How to Train Your Dragon: I'm already bored of 3D

No it doesn't.

Eddie

 

Not made for 3D movie Clash of the Titans stinks with bolted on 3D shock!

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/44470

 

Well, it took about 6 months each to re-render the first two "Toy Story" films for 3D

 

In NYC some theaters are now charging NINETEEN DOLLARS AND 50 CENTS to watch a 3D movie. If you have 2 kids and a wife the estimated cost is $120+ (including popcorn and soda) for a 2 hour movie.

It will be a cold day in hell if I would spend that much money to watch a 2 hour movie.

 

Maybe two months (8 weeks). The cost, according to companies like In-Three Inc., is about $100,000 per minute to "dimensionalize" 2D movies into 3D. So that adds at least $10M to the cost of production.

Basically, what happens is that they take a 2K digital copy of the entire film and turn it over to animators and VFX people in the Philippines or India, and thousands of low-cost technicians work 24 hours a day until it's done. If you saw the results of Alice in Wonderland, it can work effectively, though I don't doubt it's not as good as actually shooting with a real 3D camera. (There's a good piece in the brand-new issue of American Cinematographer talking to the Alice filmmakers as to why they didn't shoot the movie in 3D, and instead chose to convert to 3D later on.)

In the case of Clash and Alice, a lot of the 3D effects were applied to effects composites, so that monsters & explosions all had more depth.

What I think would be a lot more difficult to do would be to add 3D to a normal "people" movie with just humans and no effects. I think it would be nearly impossible to add 3D after the fact with a film with tons of movement, like the Bourne films.

 

I've avoided the 3D hype, as well as Avatar itself. Regardless of the era of 3D (now or the 50's), you've had to deal with compromised storylines that allow for stupid scenes to allow for the "3D wow factor" to be utilized.

I hope and pray this will pass, and they'll actually try to get back to movies that have interesting PLOTS.

 

I wouldn't count on that.

 

I was shocked when I was in California five years ago and tickets for The Aviator were twelve dollars. Here in the hinterlands, 2-D films are now $8, and 3-D films $10.

 

I've just seen "How To Train Your Dragon" and it's quite a good film.

The 3D was fine too. Not gimmicky ... no things being thrown at the screen. It's still at #3 in the US box office and is now up to $115,641,000 in the US. Apparently word of mouth is keeping the film in the top 3.

It looks like it will make its money back after all.

As I'm in Amsterdam it was interesting to see how the subtitles (in Dutch) were handled. Since they appeared to be closer to the viewer than the action on the screen it was very easy to completely ignore them as they were completely out of focus unless I was looking directly at them. It did cross my mind that it would be quite irritating if I was trying to read them, as I would have had to refocus on them everytime I read them. Since I wasn't trying to read them, the 3D effect turned out to be a bonus (as it made them much less distracting than usual).

 

Iffy. They're a lot more negative in this industry story.

It's made $230M worldwide, but the problem is that it cost $160M. The old rule of thumb is that you have to gross at least twice what the film cost to make before it even breaks even. They'll eventually get there with home video, but it's not nearly the big blockbuster they were hoping for, not nearly in the ballpark of Shrek, Madagascar, Kung Fu Panda, and all that stuff.

There are good things in the movie, but the plot twist in the end with the kid's foot just left me baffled. Totally unnecessary and bizarre. This is why authors like J.K. Rowling maintain really tight control so that nutty Hollywood producers don't make arbitrary changes to their stories.

 

I saw that plot twist coming, actually. I haven't read the book, so I had no expectations, but the foot thing was foreshadowed multiple times in the movie - it had happened to other Vikings and it also mirrored what had happened to the Dragon.

Since the film is still in the Top 3 and is pulling in nearly as much per day as the #1 and #2 films, there is a distinct possibility that it could take quite a bit more at the box office yet. It has almost tripled its opening weekend so far and its still in the Top 3, so I'd say that it's going to far exceed predictions for its box office take (at least the ones made after it opened). I think it will do close to $200 million domestically. Combine that with the overseas box office and I think they'll have already made their money back.

I just read the article you linked to. It says:

"...our best guess is that ‘Dragon’ will earn about $160 million in domestic box office and $270 million in international box office" and that is $120 million less than they expected.

However $160 million + $270 million = $430 million, so it's still expected to make a profit, since they only need to make around $320 million to go into profit.

That article was published on March 30 and the movie has done a little better than expected after its opening weekend, so the $430 million figure is probably conservative.

It's a bit stunning to read "doom and gloom" stories about a film that's going to make a profit! I suppose the reason is because Hollywood depends on big successes to compensate for all the films that bomb, but the answer to that is surely to make more films that are actually at least modest successes, rather than to blow money on sure-fire flops.

 

The film won't be a bomb -- just a disappointment. Big difference.

I think the bottom line is that Dreamworks is just real p!ssed-off that they can't seem to knock it out of the park every time like Pixar. Stack the films of the two studios side by side, and it's like "whoa!"

I'm more upset by the drastic changes between the book and the film, because once you find out what's been changed, it's clear that that's the stuff that comes off a little strange in the movie. It's all the more baffling, because they fired at least one director and several writers on Dragon about six months into it, all because of script problems. (Same exact thing happened on Ratatouille, so this kind of thing goes on sometimes.)

 

Film is a two dimensional medium. Nothing to do with cinema would please me more than seeing 3D fail again.

