Post 6- 3D Film

The film industry has developed hugely since it first started, and has grown in stature with the emergence of many different types of film. The constant progression of film is allowing the cinematic industry the opportunity to grow and make bigger and better films for the widest audience. When some new technology is made available to the cinematic world it tends to create a large excitement in hopes of it becoming the new thing in the world of film. This industry is always looking at ways of enhancing film and the enjoyment of those watching. The meteoric rise of 3D film has been incredible; however it is not the first time the film industry has tried to use 3D film to increase audiences.

“It feels like the 1950's all over again. Back then, Hollywood was faced with dismal ticket sales, partly due the rise of television. Studios needed to entice people back to the theatres. Their answer? The 3D movie.” (Grief 2005)

This first ever 3D feature length movie shown in cinemas was The House of Wax in 1953. This was a tremendous success and at that time it looked like 3D movies would become a mainstay in cinemas, however only a handful of 3D movies had been made since then. This was due to the lack of development available for this technology and also the cost. The film industry in the 50s and 60s did not have relative funding as it does today. There has been a recent resurgence of these movies in the past five years. The modern day film industry did what was done in the 1950’s and tried to bring 3D into movies. Grief did some research into people’s views of 3D in 2005 and found there were very few people were willing to give 3D films much of a chance. His researched showed that 74% of the people he surveyed were unwilling to go to the cinema more often if more feature length 3D movies were readily available. Grief also found out that 75% were unwilling to pay extra to go see these movies in the cinema. Grief’s findings showed that the comeback of the 3D movie may be in vain just like it was in the 1950’s.

Since the 1950’s there were a few movies that were released in 3D that were popular but these did not make as massive an impact as hoped for. This shows that 3D film technology has been tried within cinema for a considerable period of time but once the novelty had worn off did not produce a revolutionary new way of everyday film watching. IMAX has been the main contributors to 3D movies and developing this technology in amusement park rides with the use of 3D images as well. In Disneyland, there have been 3D attractions such as Honey; I Shrunk the Audience and Predator. Both of these were based on movies and it allowed the audience to get the feel that they were involved in such movies.

Now we are in 2011 and 3D is bigger than ever with many movies becoming Box Office hits because of the 3D aspect. Due to advancement of 3D technology and more money being readily available in this industry three out of the top six highest grossing movies of all time have been filmed in 3D. Avatar (1st), Toy Story 3 (5th) and Alice in Wonderland 2010 (6th) are three of the most successful movies of the past five years and all were filmed in 3D. This demonstrates the impact and development of 3D in modern day movies and because of this success 3D has moved on to other Medias. Sky Sports has now integrated showing sports in 3D such as football and golf. A journal article written by Kirk L. Kroeker talks about the progression of 3D movies and how it has affected other markets. This article also highlights the expectation that there will be further developments of 3d in the future with much wider access to the public.

“Television manufacturers and broadcasters have fallen under the spell of the third dimension, with stereoscopic 3D TVs and Blu-ray players now widely available, and new 3D products expected this year from major manufacturers such as LG, Panasonic, and Sony. ESPN and other broadcasters are rolling out dedicated 3D cable channels. Also, the market for stereoscopic 3D computers is expected to grow rapidly, with one million units shipped this year and 75 million by 2014.” (Kroeker 2010)

There have also been other improvements to 3D viewing, the blue and red glasses used to watch 3D movies may have played a factor into the problems with people experiencing headaches and nausea while watching 3D movies. Recently, there have been different glasses available to the public to make viewing 3D movies better. The glasses that are used within cinemas and amusement parks around the world are called RealD glasses. The use of these glasses has made viewing 3D cinema a great deal easier and has overcome issues experienced from earlier movies.


It has become the norm, when there is something a success in today’s society, that it attracts some always negative press. This is no different for 3D film, with reports of health scares and this form of viewing affecting people’s health in a negative way.

“Many people experience nausea during a 3D movie. That’s because the signals that your brain is receiving from your eyes say that you are moving in relation to your immediate surroundings, but your inner ear (in charge of balance) is saying that you’re not moving. If the nausea is not so bad that you’d avoid 3D movies all together, one way to reduce these feelings during a 3D movie is to close your eyes or look away from the screen. This will remove the competing stimuli and help reorient you in actual space,” (Rich)

The quote above highlights talk of how watching 3D can affect a person’s eye sight because ‘it violates the normal rules of perception’. Studies were being taken on people who were watching 3D movies and found that people can be affected by what is known as ‘3D fatigue’. However, the people who took this study found that the movie Avatar did not create such problems because through research and developments in the technology the film makers were able to produce the film in a way that counteracted the effects previously mentioned.

