Wow, in 2007 Lucas to Re-Release all Star Wars film in 3D - in theaters!
 

Ok, the coolest thing since the advent of color cinema!!! I personally believe this annoucement will change filmmaking forever. (not now, but it's the next phase of HD production for us all!)

Lucas to Re-Release all Star Wars film in 3D - in theaters! Apparently 3D films will help with piracy because it's difficult to pirate them. You need the proper viewing situation....a theater!

http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/artic...05/story.jhtml

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=592898

http://film.guardian.co.uk/News_Stor...440820,00.html

http://www.darkhorizons.com/news05/050318a.php

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...STRY-3D-DC.XML

More about the tech behind it all:

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/st...3196055&EDATE=

Lucas, Jackson, Rodriguez, Zemeckis and Cameron are officially the coolest filmmakers. There will be others, but these guys are in a position of power. I believe the future of cinema looks bright! (and in 3D!)

Change filmmaking forever? Don't count on it. 3D is no less gimmicky than it was in 1955, and 2D films "converted" using whatever process can only hope to become "2 and a half D"--i.e., layers of flat images that shift just-so with respect to each other.

And you're an authority on 3D filmmaking? They're professionals whom all have experience with it...in today's world.

Also, 3D films have been making real money the last few years. Imax is huge...it's just that most Hollywood studios haven't embraced it...until now!

These guys are A-list directors, I'm listening and definately get it.

I'm pretty ambivalent about 3D, but I'd love to see the Star Wars films in their original presentations without all that extra crap he's piled in there. How about releasing those?

Sorry Murph, I'm in RKS's corner. While Imax is a great format, 3D ain't much more than a gimmic that gets old in the first 10 minutes. If they released Star Wars in Imax... That would make me happy.

And to further dump on you... :)
And as far as Rodruigez... besides making it out of nowhere, what has he ever done for cinema? Your list of Lucas, Zemekis, Rodruigez, Cameron reads like Sesame Street's "Which one of these things is not like the other" game.

lol, you guys are funny..

I think you're being a little hard on Rodriguez. He's yet to produce a classic movie, but his continued independence in the industry is remarkable. I wouldn't bet against his being remembered as a legendary maverick with a major impact on the way studios learned to deal with their auteurs. I think "Sin City" is looking very promising, by the way.

As promising as Sky Captain, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, and Catwoman, anyway.

3D is a gimmick. The human visual system is great at using perceptual cues--perspective, lighting, and so on--to translate 2D images to 3D representations, so we don't really need 3D projection to recreate the 3D world inside our heads, which is exactly what our visual systems do when they observe a 2D scene. People don't go to movies for the platitude of viewing collections of objects in layers that shift in parallax when they move their heads back and forth like so many pigeons. People go to movies to experience a collective myth-dream: cinema is foremost a spiritual experience, not a technical-perceptual one.

Films--more broadly, stories--that touch the core of our experiences as conscious, living beings, take us through special experiences, and reveal to us in symbolic ways truths about ourselves are ultimately the most successful. No new technology can "revolutionize" this immanent aspect to storytelling, as it has remained the same from the times of the earliest fables recounted round the campfire, to the pagan mythic panoply of the Hellenic era, to the tentpole rattlers of the previous century, to the stories on the big screen today, and on into the future for as long as humans remain merely partially-conscious beings in search of Something More.

George Lucas once gave the impression he understood this, but that seems like such a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.

You won't get any argument about 3-D from me. I'm still trying to refocus my eyes after "Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone."

Robert, what you are saying is hilarous to me. You're trying to sound intelligent and yet it comes off like you're not. Lucas himself was recently on PBS talking about the "campfire" thing. Did you just rip him off or what? The fact (I'm going to act like you know and give my opinon as fact!) is you are wrong about 3D.

In one sentence you're saying 3D is gimmick right? Ok, so film itself minus 3D isn't a gimmick? Any technique that gets people to stare at NOTHING is a gimmick. The theater wall is a flat wall with light shining on it. Is that not a gimmick already equal to any 3D experience? They're all fake Robert - sorry to drop that bomb on you. You sure like to talk like you have all the answers. All my statements are opinions, but you are so factual in your assessment of the future? There is nothing more annoying than someone pushing their opinions as facts - online it's the worst.

