3D

Dot writes: there’s an article by Mark Cousins in the October issue of Prospect magazine (which Ken bought while he was away at the weekend, for reading on the ferry) about cinema in 3D. As it happens it uses as its main example the film Up. Ken and I saw Up in 3D but Hugh refused to wear the special glasses. According to Cousins Hugh may have had a more authentic and stimulating cinematic experience than we did:

the 3D technique…is something other than cinema… When I took my 3D glasses off, I had a sense of bringing something to the experience of watching – mental imagery or long evolved perceptual processes. When I put the glasses on, these processes seemed redundant.

When I took my 3D glasses off my main sensation was that the image was very faintly out of focus. The 3D appearance is fun but I didn’t find it as enveloping or oppressive as Cousins seems to have done. The effect was much like looking through one of those old-fashioned stereovision photograph viewers: there was a sense of depth but not of mass, of flat images displayed at different distances. Maybe it would seem more genuinely three-dimensional with a normal film as opposed to an animation. Anyway. What I set out to say really was – nice gimmick, but does it make that much difference? Hugh thinks not.