filling the IMAX screen in every single shot.

That's an interesting point. My guess is that it was a deliberate artistic decision, but it's not as obvious as it was in TRON where aspect ratio changed every time 3D volume increased significantly, so I don't know for sure. It could just be that Webb was still using 2D conventions that look bad in 3D because he doesn't know any other way to film emotional scenes other than zooming in on a face with no background or film conversation scenes without over-the-shoulder views and depth of focus.

Either way, however, I prefer realistic volume and layered backgrounds throughout the whole movie. There are better, more creative ways to make certain moments stand out in 3D without intentionally degrading the quality of non-action moments. If it was a deliberate decision, I think it was a bad choice that hurt the film experience and limited the impact that 3D can have on emotional dialogue moments.

Still loved the film though and the 3D in the action scenes. Can't wait to buy it on BD3D.

Proof that glasses-off tests are useless:

Proof that their scoring system is useless:

4: 3D Fit
5: P&E
1: Before The Window
2: Beyond The Window
5: Brightness
1: The Glasses Off Test
5: Audience Health
23/35: Total Score

Before and Beyond the Window are the only two categories that objectively say anything about the real-world presence of the 3D.

Fail both and what do you have left: Fit (so it makes sense for an action movie) Effort (so they talked to Cameron) Brightness (so the theater did a good job) Glasses off (can you really judge 3D without your glasses on ? No, see above) and Health (you won't get sick if a 3D movie is flat).

My grades:

Dialog scenes: 1/5
Live action scenes: 3/5
CG action scenes: 5/5

Since this is an origin story and has a lot of character drama, the dialog shots have to be strong. I don't buy that they were trying to be subtle to avoid it being a distraction, as the flatness is more distracting. CinemaBlend graded it as a perfect fit for 3D, but half the movie is comprised of flat dialog!

Also, the fact that there was such a big gulf in quality between live action and CG action is proof enough that the stereographers responsible for the Red Epics were not very good.
Edited by cakefoo - 7/5/12 at 5:29pm

Cinemablend should remove/modify a few categories:

Planning and effort is a subjective, theoretical number that's influenced by pre-release hype

Glasses-off is deceptive. Why are there ANY judgments about the 3D quality made without the glasses on? Instead they should have a 3D strength rating, taken with, get this, the glasses ON!

And fit? Scorsese and Cameron and Scott would tell CinemaBlend that ALL genres are a good 3D fit. Instead they should grade how the 3D served the story, because that's how you tell if the 3D is pointless or worth seeing.

Brightness is pointless. Theater's responsibility, end of story.

Health scores are exploitable. If a movie's 3D is easy on the eyes mostly because it's weak, that shouldn't count as a positive. It should be weighted based on averaging the strength and the health together:

5 in health and 5 in strength would get 5 points
1 in health and 1 in strength would get 1 point
3 in health and 5 in strength would get 4 points
5 in health and 1 in strength would get 3 points

and so on.

I am not sure what you are trying to prove with the two images though. Both have separation with glasses off and both are 3D images although they look completely different from each other I grant you.

I am not sure cinemablend are saying the glasses off test is ANY indication of how good or bad the 3D is, just that the absence of any discernible 3D with glasses on coupled with the absence of separation with glasses off is a valid way of confirming that a particular shot, sequence of shots or a scene is not in 3D.

Josh Z's comment is a fair one and I am sure the movie is probably very good. I think its fair though to knock the 3D aspect of a movie when the producers make a noise about using real 3D rigs to shoot the movie only to discover that many scenes lack any real depth. I go back to the point that we are expected to pay extra for the "added" dimension and when it isn't there for many scenes in a movie, I for one feel a little bit ripped off!

Either make a 2D movie or make a 3D movie. This halfway house nonsense just doesn't please anybody.
Edited by cbcdesign - 7/6/12 at 6:38am

The glasses off test is total garbage, as evidenced by many, many fake youtube 3d clips where the L/R images are merely offset making the convergence plane appear behind the plane of the screen, while the amount of "double-imaging" when viewed without glasses appears to be maximized. The point of the picture comparison is that the first pic shows much stronger 3d depth than the 2nd, but the 2nd would be favored in the "glasses off test" merely due to the fact that the frame separation overall seems greater.

