This is a separate argument to the above and I don't know enough about filming to comment. But with technological advances (and glasses-less 3D is one of these) on the way in the future, I don't think it will necessarily be a zero-sum game here.
The problem is that photographers have built up 100 years worth of tricks for dealing with a 2-dimentional plane. A lot of that stuff has to get thrown out. Stuff such as:
* Fast cuts with wildly different focal points. Did'ja like the big space battles in Star Wars? Directors of the future will have to make a choice when making stuff like this: Either slow the cuts down or stick to similar shots (so, not close ups of little ships and then big shots with lots of ships right next to each other). The human eye isn't good at jumping between different focus points very quickly. Directors will have to decide which thing is more important to them at any given point in the film.
Cameron is apparently good at this. Good for him, he has a lot of patience. But outside of the superstars I don't like the idea of directors saying "
let's try this shot" and a technician telling them
"sorry, the eyes won't have time to adjust to this shot that quickly. We'll have to use this shot instead."
* Movie previews that don't drive your brain crazy. No matter how well a director plans his shots, they're gonna get all mixed up in the trailers. I thought 3D 'Tangled' was fine. I thought the 3D trailers before it were horrible for exactly this reason. I really don't see any good way out of this one.
* No more rack-focuses. This is a very 2-dimentional effect used to draw the audience's attention to certain places in a controlled way. Now, yes, we do gain ways of doing that with 3D, so it's a wash, right? Well, except for all those poor schmucks I talked about who are stuck watching the 2D version. They don't get rack-focuses AND they can't see the 3D effects that replaced them.
This is the kind of thing I mean when I say it's ruining 2D films. The guy watching in 2D gets slower cuts (or less varied shots) and less lens effects, but he doesn't see any of the 3D effects that replaced them. So now you either have to buy a 3D TV or get used to movies being more visually dull than they were before. Great. What a wonderful choice.
Incidentally, this is why I don't have much problem with 3D cartoons like Toy Story or Tangled. Animators have much more control over their world and can get around many of these problems. They can even create 2D versions with different shots or set pieces than the 3D versions if they want to. But it's when you move to real-world shooting that directors have to make compromises. Then you go home and watch the normal 2D DVD and you get the downsides without the fancy 3D effects. Your 2D movie is now worse than it otherwise would have been because of the 3D version.
Right now 3D is being most heavily used in summer blockbusters.
It's pretty easy
to see the future.
