A blog about 3D cinema

Nikki Finke, at Deadline Hollywood broke a staggering exclusive story today: G.I. Joe 2: Retaliation is not being released next month. Instead, they're delaying its release until March 2013. The reason? They want to do a post-production conversion of the film, to add 3D. They quote the recent success  of Titanic 3D in China  internationally as the reason it's a good idea to spend their marketing budget for the film twice. Gitesh Pandya of Box Office Guru pithily tweeted , "with GIJoe2 moving from June to March2013 it may become 1st film ever to buy SuperBowl ads 2 yrs in a row." Our suggestion about why Paramount made the move? Four words: Spider-Man Avengers Batman Prometheus

Over the last month, the marketing team at Fox have been slowly unveiling more and more news about Ridley Scott's upcoming 3D film, Prometheus . Given the film's shot in native 3D, we here at 3Defence are getting pretty excited about its release (and it seems many others are too; it's already breaking box-office records for IMAX pre-sales in the UK). So, let's take a look at some of the images released by Fox last month: The above image shows (I mean, aside Charlize Theron holding a gun) the kit that Scott and his DP,  Dariusz Wolski , used to film Prometheus . From what we know , they used a RED Epic camera, combined with the Element Technica ATOM 3D rig. This piece of information is important, because around 50% of the big budget films you're excited to see between now and 2015 will be filmed with similar gear. The nearest rival to this camera is the Arri Alexa . Anyway, the reason I blather about any of this is because Fox seem hell-bent on making sure yo

Regular reader ' Andy ' submitted this story for us: The Top 10 Most Thrilling 3D Moments In The Avengers . Check it out, it's a great list. Useful follow-up to our story from a few days ago on the great conversion work Joss Whedon coaxed out of his team.

BoxOfficeGuru  revealed that, because of The Avengers ' monstrous opening, 10 million Americans watched a 3D film this weekend. By my estimates, that's the most for a single film ever, in that timeframe. Big news! It also validates my earlier theory that the 3D version is of historic importance. Now the question is... will its 3D attendance beat Avatar ?

Keanu Reeves has a film coming out soon, and it doesn't involve kung fu, Dolph Lundgren, bombs on buses or time machines. Nope, it's a documentary, called Side By Side , and in it Keanu asks pretty much every director who had a free hour in their schedule, "is this the end of film?" Has digital cinema replaced the usage of celluloid / polyester prints? Given that Kodak recently announced its intention to fold its business, the question is a timely one. Given that most native 3D films being released today are shot digitally, it seems pertinent to bring the matter up here at 3Defence . It screened at Tribeca recently, and there's a wave of publicity that I thought 3Defence's audience might be interested in reading. Wired have a great piece on it here, ending with the pithy observation that  Side By Side itself was was shot digitally. Indiewire bring up a stunning revelation that no new film cameras are in development by any of the major manufacturers; w

If the estimates hold true, half of the people likely to see The Avengers already have, and the other half are about to see it in the next 48 hours. It's an event film like no other before it; five films of build-up, followed by a massive pay-off. The Avengers has the world captivated, and there's hundreds of reviews out there that can help you interpret the narrative, its plot and its worthiness as ' one of the best superhero films of all time '. Today's post asks "should I see The Avengers in 3D?" and "How Good Is The 3D In The Avengers?" Conversion: The Avengers was shot in 2D, and converted in post-production. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that, as of April 2012, the gold standard in this process belonged to  Titanic 3D . That film had a few awkward moments where some characters' eye-lines gazed in a different direction than you'd expect, but most of the time the work was flawless. Using Titanic as a ya