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Tue, 1 Jan 2013

The Hobbit, in 3d

for the film, for the technology

I've now seen The Hobbit (part 1) in both 2d at the Hastings Fleapit and 3d at the BFI Imax. In 2d the only real complaints I had were that the font used for the film titles and credits hadn't been rendered well - it was all pixelly - and that the font used for subtitles when characters were muttering in Tolkienish was crap.

Both of those are fixed in the 3d version.

Unfortunately, some other stuff got broken. In those long sweeping shots with lots of movement that Peter Jackson loves so much, everything is just a little bit blurry. Even when there's not much movement, such as in close-ups, it's not quite as crisp as it should be. I believe that this is down to how the 3d system works: the images for the left and right eye are projected slightly offset from each other, and polarised 90° apart. The cheap n nasty plastic glasses you get to wear are polarised so each eye sees the right image. Trouble is, everyone's eyes are slightly different distances apart, and so it's only a very lucky few whose eyes are exactly the right distance apart who will see clearly.

A handful of scenes and shots definitely benefitted from 3d, but only a handful. I'll not go out of my way to see a film in 3d again, and nor should you. You should see The Hobbit, but seeing it in 2d is fine.

Posted at 19:00 by David Cantrell
keywords: film | geeky
Permalink | 2 Comments

I'm surprised that you actually watch those 3D things. None of the movies I've so far been forced to see in 3D have really felt like it added much worthwile. The relative best, to date, was Avatar, and even that would've been just fine in 2D.

I remain convinced that this is nothing but the recurrent flailing of an industry in trouble.

Posted by Johan De Meersman on Wed, 2 Jan 2013 at 08:49:44


This is the first film I've seen in 3d.

Posted by David Cantrell on Thu, 3 Jan 2013 at 10:50:44


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