“The recent hit movie Avatar is an example of how Hollywood got it right. What they did is put the shift between left and right eye imagines of that object essentially to zero. “ (Banks 2011)

Dorothy Pomerantz wrote an article about the effects of 3D and compared Avatar, which was a huge success, to the next film that was released in 3D. Clash of the Titans was the next big blockbuster to be released and there was hope that this could replicate the highs of Avatar. The difference between the films was that Avatar was filmed in 3D compared to Clash of the Titans which was filmed and then transferred into 3D viewing.

<em>“Clash of the Titans hit theatres. Audiences got a horrifying glimpse of what it can look like when a studio slaps a movie into 3-D after it has been filmed. Characters looked like "bad, cardboard cut-outs." (Pomerantz 2010)

This created a massive backlash from the success of the Avatar film because people realised that 3D may struggle to work without going through all of the hard work that James Cameron undertook to make Avatar. It is these issues that can affect people’s perceptions of how good 3D is now. If someone had not seen Avatar but read about how good it was and then went to see Clash of the Titans and had the same opinions as Pomerantz this would have a detrimental effect on how they viewed 3D.

The Director of Avatar, James Cameron, believes that 3D film is what is going to take the film industry forward. 3D film reportedly taking in 8% of the British box office in 2010 shows that 3D is already popular. However, Cameron thinks that it will be 100% 3D movies in the next five years.

“Our strategic plan is to make 3D ubiquitous over the next five to 10 years on all platforms,’ Cameron told the Hollywood Reporter. He said he expected to see 100% adoption of the technology in cinemas within three to five years, as well as rapid expansion of the home market.” (Child 2011)

Cameron has a venture (Cameron-Pace Group) that developed and perfected the technology used in the making of Avatar. This company is promoting to games-makers, big and small screen producers to use 3D to enhance the wider benefits of 3D. The increase in popularity of 3D movies has been astonishing 3D movies; however no-one knows how long the popularity will continue for or if, as in the past, 3D popularity will diminish.

Can 3D film become the most dominant style of film making in the coming years or will it dwindle away just like it did in the 1950’s?

Post 5 - Film Review

Toy Story 3

In 1995 one of the best movies of that year (if not ever) was released. Ok fair enough the likes of Se7en, The Usual Suspects, Braveheart and Apollo 13 were all released in this year. Yet none of these had a group of toys that included a cowboy, a spaceman, a T-Rex and a slinky. Yes it was as long as fifteen years ago that Toy Story hit our screens, and the sequel was released eleven years ago. This looked like the end of Woody and co, but that was until Toy Story 3 was released in 2010. The third and last movie of this franchise has been a massive success, just like the two before it, and is just as compelling, funny and entertaining as the two before it, if not more so. The movie brings back all the main characters from previous movies, Woody, Buzz, Rex, Ham, Jessie and Bullseye just to name a few. This movie also follows in the footsteps from Toy Story 2 with the introduction of new toys along with the ones we all grew up with. Looking back at Toy Story 1 and 2, that the main target audience was younger children, and you may say that this is the case for the third movie also. However, the people who watched both Toy Story 1 and 2 have grown up with Toy Story throughout their lives so therefore more of the older generation watched the third movie. The movie also has more of a grown-up feel about it compared to the first two, this may be due to the fact that the owner of the toys, Andy is about to leave for college, and has out grown the toys. Andy has a tough decision to make, either throw the toys away or put them in the attic. However, Woody believes they still have a place in Andy’s heart. Due to a mix up, Andy’s mum throws the toys out thinking there trash. The toys manage to escape and end up sneaking into the car to get donated to a playschool. After years of neglect the toys believe they are going to get played with again, and find love. However, Woody believes otherwise and thinks they still belong with Andy, whether he has grown out of them or not. So Woody leaves the rest of them to get back to Andy, and once he leaves the other toys realise they have been tricked by other toys already at the playschool. Buzz, Ham, Rex and co have been put in a room with children who are too young to play with the toys properly and the toys realise they have made a horrible mistake in leaving. During the time the toys get ripped apart, Woody finds the love and care he got when Andy was young in a little girl and realises the other toys deserve this and returns to the playschool. Woody’s return delights the toys and they hatch a plan to escape the playschool without the other toys knowing. The escape plan looked to be going well until the original playschool toys catch them, and throw them in the dumpster. They then proceed to be put into the dump and almost crushed and burnt until they are luckily saved by “the claw”. Returning to Andy’s house after their ordeal was a great relief for the toys yet there was still the dilemma of what Andy was to do with them. That is until Woody leaves Andy a note saying where to put the toys so they can get played with properly. The ending see’s the toys watching Andy leave and head off to college, with Andy struggling to say goodbye to the toys as well. Toy Story was the one of the first movies to show the power of animation that was being provided by Pixar. The success of the first two movies allowed Toy Story 3 to become a hit before anyone had watched the film. However, after people watched the film they realised it was just as good as the first two and it became a massive success and became a box office smash hit. It is not hard to see why; it is not hard to see why with such fun and loveable characters such as Woody and Buzz. The only disappointing part of this film knows that the franchise is over, but you never know with movies nowadays, so fingers crossed!