What this tells me is that it's possible to have a great amount of offset with little 3D depth. But is the opposite also necessarily true? Can you have great 3D depth with little to no offset? I would tend to doubt it. In your examples, even the image with less offset still does have visible glasses-off offset.

Tron: Legacy was brought up earlier in the thread. I found that Blu-ray incredibly disappointing. On my screen, about 70% of the movie looks flat 2D. Not just the "real world" scenes that are intentionally supposed to be 2D, but even major action setpieces like the disk war and light cycle race. If I take off my 3D glasses, there is a 1:1 correlation between scenes that look 2D and have little to no visible offset, versus scenes with notable depth that do have visible offset.

This is exactly what I was trying to explain in my earlier posts. Maybe cakefoo or lunaluagua can explain it better or find some better examples.

If the object of interest is placed at the plane of the screen, it can have a deceiving amount of depth even if there is little offset compared to an object of interest placed entirely behind or in front of the screen. You can't have great depth overall with extremely minimal or literally zero offset though. Obviously, no offset = identical 2D images overlapping at the stereo window or just plain 2D.
Edited by BleedOrange11 - 7/6/12 at 12:17pm

The Glasses off test, can be used with certain caveats and is used by stereographers as a rule of thumb way on-location while watching a shot being composed. This is mostly done by stereographers with a lot of experience. Other precise methods include percentage marks either hand-drawn on the preview monitor, or teh monitor itself having them as a feature.

However, as I mentioned there are caveats. One of these caveats is the fact that many of todays movies are "hybrid" ie. a mix of CGI, green screen and live talent.
Using a process called multi-rigging, it's possible to "change" the depth (parallax offeset) of background and foreground independently and then compose for the final shot. This is done to avoid audiences going wall-eyed (eyes having to diverge) to fuse together background imagery that may have excessive (positive) parallax.

So the glasses on-off test in a movie like spiderman may not reveal the true Spatial Depth of a scene if indeed such processes were used.
However, in an un-modified scene, YES you could use the glasses off test to vaildate how much 3D there is overall in a scene
1) if there is much separation in background elements, then you can guess it's got deep 3D
2) if there is much separation in foreground, then you know theres out of screen 3D (as well as window edge violations as seen in the anaglyph image posted above)
in fact anaglyph preview gives more clues as the direction of the red-cyan fringes showing the separation reveals a lot (unless the background is light colored, in which case the color subtraction is reversed...but that's getting a bit too technical)

also, worth mentioning is that you can only tell the final depth of a scene with glasses on. It's the spatial relationship between different elements/layers in a scene that make for good 3D. That...and how the composition of the scene makes the eye travel around this volume.
So yes, in many instances, even though there's not too much separation, a well composed 3D scene is actually hiding in there!

Dialog scenes
If you don't see too much separation in dialog scenes, or indeed it looks flat, you can easily see where the point of convergence is set at.
To ease cuts between different angles in a dialog scene, some stereographers/directors will make it easy and just set convergence at the so called point of interest (usually the talents face)
Many reasons are given for this, among them...

a) it's less distracting for the audience to have to make their eyes fuse imagery (we'll do that for you as James Cameron said in avatar)...rather you should be paying attention to the dialog
b) it's easier for cuts to match spatially (e.g reverse angle, over the shoulder shots etc)

There is one con to this (imho) : It's a lazy way to create 3D. It messes with the geography of the room/location where the dialog is taking place.
When your shooting overscan with Epics, a depth budget, a camera blocking script and planning... there's no reason why this practice should be.

Typically live action (sports for instance) is where you would continually converge on area of interest so cuts would be easy and not jarring on the audiences.

Oh BTW, I've not seen spiderman yet. Will do so tomorrow and then relate my experience!

