FOCUS ON 3D CINEMA

By Owen Weetch, PhD student in the Department of Film and Television Studies

With the summer holidays drawing to a close, many of us will have been to the cinema to see one of the seasons blockbusters, possibly in 3D. But has the novelty and excitement associated with 3D cinema already lost its appeal? Owen Weetch, PhD student in the Department of Film and Television Studies, discusses the 'emergence effect' and explains how it may be the stories themselves, not the 3D technology, that is putting cinema-goers off.

For many, 3D already seems to be in its death throes. With the 3D box office disaster that was Disney’s Mars Needs Moms¹, and recent releases such as Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and Kung Fu Panda 2 struggling to make more than 50% of their box office from 3D screenings, the future of the format does not seem half as promising as it did only two years ago². A recent study by L. Mark Carrier of California State University suggests that other than headaches, eyestrain, and trouble with vision, 3D brings little to the cinematic experience: “3D movies do not allow viewers to experience more intense emotional reactions, [and] are no more immersive.” ³ For Carrier, then, "there aren't going to be any benefits in terms of understanding the movie better or making the movie more meaningful, as far as we can tell." ⁴ While I cannot argue against Carrier’s comments regarding shortcomings of technology and exhibition and their physical effects on the viewer, my research suggests that 3D does contribute to meaning construction. Stereoscopy carries the potential to accentuate representational strategies within individual films, contributing more fully to narrative and thematic unity than would be possible in a ‘flat’ presentation.

How, then, does 3D affect Hollywood films? The classical Hollywood cinema, for David Bordwell, “conceal[s] its artifice through techniques of continuity and ‘invisible’ storytelling.” ⁵ Story washes over the audience; forgetting the auditorium, they are transported to the fictional world. However, 3D has often been read as incommensurable with this goal. For William Paul, the “emergence effect” - when representations move beyond the screen, out into the audience space – carried potentially distracting consequences in 3D cinema of the 1950s: “breaking out of a frame calls attention to the frame that is being violated.” ⁶ The audience is reminded of its essential remove from the onscreen action, and the intended ‘invisibility’ is scuppered.

I would argue, however, that emergence can actually reinforce strategies of character alignment that are the preserve of Hollywood’s illusionistic intentions. In his book Engaging Characters: Fiction, Emotion, and the Cinema, Murray Smith writes of how cinema can reinforce what is generally known as character ‘identification’ so as to involve spectators in the film’s narrative. For him, one way that films can produce “a certain structure of alignment with characters” is through providing spectators with “visual and aural information more or less congruent with that available to [those] characters.” ⁷ We see what the characters see and so are aligned with them. Textual analysis of a scene from Avatar demonstrates that the emergence effect can actually be used to more forcefully align the spectator with characters in its fictional world.

The scene in question details protagonists Jake (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) running through the forests of the planet Pandora, appreciating the lush verdure that is under threat from the film’s military-capitalist villains. In this sequence Jake is being shown and led through this strange new world by the Pandora-born Neytiri, seeing these places for the first time so that information about Pandora is provided to him in a manner “more or less congruent”, as Smith would have it, with the way in which it is revealed to the audience. There is first a long shot of them running along the branches of trees, with little stereoscopic depth or emergence. There is then a cut to a shot taken from behind Jake as he follows Neytiri. This second shot has far greater stereoscopic depth than the one before it. This facilitates an interesting representational strategy: he is emergent here - out with us in the audience - while she is flat and the pink weeping willows that they walk towards are placed deep within the screen space. As he follows Neytiri, however, he runs into that depth. Alignment strategies work alongside subtle grading of stereoscopic space – from flat to deep – to bring the audience along with him into that environment.

They stop running. They are presented ‘flatly’ now, while flying insects with helicopter-like, luminescent wings fly around them, often invading the audience space. The audience, rather than being distracted by the emergence effect of these creatures - as they have now been led into the jungle space - is given the sense of being surrounded by Pandoran flora and fauna. Jake then admires the helicopter-like insects. Still presented flatly, he gazes at one of these insects flying above him and also presented flatly. However, there is another insect which is extremely emergent and centrally placed, as if specifically meant for the viewing pleasure of the audience. While this second hovering curio could be read as a distracting use of the emergence effect, the fact that there is an audience surrogate onscreen to share the appreciation of these objects narratively integrates the moment of spectacle. Alignment rather than alienation occurs. Both spectator and protagonist are involved in experiencing the beauty of the fictional environment that is granted more tangibility and realism by stereoscopic presence.

This is only one example of how Avatar - a film about how various characters engage with the jungle planet of Pandora, which valorises sensitive ecological appreciation over capitalist exploitation - engages with the audience in subtle, persuasive ways. Through immersive depth and emergence that invites us to admire these spectacular flying life forms, the film facilitates for the audience a unique engagement with its fictional environment that aligns them more persuasively with characters who are attempting to preserve that space. As Avatar’s director, James Cameron, has said, 3D should “always be thought of as a turbocharger, an enhancer, to a work whose raison d’être is vested in its story, its characters [… and] its style.” ⁸

Ultimately, then, it seems reductive to argue that 3D cannot impact on a film’s meaning. Perhaps we should instead look at the type of stories being told, and whether or not they merit this particular technology in the first place.

References

1. Geoffrey McNab, The $175 Flop So Bad It Could End the 3D Boom, from The Independent [Online], 21 March 2011, available at: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/the-175m-flop-so-bad-it-could-end-the-3d-boom-2247778.html [accessed 29th August, 2011].

2. Pamela McClintock, Jeffrey Katzenberg on the 'Heartbreaking' Decline of 3D (Exclusive Q&A), from The Hollywood Reporter [Online], 6th September, 2011, available at: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/jeffrey-katzenberg-why-hollywood-is-196616 [Accessed 29th August, 2011].

3. Ben Child, 3D no better than 2D and gives filmgoers headaches, claims study, from The Guardian [Online], 11th August, 2011, available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/aug/11/3d-no-better-than-2d [Accessed 29th August, 2011].

4. Ibid.

5. David Bordwell, 1917-60: An Excessively Obvious Cinema, in Bordwell, Janet Staiger & Kristin Thompson (eds.), The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960(London: Routledge, 1988), 3

6. William Paul, The Aesthetics of Emergence, in Film History Vol. 5, No. 3, Film Technology and the Public (Sep., 1993), pp. 321-355, p. 335, available at: http://www.jstor.org/pss/3815145 [Accessed 29th August, 2011].

7. Murray Smith, Engaging Characters: Fiction, Emotion, and the Cinema (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 75

8. David S. Cohen, James Cameron Supercharges 3-D, from Variety [Online], 10th April, 2008, available at: http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117983864?refCatId=1009 [Accessed 29th August, 2011)

Owen Weetch is a PhD student at the Department of Film and Television Studies. He is in the second year of his research, which focuses on representational strategies and genre in the new 3D cinema. His interests include science fiction and horror films, as well as digital cinema and convergent media. He also teaches seminars for the department’s Basic Criticism module.