Seeing 3D movies through fresh eyes
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story was an eye-opener — it’s the first 3D blockbuster movie I’ve seen in a year (I don’t get out much), and it got me thinking about everything except what was actually happening in the movie.
When the screen wasn’t filled with fast-paced action, my mind would start looking at the stereoscopic depth and focus, and FOV (field of view), and imagine what it would be like to watch the movie from the comfort of my own home, in 180-degrees, with eye-tracking and virtual friends to my left & right.
3D TV never really took off in the home, due to lack of content and expensive headsets, and others have predicted VR will suffer the same fate. While I can’t see myself donning a VR headset and sitting down for two hours to watch a movie, I could imagine myself wearing a small set of AR glasses with eye-tracking at the cinema or at home; and here’s where I think some incremental changes could improve the experience.
Normally focus is controlled by the director, who wants you to look at the stuff they deem important; but improvements in film with technologies such as light field capture make it possible to change the focus in post-production… or give that control over to the viewer.
Imagine being able to focus on anything you want to in a movie — just like in real life. It could bring another level of realism and experience which may feel even more compelling and possibly make you want to watch it again. Light field capture plus eye-tracking could make this happen, and with Google’s recent purchase of eye-tracking company Eyefluence and light-field capture company Lytro’s cinema-quality camera, the pieces of this puzzle may fall into place over the next 3 years.
Granting the viewer such agency might be a little scary for directors, but perhaps it’s the birth of a new format — Responsive Cinema — which would respond to the device it’s being watched on. If you were watching on a mobile phone or TV, the film would fall back to it’s default focus.
Despite all these thoughts which flitted through my mind as I watched, I loved the movie — I’m a Star Wars fan, and the last two movies I’d have loved with or without 3D, and would love with or without eye-tracking. Storytelling is an art form — one that transcends changes in media.
That said, I’m still super-excited about the possibilities which these new technologies open up — for creators and viewers alike.