You believe "storyingtelling" is the answer to everything? Gee, I forgot that we're all morons and you're a genius. Check it out - no one has stated storytelling wasn't the driving force in ANY cinema experience. You're trying teach me something I've known since I saw my first movie. Let me put my moron hat back on...sorry.

You slam Lucas - ok, sure! He's responsible for getting more people into the theaters than anyone in history! Between Star Wars and Raiders alone he's #1 the last I remember. So, you're telling me that he's wasting his time talking about 3D filmmaking? Oh, ok...I'll listen to you instead and forget 3D filmmaking.

Wait, I can't forget it because I'll be going to watch Star Wars in 3D at my local theater in about 600 days.

I think the problem is that when they say 3-D you're thinking of the old 3-D process that kind of faked 3-D, and this isn't really what they're talking about. It's not about having things appear to come out of the screen, but about a more immersive viewing experience.

Well it sound like Chris isn’t too keen on other people’s opinions.

As far as Lucas is concerned he is a postmodern whore who has taken to eating his babies. Even recently he has begun to back pedal motioning towards the idea that he has become soft from pandering to lowest common denominator. He concluded with the message saying that he is going to return to his roots and start dealing with edgy subjects again.

Sure buddy....

Remember, size isn't everything.

"Ok, so film itself minus 3D isn't a gimmick?"

And here you touch on a valid point worthy of examination. Any artificially constructed framework in which art is built is bound to have some level of "gimmick" to it--iambic pentameter was Shakespeare's gimmick; cubism, Bracque's; Northern harmonicas and Eastern sitars did a lot for the Beatles at their various stages. In films, incidental story elements, known in Hollywood as "high concept hooks"--extraterrestrials, lycanthropy, videotapes with disturbed little girls trapped inside them--these are all gimmicks, of course, significant only for their symbolic representations of psychological modalities.

But these modalities are indeed what are essential to films, stories, myths, dreams. The talent of any artist lies in the representation of these inner struggles, immanent to life, sometimes symbolically disguised but always analogically veracious and mythically profound. Strip all the gimmick away from art and you're left with psychology (or in some lamentable cases nothing at all!).

And this partially solves the question of why is 3D projection is a gimmick time-and-again rejected by the moviegoing public. Uncomfortable tinted glasses and encumbering shutter goggles may give us some small semblance of verisimilitude--though, as I've already pointed out based on an understanding of the functioning of the HVS, it is negligible--but this added "depth" makes a film no more "deep."

The Warden is welcome to move the relevant parts of this thread to the appropriate forum.

Tsk Tsk...
Saucer of milk...table two.

<<<-- Originally posted by Jonathan Jones : Tsk Tsk...
Saucer of milk...table two. -->>>

LMAO!

Peter Jackson's on-board too:

http://newindpress.com/NewsItems.asp...estyle&Topic=0

Ok sure, they don't have a clue!!!

Signing on for a temporary gimmick is a good marketing ploy.

I just wish Lucas would go away. He's really just a tech head who likes to fiddle with a few movies he's made. Hasn't he been doing pretty much Starwars and Indiana Jones versions for the last 20 years? Releasing endless versions of the same thing, again and again, slightly tweaked for some new fandangled things he's into. I'm sick of Starwars. Episode 4 and 5 were OK, 6 just started to lose it with the ewoks, and 1 and 2 were pretty sad. Give it up George.

He's an entrepreneur, he knows how to make more and more money. Simple. He announced no original Star Wars on DVD, I bet in 10 years he'll release it to make another multi-million dollars. He really is boring.

You guys just kill me!! lol!!

<<<-- Originally posted by Christopher C. Murphy : Peter Jackson's on-board too:
Ok sure, they don't have a clue!!! -->>>

It's good that these major directors are working to advance the state of the art and make new films in new formats. The assertions I'm challenging aren't that directors who make new films in 3D don't know what they're doing, or even that old 2D films shouldn't be given the 3D treatment (although the proposed "repurposing" of back catalogues of films smacks of the same chintz that inspired the spate of colorization of old black & whites, which Lucas himself testified was unfaithful to the works' intentions). What I'm saying is that we shouldn't expect to see every movie theater in America looking like something out of a J.R. Eyerman photograph ten years from now, the type of image evoked by words like "change filmmaking forever."

