Meant to be Seen

I have seen this one in the theaters last summer. I enjoyed it so much that it was a real easy choice for me- I bought it. There are a lot of dark scenes. So you'll need a premium 3D HDTV to get the most from it. It is a 3D conversion. And the 3D is on the weak side. But it demonstrates once again what a superb entertainment format 3D blu-rays are. I am proud to now have Captian America: The First Avenger 3D in my collection. If your watching 3D blu-rays and your underwhelmed. You may want a display upgrade.


Chief's score card:
Story: 9
Acting:9
Special effects:9
3D: 7.75
Final Score: a rock solid 9.5 (kick ass)


cheers

I just posted these thoughts about the 3D in Captain America over at the avforums site.

I'm currently watching Captain America, which is also a conversion. I won't be renting any more conversions as even though they've done a reasonable job on this film, you can still tell that it's fake. Throughout the film, you get the "cardboard effect" and almost every scene seems to contain a mixture of 3D and 2D as though the artists have selected only certain things to convert, no doubt in order to save a lot of time and labour. When I watch a 3D film, I want everything to be in 3D and I want all objects to have a solidity and depth to them. Throughout the whole of Captain America I found myself playing the "guess whats been converted and what hasn't game" for each scene.

I will stick to watching native 3D movies from now on.

In a natively shot movie like Sanctum, all objects have a roundness to them and you are subconsciously (or even consciously) aware that the 3D is real. In Sanctum I love little elements of the 3D where the character's breathing apparatus has a solidity to it and the regulator pipe sticks out in front of the mask etc etc. You can't recreate real 3D like that through a conversion because it will always be an interpretation of a real phenomenon. The mere fact that I know its not real is enough to spoil it for me. There is something almost mystical about real 3D as though our eyes have really been put on the set of the film (in the real environment) and we are given a sense of being there. No conversion can re-create that sense of being able to see that authentic 3D.

As an afterthought, there needs to be consistency of 3D throughout each movie too, so that you don't get sudden changes of depth which can be distracting.

Gae43

I saw this in theaters. I didn't think the conversion was THAT bad. I mean, it wasn't great but it was OK I guess.

I pretty much agree with Gae43 after having seen some 3D screen caps : cheap cardboard effect, no roundness for characters and very little depth. It can be confirmed by using the same technique than in the Ratings section for 3D movies thread. The end result is quite equivalent to the Thor 3D conversion - with maybe some more efforts (more cardboard planes) - but it's still very far from real 3D.

First image (perspective view) First image (side view) Second image (perspective view) : this shot shows some roundness on the characters but I don't know if it's because of my imprecise calculations or if it's for real. Also more efforts have been done in this scene with more planes than usual, but the background is still wrong (seems parallel to the screen plane instead of angled). Second image (side view) : the depth seems to be more important in this one but it's only because it's wrongly calculated on the sides, the depth range is similar to the other two images in fact. Third image (perspective view) : this scene extends from very close to infinity in reality, but in this capture we can see only 2 main planes. One for the character in the foreground and another one for the rest of the scene, although this part should account for the biggest range of depth. Third image (side view)

Damn, that looks pretty shabby.

Yeah, Its funny how we all have a slightly different take on 3D. Take the movie Hugo by Martin S. It has some really good 3D in it. I'll never watch that movie again nor will I own it. I've got a copy of Megamind 3D Blu-ray coming this week. And soon I'll have the Transformers 3D blu-ray. By the way, my home set-up is Full HD 3D. Are you guys watching in this format?

cheers

I'm still only half way through my Captain America 3D Blu-ray rental. That says a lot I guess. Probably says more about my loss of enthusiasm for SuperHero movies rather than anything inherently bad about the film itself.

I thought the best 3D scene in the film was the one with Captain America in costume on the podium with the dancers on stage. Now that was a nicely converted scene but sadly it only lasted a few seconds.

Gae43

If I'm motivated enough I'll update my app to show how 3D images look like for different viewing conditions (monitor, TV, projector, cinema). The depth effect will probably be more pronounced for bigger screens, but I guess the cardboard effect will too. I only watched these screenshots on my monitor but I may try on my projector (102" diagonal) to see how it looks like.

The "we all have a slightly different take on 3D" is precisely the problem though, that's the reason why there are still 3D conversions being done and not only real 3D filmed with dual-camera rigs.

Why won't you buy or see again Hugo btw ? Is it because of the story or the 3D ?

Gae43 wrote:I thought the best 3D scene in the film was the one with Captain America in costume on the podium with the dancers on stage. Now that was a nicely converted scene but sadly it only lasted a few seconds.

I guess it's not the same scene as the one in the first image I posted, is it ? Can you take a screenshot of this scene and post it here ?

Fredz, Hugo is just painfully boring to me. The 3D is quite good though.

cheers

Hugo was slow, but I didn't find it boring. It was a nice film. Great 3D as well.

I prefer slow thoughtful films over fast mindless films any day. I guess that's an age thing. My mind can't cope with fastly edited films and shaky camerawork.

Gae43