3-D or not 3-D

I just read an interesting blog post entitled The Myth of 3-D Immersion. Evidently, this particular blog post is a follow-up to another one which received so much response (overwhelmingly negative, I gather) that the author felt compelled to come back for more.

Now, I'm a sound person, and have my own bias on movies which is unashamedly audio-centric. I believe an audience will tolerate weak visuals, bad lighting, poor shot composition, etc, far more than they will sit through bad audio. If they can't understand the dialog, or if they have to really concentrate to hear the words over the background noise, it's over. If the lead actor's fill light is too low and makes the hero look like a jackal, they'll keep watching (and listening).

So, that's my bias. It should come as no surprise that I view 3-D in movies as far less important than a good surround sound mix. Done well, 3-D can enhance my enjoyment of a movie, but it won't make a good movie great and it won't make a bad mix sound good. (On the other hand, a really good mix can make a good movie great for me because it puts me in their world and I respect that even if I didn't especially like their world.) Done poorly, 3-D is just annoying and distracting. (Of course, surround sound done poorly can be annoying and distracting, too. I think of the early days of 5.1 mixing when they just felt compelled to place sounds behind your right shoulder just because they could. Generally, making the audience look away from the screen is a pretty good way to pull them out of their suspension of disbelief.)

Anyway, the core point of this blog I was reading which inspired all of this you're reading is this:

The introduction of 3-D technology can't be compared to that of sound, or color, or even stereo, as people like to do. And for a simple reason. We use these technologies to show more, to extend what can be depicted. These technologies enable us to increase the amount of information we can represent or put to work in film. And this is the stuff of story-telling.

And that thought leads to the paragraph which really inspired me to write this post:

Recall Marlon Brando's famous line, as Terry Malloy, in On the Waterfront, "I could have been a contendah!" You recall his facial expression, posture and movements, the line itself, the feeling with which it is delivered, but you also recall Brando's voice. You need sound to display the voice; you need sound for voice to be one of the elements in the composition making up the whole. Color similarly extends the working pallet of the director and so extends what can be presented to an audience.

Which reminds me of one of my favorite quotes on the subject of sound in movies: "half of what you see is what you hear." (Attributed to many, many film-makers, perhaps most famously to George Lucas, although it was probably said by Francis Ford Coppola first.) Now imagine if you could hear Brando saying something, but couldn't really make out the words because the microphone was pointed the wrong way or the scene had been shot in an actual moving car or the music had been mixed too loud. First, turn the sound off on your computer. Now watch it without sound.



Kinda dull scene, no? Go ahead, I know you want to, watch it again with the sound on. Better, isn't it?

I can imagine the scene colorized and I don't like it. I can imagine it shot in color and it would probably be just as powerful, but not necessarily any more than it is now. I can't really imagine conceiving of that scene in 3-D, but when I try, I don't see how it does anything but distract me from the scene. So I have to agree, sound was a more important advance in movie-making technology than 3-D.

What does get really interesting to me is thinking about how sound can play with 3-D in interesting ways. We've had something like 3-D audio for my entire career (in 1977, Star Wars was the first movie to use Dolby Surround, Jurassic Park in 1993 launched 5.1 audio in theaters, I started working in audio post in 1995), so I've been spending my whole career working with how to place the audience into a three dimensional space. I haven't worked on a 3-D project yet, though, and I'm looking forward to discovering how those two different 3-D spaces can interact and compliment one another.

we agree wholeheartedly

Michael Davenport, music supervisor and owner of Expressive Artists, just alerted us to this review of our work (and his) on Adventures of a Teenage Dragonslayer:

Luckily the film's lossless Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mix is quite winning, especially from the very creative use of poppy underscore tunes, some evidently courtesy of bands the music coordinator for the film manages. There is also good, if inconsistent, use of the surrounds, including the many sewer sequences, which feature a lot of discrete channelization and good echo effects. The best overall sound effect is toward the end of the film when Darksmoke and Arthur have their final showdown. That sequence bristles with awesome LFE and the sound design is very effective. Overall, dialogue sounds great here, and the music is especially well done throughout.

(Quoted from http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Adventures-of-a-Teenage-Dragonslayer-Blu-ray/18666/.)

We're very proud of our work. (Sure, we'd rather not see the phrase "if inconsistent" in there, but we understand what they mean. We knew we had to focus our efforts on certain scenes to make those sections of the movie have the punch the filmmakers wanted. We would have loved to flesh out the movie throughout as much as we did in those key sections, but we had to pick out battles.) Kat certainly deserves the credit they give her for the "very effective" sound design on the final showdown and, in fact, throughout the film: she brought the dragons to life, and her Foley and background work filled out the reality. I'm very pleased to see what they said about my dialog work and the final mix. While we were doing the initial premixing in one of the "many sewer sequences" referenced in this review, I had the wonderful sensation of everyone behind me in the mix room leaning in closer as the suspense built and the mix surrounded them in the world of the sewer. We also agree with everything nice they said about the music, which it should be noted came from the combined forces of composer Mark Oates and music supervisor Michael Davenport.

Best Sound Oscar 2010

We watched Inception in the studio the other night--the movie which won both sound Oscars this year. (While our video friends laugh at us for the picture quality, we like the sound. We're working on the picture quality, too. Stay tuned.)

It wasn't as clear a standout to me as a Best Sound Oscar as The Hurt Locker, but it sounded very, very good. The sound design was very good--interesting without being distracting--and that's what usually wins the Best Sound Editing Oscar. What really stood out as exceptional to my ears, though, was the final mix. It was really clean and clear and easy to understand; it was dynamic without loosing the quiet moments or blowing us out of our seats on the loud parts.

when it rains, it pours... and when it pours, we get wet.

Wow, what a week this has been... and it may be almost over, but it's not really close to over. We've been working most of the week--days and nights--one two feature-length documentaries, both with the same deadline, Friday, March 11.

The two projects really couldn't be much more different. We started last week working with the lovely and talented Scott Cervine on his latest, People v. The State of Illusion. This project is put together by, and features, some of the same people from What The #$*! Do We (K)now!? This one is a very provocative look at how emotions control how we perceive the world, and how our perceptions affect our state of mind. It's very inspirational and uplifting to work on, even when it's the middle of the night and our ears are starting to get weary from too much work.

The other project is called The Proving Grounds directed by Ld Dyksterhouse and it's about a Mixed Martial Arts training gym here in Albuquerque run by the inimitable Greg Jackson. We've actually had the distinct pleasure of recording Greg Jackson for an entirely different project, but that's another story. While on the surface, this is a very different kind of project, it is also very rewarding to work on, which is good because we've been putting a lot of hours into it, and it has some surprising similarities with People v. The State of Illusion. I'm not sure I've had enough sleep to articulate those similarities... perhaps you'll watch both of them and tell me what you thought.