3D won't catch on today (beyond novelty exhibition like IMAX 3D) any more than it caught on in the '50s because people don't like wearing claptrap and 3D never adds anything to a story.

Want to revolutionize cinema? Make a great movie, 3D, 2D, black & white, or even silent.

<<<-- Originally posted by Robert Knecht Schmidt : 3D won't catch on today (beyond novelty exhibition like IMAX 3D) any more than it caught on in the '50s because people don't like wearing claptrap and 3D never adds anything to a story. -->>>

Neither does color or big fancy effects shots. Sometimes sound does, often it doesn't. If history has proven anything, it's proven that adding to a story, or a story at all, has little to do with what will change cinema forever, or what audiences are willing to see.

What those things do do is add to the visceral experience of a film, which is what most people go to the movies for.

<<<-- Originally posted by Joshua Starnes : What those things do do is add to the visceral experience of a film, which is what most people go to the movies for. -->>>

For "visceral" experiences--those that affect the viscera--people ride roller coasters. Movies are are enduringly popular because they tell stories.

If people really attended movies to get a good gut-wrench, then the fabric of cinema would be different indeed. Shot sequences, rather than aiding such cinematic staples as continuity of character, setting, and plot, would be engineered around the simple thrills of flights and falls and twists and turns. Which is not to say a market for such films doesn't exist--it clearly does, in some IMAX films and all shaker-table rides like STAR TOURS--but it is deservedly small, because on the whole it becomes rapidly tedious and is finally psychologically meaningless.

Joshua, I always enjoy your posts.

<<<-- Originally posted by Robert Knecht Schmidt : <<<-- Originally posted by Joshua Starnes : What those things do do is add to the visceral experience of a film, which is what most people go to the movies for. -->>>

For "visceral" experiences--those that affect the viscera--people ride roller coasters. Movies are are enduringly popular because they tell stories.

If people really attended movies to get a good gut-wrench, then the fabric of cinema would be different indeed. Shot sequences, rather than aiding such cinematic staples as continuity of character, setting, and plot, would be engineered around the simple thrills of flights and falls and twists and turns. Which is not to say a market for such films doesn't exist--it clearly does, in some IMAX films and all shaker-table rides like STAR TOURS--but it is deservedly small, because on the whole it becomes rapidly tedious and is finally psychologically meaningless.

Joshua, I always enjoy your posts. -->>>


I would say one of the things that have made movies enduringly popular is that they tell stories. But there are lots of mediums that tell stories, but movies have trumped them as the most mass appeal because they deliver not just a story, but an 'experience' which I think is what audiences go for. Yes, story as well - but there's a reason we get so many of these huge effects movies and action movies each year, and there's a reason those films are successful. Sometimes that has to do with the story.

Story is certainly everything in making a good movie. But it often has nothing to do with making a popular movie, or a movie that changes filmmaking. Star Wars is a classic, it remains so because of it's story, but it didn't change filmmaking with it's story but with how its story was told and the 'experience' that went along with it.

About the only enjoyable bit I got out of the Oscar's this year was Rock asking normal people what movies they'd seen or heard of and which were their actual favorites. Granted, responses are picked for comedic effect, but I don't think it changes the truth of it either.

I prefer my films to have great stories, and it definitely determines what films are classics (though there are certainly some 'classics' that I think are awful, but that's another discussion) but I think we also have to admit there's more to what people will go to see than just the story. Well - when you're working on Hollywood budgets, anyway.

I always enjoy your posts to Robert.

I see your point and it's a good one. Just try explaining the big rolling rock chasing down Indiana Jones to anyone without actually showing them the movie.

"I just wish Lucas would go away. He's really just a tech head who likes to fiddle with a few movies he's made"

Go away??
It sounds like he should be posting on here with us! He'd fit right in.

:)



by the way,
Robert and Joshua, great points on both sides.
Thanks for those posts.

