A blog about 3D cinema

The 86th Academy Awards were held in March, hosted by Ellen DeGeneres. When the gathered stars and glitterati weren't taking selfies , the famous gold statues were being handed out to a host of worthy winners. Amongst them, 3Defence counted 11 wins for 3D films , helped mostly by Gravity , but ably assisted by Frozen and The Great Gatsby . This means that 46% of 2014's Oscar winners were 3D films. By comparison, 21% of 2013's winners were stereo movies, and 23% of 2012's were too. So, why the meteoric rise this year? Gravity  - as many predicted - swept the majority of the 'technical' categories. It took out the Visual Effects, Sound Editing, and Sound Mixing awards early on in the evening. These particular awards have been given to 3D films in the past. Cinematography and Film Editing came next though, and winning both of these awards is a significant breakthrough in terms of the industry's recognition of stereo film-making. For one thing, the team...

This year's Awards Season is gearing up for its main event: the 86th Academy Awards. Many cinephiles justifiably find the concept of 'Awards Season' horrifying. They can validly cite examples through the years where Oscar was wrong  ( My Fair Lady over Strangelove ? Crash over Good Night and Good Luck ? Shakespeare In Love being allowed in the same room as the first 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan ?) and they can cite many more examples where films "should at least have been nominated !" Thankfully, the Academy broadened the nomination pool after universal outcry at The Dark Knight' s nomination snub   in 2008, and that's alleviated those tensions a little. It means we get a more balanced summary of the year in cinema: edgier films get nominated ( District 9 , Amour ), and broader-playing fare ( Up , The Help ) makes the cut as a nearer summary of what movie-goers... go to the movies for in the first place. The Nominees 2013's nominees are...

Background: The best 3D film of the year? Ordinarily conservative critics have fallen over themselves to proclaim  Gravity a landmark cinematic event, ranking it amongst distinguished 3D peers like Avatar , Hugo and Life Of Pi. James Cameron, the king of commercially successful 3D films, told Variety "I think it's the best space photography ever done, I think it’s the best space film ever done, and it's the movie I've been hungry to see for an awful long time." Riding a wave of breathless hype,  Gravity  broke US October box-office records, and is fast becoming the 'word of mouth' hit of the year. So... does it live up to the praise? Is Gravity a ground-breaking achievement in 3D film-making? Post-converted / Natively Rendered 3D: Modern-day 3D films are produced through three broadly classifiable means; 'native 3D' (where the majority of the movie was shot with stereoscopically capable cameras that have two lenses to capture the infor...

Alfonso Cuarón's upcoming 3D film Gravity has critics spellbound, and looks to be this year's "Must-See 3D Film". Set miles above Earth, the film stars George Clooney and Sandra Bullock as a pair of astronauts who... have to deal with gravity after a high-speed encounter with space debris. Gravity  premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this month, and immediately started generating Oscar-buzz from the dumbstruck audience. It sounds like cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki 's first 3D outing is a doozy, technically-speaking. Breathless reviewers have described long, unbroken, takes that last in the range of 10 - 15 minutes. HitFix's Drew McWeeny appropriately summed up most people's reactions : "It is increasingly rare that I look at an effects-heavy film and don't know immediately how they did it. With Gravity , I'm not even sure what was real and what wasn't." Indeed, if you watch any of the film's tra...