3 D Crazy

NAB The National Association of Broadcasters holds an annual meeting in Las Vegas. It's huge, largest in the world, and the exposition takes all of the LV Convention Center and the Hilton center as well.
After several days, looking at hundreds of millions of dollars at the largest video and broadcast convention in the world, the rush is on to 3-D. SONY, Panasonic, Hitachi, JVC, and hundreds of others are rushing into HD. Some looks pretty good, some not good, and headaches abound after watching misaligned 3-D.
Formats abound as well. As best we could figure there are at least 15 different non compatible formats. Of course the best systems are also HD. 3D requires dual images and HD 3-D requires twice the band width.
Opinion:
As a producer/director I like 3-D for certain projects, but in general I don't like it. 3-D is a production pain in the neck. It's a lot more more expensive, more difficult to shoot, and often gets in the way of story. Avitar thrived on it, and the 2D version is not nearly as good. The story in Avitar is generally considered to be not nearly as good as the 3D images. (It's pretty much "Pocahontas" in space). The 3-D made it Avitar an amazing achievement. It should be noted that animated and computer enhanced projects make the best 3-D images.

For the business production it's a cost and production nightmare. The change to new equipment with the associated increase in costs is a lot more than HD, which is still not fully implemented. About 90% of the "industrial production" out there is still standard definition. We shoot in HD but finish in standard definition because our customers simply don't have the capability of HD playback and don't want to even pay extra for HD at meetings. It's a slow transition to HD, and will be slower to 3-D.
Blue Ray is the HD standard for DVD, but it's predicted DVDs will go away in the not too distant future. I did not see any special 3-D playback machines. I think they are doing special encoding for Blue Ray for playback or use other specialized systems. Home 3-D means all new everything, screens, receivers, playback, and of course special glasses to watch TV.
Currently there is zero compatibility between systems and formats, and each requires different different kinds of special glasses.
For production major investment will be needed in new or expensive upgrades to edit systems requiring twice the memory capacity. For now production it takes two cameras instead of one and they have to be mounted on cumbersome rigs requiring special alignment for every shot. Oh yes, don't forget the lenses have to be perfectly matched, as in consecutive serial numbers, so the glass if from the same batch. Don't shoot it perfectly and the audience will get a near instant headache. In a small percentage of people 3-D actually triggers epileptic seizures. Call the lawyer- Joe goes to the corporate meeting and they give him a seizure!!
It is neat, looks cool and is absolutely the latest fad. Conversion from 2-D to 3-D is going on. The 3-D purists hate it, but there are some failures as well as very successful conversions. One of the conversion companies is going to covert some scenes from Proud American for a 3-D test. Of course we'll have to go to a specially equipped studio to see it! But it may be part of our release in theaters.
3-D IS coming, and the technology will get better, a little cheaper and more readily available, but it will be a very slow transition.

As a gimmick I love it. As a storyteller, in it's current form, it tends to get in the way.

The only constant is change. Yes indeed.