How about this idea for 3d viewing. Something in the future that is more holographic projection than the simple 3d systems of today. Imagine staring at a 'virtual set' as though you were watching a play. Perhaps it can even be advanced enough for the viewer to place themselves anywhere in or around the scene as they desire. Now, that's something I'd go see and be enveloped in.

-gb-

Like the 'family video' Tom Cruise was looking at in 'Minority Report'.


<<<-- Originally posted by Greg Boston : How about this idea for 3d viewing. Something in the future that is more holographic projection than the simple 3d systems of today. Imagine staring at a 'virtual set' as though you were watching a play. Perhaps it can even be advanced enough for the viewer to place themselves anywhere in or around the scene as they desire. Now, that's something I'd go see and be enveloped in.

-gb- -->>>

I don't really buy the experience argument. I don't think the movie "experience" goes any farther than the experiencing a sticky floor, the smell of popcorn, hearing the pops of sound in the film and watching the dust and scratches.

People go for stories yes, but I'd say more to experience things that they cannot normally in their lives i.e. cool explosions. its a sticky argument because I feel part of your attention is kept by how "cool" whatever you are watching looks, but i'd hardly think the majority of the movie public finds wearing cheesy sunglasses cool. I find that idea as campy as the pick-your-own-ending film idea. But we'll see. People are pretty dumb. I tihnk people watch movies to be immersed in the story but in a strage transcendental way, not literally.

3d (and not added depth)is a good idea but creates a huge problem.
Suppose you are looking a 3d movie. Will you stop every 3 secondes to check another angle ? will you review the movie 360 times to make sure you have seen any angle ?
3D is fine for football or boxing, since you would want to replay some event from a different point of view (this already exists anyway, no need to wait for 2007) but frankly a think the story is 90% of a regular movie and i do not care if it comes from a digital satellite transmission or a plain old 35mm film, as long as my eyes are fooled enough (and that is pretty easy) to believe they see the story and not a wall.

i already posted this in my 3D thread, BUT since you guys post in threads that don't really pertain to the subject, i shall re-iterate it here =^).

3D will ONLY work if the medium is interactive. meaning, if you're playing half-life2, doom3, farcry, THEN having total immersion/3D is a MUST have. 2D is a LIMITATION for the interactive medium. i'm thinkin star trek's holographic projections. in fact, artists can even create "holo-novels" or stories taht utilize 3D but the reader/audience actually interactes much like today's games (MMPORG).

but for film, film was created as 2D. "MOTION PICTURE". the 3D "gimmicks" as most of you have said only work on limited basis cause people don't wanna watch their stars becoming 3Dimensional all of a sudden. film by its very nature do NOT require 3D. even those "3d" rides like the Borg ride in Vegas is relying on interactivity of the seats moving. but for NON-interactive mediums, most people don't want to have 3D. i mean, would you want to take 3D pictures? maybe, if it's practical and if you can interact with it. but film? i don't think so.

A well-written, well-acted, well-filmed, and well-edited story that connects with its viewers is, in itself, already a sufficiently immersive experience.

But I suspect that it's hard for George Lucas to walk away from perhaps the $50 mil-$100 mil that Star Wars devotees, a crowd well-primed to buy into gimmicks, will likely reward him for such an effort.

An interesting argument for 3-D.

heath

3D won't be an effective antipiracy measure. Movies that are pirated from studio sources will continue to leak out through the same channels they leak out through now: in-house screener copies; it is unclear whether there will be some countermeasure preventing theater pirates from simply pointing their camcorders through one eye of the shutter goggles. (So you won't be able to view it in 3D on your TV or computer? Many might consider it an improvement: no need to wear any hoo-ha.)

Is the internet really to blame for killing theatrical exhibition? The numbers do not support this assertion made in the first several sentences of Harry's column. Hollywood posted record years for revenue through 2002, but even if internet piracy is to blame for the slump in attendance in the most recent years, it doesn't explain the explosion in DVD sales, whose revenue numbers rival the numbers for theatrical. And any decline from piracy in the Hong Kong industry is almost certainly attributable to the proliferation of cheap bootleg discs sold in the streets in broad daylight, not clandestine distribution over the internet.