Post 4 - Explicit and Implicit

Most of the time when you sit down to watch a film, you are hoping to watch a good film; however there are the occasional films that try to make you think about today’s society and whether or not certain actions that are taken and which actions are right and which ones are wrong. Jonathan Rosenbaum said “What is designed to make people feel good at the movies has a profound relation to how and what they think and feel about the world around them”. Different ideologies are given throughout different films and can be interpreted by the audience in different ways. There are movies that will imply certain ideologies with a film, and other movies will state the exact ideologies based in the film. Films that imply certain ideologies are known as implicit and movies that state ideologies can be known as explicit. An example of an Implicit film is Inglorious Basterds, this has implicit ideologies due to the fact that a rogue group of ‘heroes’ go across to Germany to fight the ‘enemy’ of the Nazi regime. The so called heroes of the film are seen to get revenge for all of the abuse that has been sustained to innocent people (specifically Jewish people). The Rogue group who enter enemy territories somehow manage to overcome the whole Nazi regime and get revenge on all who have attempted to stop their mission. Four of the group going into a cinema and killing and burning Hitler and all the high ranking German militants in one go without any real fight. This idea gives the image of war and terror however, it shows the heroes prevailing and none of them lose their lives or get injured in the disaster. Also the last scene depicts the ultimate hero Aldo Raine carving a Swastika onto the forehead of Col. Hans Landa. This was revenge for Landa inflicting pain and suffering on innocent people and it was also a mark of what Landa had done while in the Nazi regime. In comparison, an example of an explicit film is Saving Private Ryan. This movie shows a regiment from an army sent to collect a man who has lost his three brothers during the war. As in any army around the world, they did not question the mission even thought they felt it was a waste of time. The ending also showed the true meaning of war, instead of the heroes prevailing and coming out unscathed, all of the regiment who went to save Private Ryan died while achieving the mission. That statement depicts the truth about war and that is that a lot of people died during war, many of whom did not deserve to die. The battle scenes show both heroines and enemies both dying, just like in many wars and the ending does not give a false ending that may impress the audience. The different ideologies used in different movies make it difficult to explain the difference between explicit and implicit movies. It is hard to try and separate the difference between reality and ideology in film. However, Comolli and Narboni say that “Reality is nothing but an expression of the prevailing ideology.” So in some aspects ideology can become more of a mainstay in film than reality can.

Post Three - Counter Cinema

Most Hollywood movies are seen to conform to the same old storylines. Good start, tough storyline in the middle, happy ending. Of course there are the occasional storylines that do not conform to this but eight out of ten films are based around this sort of idea. Every now and again a movie stands out from the rest and changes this conformist view. This is seen as counter cinema. Peter Wollen said "the seven deadly sins of cinema against the seven cardinal virtues". Wollen quoted that to try and achieve counter cinema you needed to try and stick to the seven cardinal virtues and blank out the seven deadly sins.

A movie that does not conform to the usual Hollywood stereotype is the hard hitting film American History X. The movie itself is hard hitting as it is based around neo-Nazis and has very racist views throughout the film. However, the film looks to head down the same path as other movies, as Derek Vineyard manages to try and stop his younger brother Danny from going down the same route as he did when he went to jail for being part of a neo-Nazi gang. It looks to end peacefully as Danny decides to turn his back on all that trouble and concentrate on school. The ending of the film shows Danny getting shot by a young black man in the school toilets. This ends the film with a disturbing and ironic ending that is very rarely done. The director Tony Kaye choice of ironic deaths suits the story perfectly and give the film an ending that is original and outside the norm. The idea of someone escaping the idea of the neo-Nazi world and trying to better him while also trying to better his family allows the audience to feel sorry for the character while also having some hatred towards him regarding the way he acted in the past. However, will the fact that his brother has been killed by a black man anger him to return to his neo-Nazi roots? Kaye knows this will be in the minds of the viewer and therefore gives the audience some doubts about whether or not it was the right idea to try and leave the neo-Nazi regime.

