How I Fell in Love with 3D Film
During my junior year of college, my dad died.
To say I was devastated would be an understatement. I missed three weeks of school. I dropped a class and took an incomplete in another. I earned a “C” in editing — the task I wanted to do for my career! Overnight, I’d gone from a lifelong A/B student to someone struggling just to get by.
Honestly, it’s hard to remember what I was thinking back then. Everything was a blur. I broke down constantly, and I was in over my head. Being overwhelmed and stressed out with daily life became the new normal.
These feelings continued the following semester, and I toyed with the idea of quitting college altogether — a decision that would have surprised anyone who knew me. School was draining me.
Luckily, I stuck with it, and the following year, I registered for a class that would change my life: Introduction to 3D.
I went into the course knowing almost nothing about 3D film, but I quickly fell in love with it. Early on, pivotal moments sold me on various aspects of 3D and convinced me I wanted to be a stereographer. But perhaps one of the most profound moments was when I watched the French short Forget Me Not.
In the first few minutes of Forget Me Not, we see through the eyes of the main character as he learns of his mother’s death and then attends her funeral. It’s how this moment is shot that matters: it’s exclusively point-of-view shots, and the camera movements are blurry and disoriented.
We don’t see anyone’s faces at the funeral. People talk to the character, but he doesn’t know who they are, nor does he care. They all blur together in a string of meaningless platitudes as the audio fades in and out of clarity. He may be physically at the funeral, but mentally, he’s not processing anything.
Eventually, the funeral ends, and the lead wanders around his mother’s house in a surreal combination of reality and memory that only the French can represent well.
I may have cried when I saw Forget Me Not; I’m not sure. I probably cried. I must have because I remember it hit me like a ton of bricks. Finally, somebody got it. I had been struggling to put into words what I’d been feeling for so long, something that seemed like an impossible task precisely because it defied words, yet someone had managed to put it on film.
Granted, I might have reacted this way had I seen the film in 2D. But the 3D made it more real. I wasn’t just watching the character’s experience; I was there. I was the character at the funeral. I was me at my father’s funeral, not knowing what to say when my best friend’s little sister, too young to understand, asked me where my dad was.
Right then, I realized that 3D film, when made by people who love and respect the form, had the power to be transformational.
Originally published at stereosight.com
