I have always been a little weary of whether I could even view 3-D properly.  You know those pictures that are supposed to pop out at you if you look at them the right way?  I have never achieved that effect, despite much time spent staring and concentrating.  Apparently my eyes (I think they call it binocular vision) just won’t produce that image.  And earlier 3-D technology was the same way for me, never really popping out the way people sitting next to me said it would.  But I knew that the technology had improved so I figured I’d check it out.

As far as I could tell the 3-D in Avatar DID work for me.  While I never felt that the characters were sitting in my lap or that I wanted to reach out to try to touch what I was seeing, I did see images emerging from the 2-D space.  I would say, though, that it took me about 10-15 minutes of the film to settle into “how” to view the film, and I felt myself getting a little headache at the beginning.  Long story short (as I don’t want to make this a review of Avatar), the 3-D was cool, but I left the theater feeling that it did not greatly enhance my viewing experience.  If felt a little gimmicky to me.

Now I don’t want to sound like some antiquated techno-phobe.  I am far from that.  I LOVE new technology in the video field, and I try to embrace and use new tools as early as possible.  I think, for the most part, advances in video imaging have really increased the viewing experience, as well as my enjoyment of producing these images.  I just feel that 3-D is one of those things that does NOT need to become the norm.  I know when HD came out, I looked at it as the holy grail, and a VERY expensive acquisition format, and now I have been producing at least 85% of my content in HD for the last few years, and shooting in some flavor of HD for about 5 years.  But I look at 3-D and hope this does not become as prevalent in the tv/movie world as HD.  Several tv networks are starting to build and roll out 3-D channels, and camera companies are starting to design 3-D rigs.  Panasonic has developed this 3-D camera at a relatively affordable $21K.

So why don’t I like this?  Well last night I turned on the Grammy Awards for a few minutes, just in time for the tribute to the late, great Michael Jackson.  Right before the song they said to put on your 3-D glasses, and a little icon reminder appeared in the lower corner.  Well, as it turns out, I don’t have a pair of 3-D glasses?  Do you?  So I sat and watched what I dubbed as “No-D” as a blurry Celine Dion and then many other famous singers came on the screen.  My nice HD plasma screen suddenly looked like crap.

Basically I don’t want to have to wear glasses to watch tv.  Many people already need some sort of corrective lenses, but they probably don’t want to have to put on additional glasses to view 3-D content.  Can they make 3-D TVs that don’t require glasses?  I don’t know.  But either way I am not sure I really need to feel THAT connected to my television.  I imagine some content would probably be neat in 3-D but I don’t think I need to feel like Al Roker is popping out of my television set.

While it would probably be interesting to shoot some 3-D footage for specific projects, I don’t think it needs to be the norm for all production.  I imagine the equipment and post-processing load would be greatly increased, and I have yet to experience all the merits of 3-D.  Will it become as ubiquitous as HD is now?  I don’t know, time will tell.

I would love to hear your comments though on this issue.