The Blair Witch Project is another movie that does not conform to the usual Hollywood stereotype; the movie was not suppose to become a mainstream movie and was not expected to reach the dizzy heights it reached in the cinematic world. The Blair Witch was originally a low budget movie but because of the movie being something different, it generated mass interest along with mass revenue. The movie is seen as a documentary within a documentary and this one of the few movies that uses a handheld camera. The amateur way the movie is portrayed gives the audience the idea that this has actually happened. The use of hand held cameras to make a blockbuster movie was never used before The Blair Witch and this has started a trend that other movies have imitated such as Cloverfield and Paranormal Activity.

reference: Wollen, Peter. 1972. Godard and Counter Cinema: Vent d'Est

What Makes An Auteur?

Quentin Tarantino - Inglorious Basterds, Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs


Quentin Tarantino can be seen as auteur director due to his different sense of direction of movies and this has been a large talking point throughout his career. Three of his main films have been the likes of Pulp Fiction, Inglorious Basterds and Reservoir Dogs. These films demonstrate the auteur qualities of Tarantino and all three of these known as having Tarantinoesque film qualities because of the way he has gone about directing these films. Tarantino comes under what Francois Truffaut’s said which is that “A director can be measured on their unique and perceivable style such as recurring themes, recurring motifs, a distinct visual style or prevailing themes.”

Tarantino is known for many things within his films but the use of violence has become a mainstay within his films. There are a lot of films that have used violence but the way Tarantino uses violence puts his own trademark to the films. He has a way of making his ideas of violence somewhat humorous in a sordid way. In Reservoir Dogs there is an iconic scene where Mr Blonde cuts off a man’s ear to the soundtrack of stuck in the middle with you by Stealers Wheel. This scene shows the irony of a man dancing around to an upbeat song seemingly enjoying the fact he was brutally harming a man. Pulp Fiction has a scene that shows some violence in a humorous way also, when Vincent and Jules are driving away from a murder scene, they have a hostage Marvin and they are asking him some questions until Vincent shoots Marvin accidentally in the face. Inglorious Basterds uses violence throughout the film also however, a memorable part is when the officer, Donny Donowitz (aka. The Bear Jew) batters a German soldier to death with his weapon of choice, a baseball bat.

Tarantino also has a peculiar way of setting out his movies, instead of telling one main story and sticking to this, Tarantino chooses to tell three or four different stories that interlink throughout the film. This also allows Tarantino to cast four or five main characters instead of the usual two or three. The use of several main characters allows Tarantino to manipulate the different stories to follow all the different main characters. Inglorious Basterds has four main characters that the story follows (Hans Landa, Aldo Raine, Shosanna Dreyfus, and Donny Donowitz). Pulp Fiction has five main characters the movie is based upon (Vincent Vega, Jules Winnfield, Butch Coolidge, Marsellus Wallace, and Uma Thurman) and Reservoir Dogs has for main characters (Mr White, Mr Blonde, Mr Pink, and Mr Orange).

Very few directors choose to put themselves into their work however Tarantino is not one of these people. Tarantino has appeared in all three of these movies, he has become somewhat of a cameo in all three, however still chose to cast himself. Tarantino playing a cameo role in a movie gives the idea that the movie is directed or written by Tarantino himself. The part in Inglorious Basterds, he chose not to be credited for, however in Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs he plays part in the storyline.

Reference: Francois Truffaut, 1954. Une certain tendance du cinema francais.

Man With a Movie Camera (1929) Dziga Vertov

Vertov's film has proven to be a real talking point in the early stages of cinema. Vertov felt that films should be based on real life and nothing should be staged; however 'Man with a Movie Camera' was criticised because Vertov had gone back on his original point of view. Even though Vertov went against his first ideas, he still created some important cinematic techniques. The film introduced techniques such as double exposure, freeze frame, split screens, extreme close-ups and tracking shots are just to name a few. The idea behind this movie has become a revelation for other films and the techniques used within this film has proven to be pivotal in other movies.

The Cabinet of Dr. Cagliari (1920) Robert Wiene

Horror films have been a mainstay in the film industry and many say this film could be the influence that hs helped the popularity of horror movies. German expressionism is shown in this film and has impacted on other movies with its peculiar style. "German expressionism in film was an artistic movement advancing the theory that every component of a movie - the photography, scenery, lighting, costuming and acting - should be intentionally stylized and even wildly exaggerated in order to achieve a unified emotional impact". The use of dark mysterious lighting along with the horror style scenery makes this film one of the first movies to create a real horror theme.