P.s for a review I did on the 3D aspects of Tron, see here

Cheers,
Clyde
'Think in 3D' now out on Amazon.

twitter: @cly3d.
Edited by realvision - 7/7/12 at 3:11am

Proof it ever it were needed that people see 3D differently!
By no stretch of the imagination can I agree that the first image has stronger 3D than the second, the second image is the better of the two by some margin with much better clarity and depth. The first image is ok but just doesn't work as well for me.

Thanks for clearing up the "glasses off" test, Clyde! Looking forward to your thoughts on Spider-Man.

StereoPhoto Maker's anaglyph ghosting is lousy. Here are the same photos in another app, Imagen 3D:



While the second image is deeper in terms of position relative to the window, and that can tend to provide a greater sense of scale, the first image has a stronger interaxial, is closer, and therefore there is more noticeable separation from layer to layer.

My point is, can you look at the image without your 3D glasses on and decide which will look stronger when viewed with glasses on? To further my point you passionately prefer the one on the right while I like the one on the left hands-down

Here's an example of an image with minimal blur still popping with the glasses on:

Here they are: What is Stereomatography? A stereoscopic 3D critique of The Amazing Spider-man

Best Regards.

I think your closing paragraphs say it all.

The steroegrapher is supposed to be the expert on set advising the director and cinematographer how to compose and shoot in 3D. If the stereographer is going to pander to the opinions of the latter two individuals whoose knowledge on 3D is so woefully inadequate that they need the services of a stereoscopic expert, why bother being there at all? Collective decisions are all very well but when they come from a group of people who don't know what they are doing look at the result?

I hope the TASM crew learn from this and allow the experts in the field of 3D to do their jobs properly should they make a sequel.

Thanks for the blog post Clyde. I too, sort of cringed at that terrible "rack focus" shot with Aunt May at the end of the movie.

Your critique begs a number of questions. First, why didn't Spider-Man's decision-makers film a hybrid of 2D and 3D like TRON: Legacy if they wanted most of their scenes to be composed like 2D? Why can amateur 3D reviewers and internet forum members recognize that a large portion of Spider-Man's 3D looks bad (as in negligible difference from 2D), but the actual filmmakers seemingly cannot?

Second, I have no real knowledge of what happened on set or what it takes to be a stereographer, but why did Spider-Man's higher-ups even hire stereographers if they weren't going to allow them significant input into how the 3D looks? (Or do I have it wrong, and the Spider-Man stereographers actually think the 3D looked good? Or did they want it to look bad to make the finale stand out?) Why are some producers, directors, etc. seemingly ignoring the advice of stereographers? Why are some stereographers not taking the initiative to give advice when the 3D needs to be improved, and what exactly do they think their job is? This is not a good trend for 3D in general if those attitudes are allowed to become the norm.
Edited by BleedOrange11 - 7/9/12 at 12:24pm

I think you were looking for the word negligible possibly rather than negligent?

Based on the email reply Clyde received from somebody who worked on the movie, I don't think they see the 3D as being poor at all. I get the impression they think 3D should be used in some shots and really not used at all in others or used in such a subtle manner it can barely be recognised as 3D. The problem with that is that its a sort of halfway house 2.5D approach to 3D filmmaking.

What they should be doing I would have thought is keeping everything in the shot in any scene in 3D then varying the composition accordingly. So a dialogue scene may well consist of a couple of characters in the foreground and an out of focus background. More complex room shots may include lots of foreground, mid-ground and background objects, all in focus and all in 3D. Action street scenes may well consist of massive amounts of depth with full use of positive and negative stereo space, particularly if we want Spidey coming through the screen! In all scenes though, objects should be in 3D.

I honestly don't think the person who replied to Clyde sees 3D like this though and in my opinion therein lies the problem. He was talking about subtle 3D and make a direct comparison to volume, likening those of us who want clearly defined 3D objects and characters in all scenes as being the same as somebody wanting the volume cranked up at all times. Frankly I think the guy just doesn't understand that whilst he may thinks its very "artistic" using 3D like that, its not well received by people like me who expect to see 3D charcters and objects in a 3D movie at ALL times, not a mixture of 2D interspersed with 3D!