Roger Ebert attacks 3D

It's the waste of a good dimension

Ebert wrote a pretty good article attacking 3D. Published in Newsweek and available here:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/237110

He didn't mention that binocular vision is only used to judge distances up to about 12 feet. Beyond that people use other visual cues. This means that for anything more than 12 feet from the camera, 3d is unrealistic.

He's right, though. Hard to imagine anything but crap being made in 3D. And, anyway, didn't we already have 3D? I haven't seen any of the current 3D movies, but are they really better than the 3D movies I saw in the '80s? I mean, is the 3D effect any better.

Lenny Lipton

One thing that surprises me is Lenny Lipton. Ebert says he is "known as the father of the electronic stereoscopic-display industry".

Lenny Lipton? The same one who wrote Independent Film Making? He was a hippie. Advocated art film. Scoffed at Hollywood. Was bemused that filmmakers wanted to record dialog. He wrote a book on Super 8 film making and he called on readers to shoot at 18 fps. And now HE'S responsible for this?

It just seems a little surprising. I guess it shouldn't. He was really into the technical side of it.

Video, 16mm film, digital photography, Andy Warhol

I don't know how I feel about it. With video now. Anybody can make a movie.

I read that photographers are having a hard time earning a living now. And people posting their digital pictures on Flickr are making money. People are paying them to use their work.

I attended a political protest recently. I didn't want to be associated with either the protesters or the people being protested, so I was disturbed at all the cameras. I couldn't stay out of the line of fire. EVERYBODY had a digital camera, and if they didn't have a digital camera they had a cell phone with a built-in camera.

I remember the old days. I'd go to a rally and I'd be the only one taking pictures.

I don't know if it's good or bad. Digital photography is easier and cheaper, but it seems like photography is no longer an art form, or at least it's been diminished as an art form.

In the same way, there was a time when an extreme low-budget movie was really something. They'd cost you about $6,000. Some weren't very good, but you had to admire them. Now you have $100.00 movies.

Now, here's my suggestion. Look at the movies of Andy Warhol.

He did portraits on movie film. The person would sit there and pose and they'd turn the movie camera on and run it for 12 minutes. The rationale for this nonsense was that no one could hold a fake pose for that long. After five minutes, you'd see the "real" person. No fake expression. And this was "art".

So would it be less of a work of art if you did it on video? If you shot it on a high resolution DSLR? The resolution could be as high as 16mm.