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Bolt in Vivid Technicolor (Sorta)
Owing to a minute break in the oppressive snowfall of the late fall here on the island I found myself in Sudbury this last Sunday on a "supply / x-mas shopping run". Never having been one to waste a furlough, I decided to cap off the evening by seeing a movie at the Silvercity in Sudbury.
Sadly, choices in movie-going fare were limited, so I decided to see the latest CG film from Disney. More out of curiosity over the new digital 3D technology (having missed out on Journey to the Center of the Earth
) than actual interest in the film, which I had correctly assumed would be standard Disney fare.
Earlier this yes, I had seen "Wall-E
" at the Silver City, so I knew that at least one of their screens (Screen 8, to be precise) had gone digital with impressive results. "Wall-E", if somewhat uninteresting in its preachy eco-friendly message (I mean, how many times do we really need to have this message bashed over our heads?), was still a visual treat. PIXAR is still king of the hill when it comes to CG movies and Wall-E was definitely a crowning achievement, especially when it came to scene rendering, which had an uncanny ability to mimic the real world with visual trickery, especially with regard to depth of field effects. This, combined with the clarity of brand spanking new digital projection equipment, gave the film a tremendous cinematic feeling that almost allowed me to forget that the movie was entirely computer rendered.
So, needless to say, I was excited to see how this same digital projection equipment handled this new digital 3D stuff. However, the experience was somewhat marred with the feeling that the equipment at the Silver City was somehow misconfigured. My suspicions started to arise with the first (non-3D) preview for the new CG film: "The Tale of Despereaux", which seemed rather washed out colour wise. At first I thought it may have been a visual effect,
similar to the muted colour pallet of Fallout 3
, but then the next two previews for Ice Age 3 (how the heck do they render such nice fur? I have a hard enough time rendering nice metal finishes on chainmail pattern illustrations!) and Monsters Vs. Aliens, respectively, were similarly colour-mute as well.
Because the Ice Age 3 and Monsters vs. Aliens trailers were 3D, I spent some time fiddling with my glasses, taking them on and off in order to examine what kind of effect they had on the viewing experience. I noted that the glasses themselves, while not specifically tinted (unless you look in them backwards, more on that in a moment*), did slightly change the colour palette of the movie, making it slightly darker and perhaps a little more greenish in hue.
So, at first, I suspected that the overall hue of the digital projector had been altered in order to make the movie palette truer whilst donning the 3D glasses. However, after watching Bolt for awhile, I suddenly realized that the brightness of the red side of display seemed rather lacklustre. Red and orange objects were super muted, even when I raised the 3D glasses the blurry picture seemed yellow heavy. This led me to suspect that Sudbury's digital project needs an adjustment to balance its RGB, but at the same time, perhaps Bolt itself was just rendered with a yellow heavy palette, I'm not sure and considering how far I am from any other theatres, I'm unlikely to find out for myself until the inevitable DVD release. In the meantime, I would love to hear feedback from anyone else who's seen the Digital 3D version of Bolt and how they found the colour representation (both with and without glasses) to be?
*Fun with 3D Glasses section:
A - Look at the movie through the 3D glasses backwards (arms facing away from your face). Effect: a heavily yellow tinted world, which I'm guessing is related to one way polarization in the plastic lenses (technical folks feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about this!)
B - Look at the movie with the 3D glass on upside down (So that the left lens is in front of your right eye and visa versa for the right lens). Effect: Inverted 3D depth, objects which should be closer to you will appear further away and visa versa for objects which should appear to be more distant. (Note: I only discovered this trick during the credits of Bolt, so I'm not sure how the effect plays during the actual movie. It's almost worth going back to find out!)
C - Blink your eyes alternately. Effect: See the two sides of the film and how they're offset from each other.
D - Raise and lower your 3D glasses. Effect: Contrast and compare colour differences between the (blurry) regular projection and the proper (3D) projection through the glasses.
E - Tilt and move your head to different angles. Effect: Note that it doesn't matter what angle you are viewing the screen from, the plastic lens will always polarize the light correctly for the 3D effect to be visible.
F - Look away from the main action in a scene. Effect: Note other background dimensional effects and screen edge blurring/ghosting.
G - Anybody care to add any other interesting discoveries?
Oh, and what did I think of the film as a whole? Well, it was pretty predictable and pedestrian (What else can one expect from Disney?) But, if that's your kind of thing, then I'm sure you would enjoy in thoroughly! My only real complaint is that when the director has made the decision to drop/shoot/spray etc… objects directly towards the audience I found that it broke my suspension of disbelief by violating the fourth wall and I kept thinking "Oh, the director decided to angle this or that shot specifically so they could invoke the 3D effect, not because it was necessarily the best angle for a given shot."
For me personally, anytime that I'm thinking about how and why a shot or scene in a movie was constructed, rather than the movie itself, there's something wrong.
But, I guess that's just an inherent risk with any 3D movie, I remember thinking the same thing with the 3D version of Friday the 13th
that came out when I was a kid, so I very well just may be too damn jaded!
Posted by Dylon on December 8, 2008 5:46 PM |
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