what happened

[calimac]

Well, that was interesting.

Yielding to the blandishments of several, I went to see Coraline in 3D today. The worst that could have happened was that my eyes would rebel, I'd have to leave the theater, and I'd be out $10. But it wasn't that bad, and was worth the experiment.

Let me review my eye problems again. My eyes are slightly misaligned and I never developed proper depth perception. The right eye is very nearsighted; but the left is much less so, and when I was a child it wasn't at all. (What I didn't know until a few years ago is that I use the right eye for close-up vision.)

The right eye's nearsightedness is what keeps me from having double vision, like Sir George Head in the Monty Python mountaineering sketch. ("We're going to climb the twin peaks of Kilimanjaro," remember?) As a child lying in bed, I'd sometimes stare at the clock on the otherwise bare opposite wall. For a moment I'd just see one clock; then a fuzzy (because nearsighted) second clock would detach itself and drift over to the right. When I blinked, it would jump back and repeat the process.

I haven't seen that peculiar effect in many years, because I haven't been in the conditions to get it, but it proved to explain what happened when I watched Coraline. If I blinked heavily, I could sometimes actually get the 3D effect to jump out at me for a few seconds. Then it would flatten out and I'd have to try again. Most of the time I was just seeing an ordinary 2D movie through a slightly darkened lens. (If you take the glasses off, the 3D effects look fuzzy, because you're seeing both images through both eyes.)

So that's interesting: I'm not totally lacking in depth perception; I just can't hold on to it. I should add that I've never had this effect while looking at the real world: it always looks exactly the same to me whether I've blinked or not, or whether I'm closing my weak eye or not, and I don't perceive the world as flattened, but maybe that's just because I'm used to it. This seems to be just a function of the 3D movie illusion.

It might be significant that the 3D images never themselves looked 3D. That is to say, when I saw them as jumping out, they looked like insubstantial sheets of film or paper hanging in space, not solid objects.

You might think: if I could get my eyes lined up, it'd fix itself. We tried that. An overeager optometrist once ordered me a pair of startlingly angled lenses to try to get my two eyes focused on the same spot. It took the lenscrafters three tries to get it made properly, and it still didn't work. The eyes refused to stay together, or to work together.

And the film itself? I liked it. Like a Tim Burton film without the mannerisms. The story had a more wayward form than the formal structure I want from fairy tales, but that was true of the book as well. The designs were clever (except why, when the Other Mother reveals herself as evil, does she have to start looking like Cruella de Vil?), Coraline was appropriately spunky, the cat talked like Morris from the TV commercials, and I saw more of myself in Coraline's dad than I felt at ease with. If I had a child her age, I hope I'd take this as a cautionary tale.

Comments

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

I quite liked the film. It is the first film I've seen that uses 3D the way I believe it should be used -- to build the world of the film, not for goofy jump-out-at-you sfx. Sound and color were gimmicks, then color design and sound design became part of the vocabulary of film; I believe that 3D design may now become a part of the vocabulary of film.

I realize that this is no great joy to you; you'll be like a colorblind man watching Dorothy travel from Kansas to Oz. But it delights me.

[asimovberlioz.livejournal.com]

Well, there are a few "jump-out-at-you" moments -- the needle, for example, but I guess that helped drive home the point (as it were) about the buttons-for-eyes.

The worst 3D movie I've ever seen was a monstrosity called "Comin' At Ya," a truly godawful spaghetti western (although apparently produced in Spain, not Italy). Things were just thrust toward the viewer with no rhyme or reason. The worst: a baby's bare bottom.

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

paella western!

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Don't forget that you and I watched the broadcast of the original PBS Lathe of Heaven in 1980 on a black-and-white TV set, thus completely missing one of the film's most important effects. It was years before I acquired a tape of it and saw it again, properly.

From what I can tell, although the 3D effects in Coraline are integrated and not gimmicky, they are also not essential for the telling of the tale. Otherwise they'd hardly dare to release it in 2D as well. That's not going to happen until 3D makes its way to whatever replaces home video. But that might not be too long.

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

Fringefaan and I tried to see it yesterday (Monday) but it was sold out! I think they sold the last tickets while we were in line. Oh well.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

This showing, though well populated, was nowhere near sold out. But these are the trackless suburbs.

[milwaukeesfs.livejournal.com]

Georgie and I enjoyed it, and perfectly well in 2-D. Even for those of us whose vision is not so different from one eye to the other, we find having to wear the 3-D glasses in addition to our own to be sufficiently annoying as to be not worth the effect.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I sometimes find my own glasses to be annoying, but I did not find the 3D glasses to be any more so.

[liveavatar.livejournal.com]

Did you stay until the very end? That's when the most 3D image of all appeared. If so, how did it look?

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

There was a sort of merry-go-round thing, I think? Horses and ribbons of some kind? That one did jump out and impress me for about two seconds.

[liveavatar.livejournal.com]

That's the one.

I'm glad the 3D experiment was moderately successful.

[smofbabe.livejournal.com]

Just got back to our hotel room after seeing this. We liked it a lot and are glad we stayed through to the very end of the credits for the special effect.

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

Interesting...I, too, saw Coraline 3D Tuesday evening. Thanks to batwrangler's comment this weekend, I knew to stay to the very end of the credits. (I usually do that anyway, but was glad for the heads-up.)

My favorite 3D effects in the movie were those that went from the audience into the screen. Very nice.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I didn't actually see any of those in 3D, but it was obvious that was what they were doing. From audience into screen at that speed is much cleverer than the other way around.