Give me 2-dimensional crystal clarity, excellent color, and full uncompressed sound. I'm very happy with my perfectly calibrated 52" Pioneer Kuro and my Blu-Ray player. I'm not interested in blurry, fakey 3D. ... And I already wear glasses, so wearing two pairs just to watch a movie is stupid and uncomfortable.

 

Seems like Dragon is as big a hit as could be reasonably expected. Still going strong for 5 straight weeks now. Even beat J-Lo and her Backup Plan.

"We couldn't be more thrilled to be No. 1 in the fifth week," said Anne Globe, head of worldwide marketing for DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc, the studio that produced "Dragon."

 

To me it's a trade-off, you can get a 3D effect, but the cost is reduced color palate and clarity. It's funny to me in this day of revered HD-everything, how many people are willing to dumb down the image to something that is actually sub-standard definition for a cheesy and played out special effect.

I think up until now, most people have been so distracted by the 3D effect, that they haven't noticed that they're looking at very dull and blurry image. I think before long, more people will notice what they've given up and the cost of 3D, and interest will wane quickly.

I'm in the minority, in that I thought Avatar looked horrible in 3D. I'm looking forward to seeing it in 2D tonight for the first time on Blu-ray. I anticipate noticing a lot of detail that was lost in the 3D version. I'll definitely be voting with my movie dollars in the future.

 

As a big Philip K. Dick fan, I don't know whether to be happy or worried that Disney/Pixar is working on KING OF THE ELVES as an animated 3-D blockbuster. It's the company's big release that season, with a scheduled opening day of Christmas.

Hard to believe, but there will be aisles of KING OF THE ELVES merchandise in every Taget and WalMart in the country. It'll be like UBIK.

 

Pixar is an amazing company, very well-run, and they're generally pretty respectful of their source material. I think they'll do justice to Phil Dick's original.

 

Actually, the Hollywood Reporter criticized a 3D movie last week in a review, and they specifically mentioned the relative loss of brightness. So some people do notice the flaws. (I would post the link, but the mag is now a pay site.)

I'm not sure if I would say the color palette is reduced for 3D, but it definitely affects contrast (video level) and brightness (black level). To me, the overall pictures look muddy and a little dull. They try to overcome it with a drastically-increased level out of the projectors, plus a highly-reflective screen, but it doesn't quite work.

BTW, I've reported previously on this board that the 2D version of Avatar (from 35mm print) didn't look appreciably better than the 3D in terms of contrast. They got that pretty close. But the Blu-ray looks much deeper and richer to me, better in some ways than the theatrical presentation.

 

It might be a slow week, but #1 is a pretty good result for a movie in its 5th week.

I am a little dubious about the long-term viability of 3-D - I don't think it really made much difference to the box-office for Avatar. That was just a big movie. It's not as if Alice, Clash of the Titans, or Dragon have exactly knocked the ball out of the park in terms of their respective grosses. 3-D is just one more expense to increase already swollen budgets. It's not clear to me that it's really enhancing the bottom line. Sure a percentage of the audience are watching these films in 3-D but it's hard to believe that these people would have shunned something like Avatar if it had been in plain old 2-D.

Just wait until something comes out in 3-D and it bombs...

 

Well, I just read today that 3D screens made up approximately 52% of the box office gross of Avatar. Why would people pay extra to see it if 3D didn't make a difference to them?

And "Alice" has grossed $327.5 million to date. How is that not "out of the park"?

It's clear to me that 3D is enhancing the bottom line. How long it will continue to do so is still a question though.

Derek

 

The problem as I see it is, a bunch of Hollywood execs think that releasing a blockbuster in 3D is an automatic, sure-fire way to guarantee an extra 20% more boxoffice gross. And HMV is right: the moment somebody makes a really bad movie and releases it in 3D, everybody's going to figure out that nobody wants to see a bad movie, whether it's in 3D or 4D or flat or whatever. Bad is still bad.

The industry is still scurrying around trying to deal with the problem of not having enough 3D theaters. They already pushed back the release of Green Hornet a month, just because there aren't enough 3D theaters available this coming December. There's a traffic jam of 3D releases, and it's making everybody bonkers. Jim Cameron and Fox said that if Alice in Wonderland hadn't bumped Avatar out of 3D theaters in January, they could've made another $100M -- and that ain't hay.

3D will speed the adoption of digital projection for theaters, and that's good in some ways and bad in others. The good news is, I think projection will become more reliable and more consistent; the bad news is, an average digital projector doesn't make pictures as good as a great film print. But then, I don't think most audiences ever get to see a great film print, not these days.

 

I just want a standard established so that those of us in the suburban hinterlands can get a proper theater. Right now I have a sad, dilapidated six-screen cineplex that looks like it's had zero dollars reinvested in it in the last twenty years.

A commercial real estate developer told me the reason no one wants to build a decent movie theater around here (and presumably lots of other places) is that no one knows what technology is coming down the pike. No one wants to invest the money to install the current stuff, only to have to rip it out two years later.

 

Oh, there's tons of standards for theatrical projection. It's just that many (if not most) of the major theater chains ignore them. It's hard to even get them to play the sound at the right level. Don't get me stahted...

 

isn't that because there are tons of standards - at what point does it stop being a "standard" if there are many of them? I mean, if there were just one or two - then it can be called standard and everyone would be able to follow it/them.

 

After 20 years of sad, dilapidated four-screen cineplex here in the hinterlands of rural Mississippi, we now have a brand new DLP cinema. I must say that both 2- and 3-D movies look fabulous at our new theatre.