Will 3D bring people back to the cinemas in the same way sound, color, and wider aspect ratio succeeded in bringing people back to the theaters in past eras? More likely, 3D will succeed in bringing people back to the theaters equipollently to the way 3D brought people back to the theaters in its original life--i.e., not appreciably. We should not forget that 3D was among those gimmicks introduced in the '50s to reclaim television audiences, right along with color, Cinerama, CinemaScope, Todd-AO, Smell-o-Vision, Illusion-O, among myriad other ballyhoo. It didn't work back then, and the new generation of Hollywood executives, perhaps ignorant of history, would be unwise to place faith and investment dollars in new slates of gimmick productions: the one thing that 3D production is guaranteed to do is complicate and expensify the cinema business at every level--production, post, exhibition--thereby heightening the risk for film investors.

As for the less-expensive repurposing of back catalogues, as I've already contended, the 3D-ifying algorithms can't and don't do anything more than your brain already does while watching a 2D movie, but beyond that, are audiences really going to clamor to pay a nearly double ticket price to sit with an ill-fitting shutter goggle apparatus to watch Constantine in 3D? Casablanca? "If you liked it in 2D, you're going to love it in 3D!"? I think not. "If it stunk in 2D, it might be a little bit better in 3D!"? A guaranteed no.

The Aint it Cool News piece has the same view I do.

Anyone with half a brain can see that 3D Cinema isn't even an argument. The cinema professionals who make $ are going to use whatever technology is available to draw eye balls into theaters. The numbers are hurting and there is no doubt that 3D (as well as other new technology) will be used to bring people back into theaters.

History is the greatest tool in making an educated guess on what will happen next. The theaters at this point have maxed out technology based on "old school" - the traditional projector is on its way out. The 5.1 digital audio was the start of the "digital" change. I should know a thing or two about theaters - I was a projectionist in a theater! It's appalling what happens to the films at the very last part of the cinema chain. The film comes in on 7-10 different reels, some stupid kids splices it together, cuts segments out because the theater owner wants to save time (yes, up to 10 minutes are cut out of some films sometimes and you don't know it...true, true, true!! later on DVD you wonder why you didn't remember a certain part!), also the old projector pumps immense light (heat) onto the film...burning it beyond belief! The physical mechanics happening during a presentation are the worst....everytime a film is projected the quality goes down and down. Unless you see a film on opening weekend - you're seeing a print that's degraded.

So, digital projection was needed yesterday. Everyone knows that digital means unlimited and infinate creative choices. It's totally obvious that Imax and all those other 3D technologies are successful. It's the independent movie theaters scattered all over the place that are the hold up.

Doesn't anyone remember the "monopoly" break up of the movie studios owning theaters? All the studios owned theater chains, but the gov broke them up a long time ago. Now the studios are at the mercy of the theaters....and they hate it. But, they have to play ball. I've been there in the office when movies are being ordered - the typical deal is the movie studios take a percentage of the opening weekend - like 90%. Then the following week it's 80% or less depending on the success of opening weekend. The only thing theaters can take is consession stand - they own that. So, it's a huge battle. The theaters don't want to invest in anything that won't help bring in people buying food and drinks.

However, it's a SAFE BET for the theater owners to invest in digital/3D because those particular films will be BLOCKBUSTERS out of the gate. Everyone knows that blockbusters bring in audience and they buy popcorn. The local theaters need blockbusters much more than art films, so they will cater to the "wiz bang" if they need too. Think about the sound thing...they went digital because home theater went there.

Newspapers - 100's of years
Radio - early 1900's
Kinescope - 1947
Personal Photography - early 1800's
4:3 Cinema - early 1900's (Edison before that)
Black and White Television
16x9 Cinema - because they wanted to compete with TV
Color Television - 1960's
Color Cinema - before television, so it had that edge
Home Black and White Film Cameras - mom and dad make their kids stars
Home Color Film Cameras - the home videos is color!
Home Video Cameras - cheap and every family has one now
HD Television - 1997 in USA and Japan has had it for longer
Streaming Video on Internet - the start of the digital revolution
NTSC and HD content available on Internet - you can download anything now

You mean to tell me that theaters won't offer 3D even though HOME USERS can download FULL SCREEN HIGH DEFINTION MOVIES right now???? Are you on drugs or what?!

http://www.cinemanow.com/browse.aspx...0&channelId=64

I don't care that few people are actually doing it right now - the point is they can and there are millions more people online then in theaters everyday. It's the exact same thing - a theater and your home entertainment system. If you can download a perfect digital HD movie now...they had better get 3D going ASAP.

