Re: What's your verdict on GRAVITY? (*SPOILERS* are likely)

While Gravity may have been enhanced by 3D, I remain skeptical that it's much more than a gimmick overall.

Perfume might have been enhanced by smell-o-vision, after all. Would we want that all the time?

Warning: I'm probably rewriting this post as you read it.

Zarban's House of Commentaries

127

Re: What's your verdict on GRAVITY? (*SPOILERS* are likely)

Dorkman wrote:

I've said before that the problem with 3D has been that filmmakers continue to make films the way they do in 2D -- that if there's a validity in the 3D medium, it will require the development of a different cinematic grammar. (If I may toot my own horn, I had a suspicion it would involve longer shots, since the refocusing of eyes and brain between cuts is much of what makes 3D distracting, and I noticed the longer shots in BEOWULF were more successful; but I'd certainly never have dared to think of anything on the order of GRAVITY.) If 3D filmmaking does indeed develop into its own language, GRAVITY may not turn out to speak it fluently, but it's at least the Rosetta stone.

I'll join the tooting my own horn segment by point out that I've been arguing for a while that one of the best ways to imagine "learning" how to do a 3D movie (and particuarly HFR-3D, such as the Hobbit) would be to go back and revisit early filmmaking -- because they are shot more like theater plays. They were done this way more because of technological limitation, but the evolution of editing and camera movements were born from new tech allowing filmmaking to grow from within that 2D medium. Since 3D creates a whole new dynamic, you have to go back to the beginning and start that evolution all over again.

Not to go all film-school junkie on it, but if you go back and watch Citizen Kane -- with it's amazing blocking, slower pacing, and limited camera movements -- you could easily see that film's style being even more pronounced and impactful if it were done in 3D, HFR, or HFR3D. Same goes for a lot of Hitchcock, such as Rear Window or Vertigo. It's easy to imagine those films working very well in 3D. Plus, with 3D's ability to emphasize scale (did you notice how much larger the dinos seemed in Jurassic Park 3D?), imagine something like Metropolis in 3D. The ability to show relative size in 2D is always a bit skewed, where 3D allows the viewer to see the subject really "in" the environment in a better way -- part of why the real scale of space was even more vast in Gravity.

Of course you won't go back and shoot a film exactly like you would have had to in the 40's or 50's -- but they seem like better starting points when thinking about the fundamental design of film than something shot in more modern times.

Technically you could go back even further, looking at films like Metropolis and branching out from there...but I think the first few decades of film making was more about figuring out how to tell a story with moving pictures than it was about the actual art of "film making".

That said, I would actually love it if someone went aaaalllll the way back to scratch. Take and 'on location' set, and just do an entire play in 3D (or HFR3D) allowing the camera to linger around the set during the performance. Cuts would be limited to scene changes. Try to really capture the live, almost voyeuristic, aspect of a theater piece on film...which usually requires all sorts of tricks to convey in a 2D film.

It would require immense planning (blocking, lighting, etc.) and I'm not really sure how the final result would be...but it could be a very interesting experiment.

Thumbs up Thumbs down

128

Re: What's your verdict on GRAVITY? (*SPOILERS* are likely)

Another behind the scenes video.

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=112843

"Life is about movies; anything else is a bonus!"- Me   cool

Re: What's your verdict on GRAVITY? (*SPOILERS* are likely)

http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=13024

The Gravity Blu-Ray is going to feature something called the "Silent Space Version." No idea what that refers to, but I'm extremely curious. Obviously they already removed the sound effects/explosions, so maybe this is a version without the score?

"The Doctor is Submarining through our brains." --Teague

Thumbs up Thumbs down

130

Re: What's your verdict on GRAVITY? (*SPOILERS* are likely)

How great would it be if "Silent Space Version" was Jonas Cuaron's new prog rock band?

Last edited by Rob (2014-01-21 21:20:19)

Thumbs up +2 Thumbs down

131

Re: What's your verdict on GRAVITY? (*SPOILERS* are likely)

"Jonas Cuaron's new prog rock band" is the name of my new band.