In addition, HD movies are available "On Demand" on my Comcast HD cable 24/7 too. That's perfect HD quality, 5.1 and whenever I want it. How are theaters competing?? They're not when it comes to presentation....3D would change that for blockbusters.

3D Cinema - just like Lucas and the others say...it's next for theater cinema!!!

re: well, we'll see what happens 5 years from now =^).

i coulda sworn that photography was around in the 1800s and so was the first film cameras (hand cranked).

15 years ago, did anyone know about DVDs? 11 years ago, yes, but no one cared even when they premiered in lated 1997. It wasn't totally adopted until the late late 1990s/early 2000s.

My point--who knows what's next?!

heath

DVDs are just a storage medium. You can safely predict that there will be better and bigger storage mediums in the future.

Now, the introduction of mass VHS (er... Beta) was revolutionary.

"You mean to tell me that theaters won't offer 3D even though HOME USERS can download FULL SCREEN HIGH DEFINTION MOVIES right now???? Are you on drugs or what?!"

In the immortal words of the would-be immortal slugger, I'm not here to talk about the past...

Chris's assertion that 3D will foment an overbearing market pressure to convert to digital projection is predicated on the premise that audiences en masse will pay premiums to see blockbuster films in 3D that they wouldn't pay to see in 2D. Time will tell, but here are some ponderables for the suits in the meantime.

(1) About 10% of the population lacks stereoscopic vision.
(2) Most young children have a hard enough time sitting through a 2-hour film without an extra half a pound of front-heavy weight pushing their chins to their chests. 3D animation is supposed to be a major market for inexpensive 3D treatment, but the major audience demographic for films like Finding Nemo, Shark Tale, and Chicken Little are families with young children.
(3) Wearing shutter goggles interferes with many of the pleasures of the movie-going experience: putting your head on your sweetheart's shoulder becomes an impossibility; looking into your friend's eyes to gauge his or her reaction during a mutally meaningful moment is thwarted; and one is hampered wiping the tears away during the end of Forrest Gump 3D.

Finally, to retread the "3D as antipiracy measure" applesauce:
Pirates are clever. That's what make them pirates. If a 3D film can be exhibited, it can be pirated, in 2D and with ingenuity and a little compromise, in 3D also. 3D exhibition complicates things for pirates, but not appreciably, especially seeing as a lot of piracy results from leaks that occur within the production and distribution chain before prints are even screened commercially. But more significant is the fact that despite piracy, and VHS, and DVD, and pay-per-view, and cable TV, and all sorts of entertaining programming on all sorts of televisions channels, and myriad other options for entertainment on a Friday night, going out of the home and seeing a movie at a theater remains the weekend ticket of choice in industrialized nations.

Put simply, 3D is a non-solution for a problem that doesn't exist.

Robert, I honestly don't see one thing you've said that supports your argument.

I haven't stated that 3D films are profitable today by studio standards - wait, isn't "Polar Express" in 3D right now making $$$$$$? ::)))

We now have HARD FACTS that some of the most successful filmmakers in FILM are endorsing 3D filmmaking. The #1 movie all time "Star Wars" will be coming to theater near you (2007 is tomorrow!) in 3D.

Titanic's director (Cameron) is ONLY 3D from this point forward. Let me remind you that Titanic is the highest grossing film of all time (DVD, theater etc).

Where is the argument? The fact is 3D is here according to the top filmmakers of all time. I rest my case!

The exciting thing is that in 5-10 years indie filmmakers will have access to affordable 3D equipment....if they so choose to use it! :)))

3D film PRODUCERS -- Lucas, Jackson, Rodriguez, Zemeckis and Cameron - what more do you want? What's the Box Office with these guys alone? 10+ BILLION? They say "yes" and you say "no"? Who's right? lol