[Philip Lelyveld comment: Clyde DeSouza is a stereographer and 3D technical consultant who regularly blogs about S3D at http://realvision.ae/blog/]

[by Clyde DeSouza]

What is 3D Heart Burn?

Last week I went to see the epic Transformers 3D. As someone who has had a brief past with animation software (Newtek’s Lightwave), I had to appreciate the talent that went into creating the various Transformers. The sheer level of detailing, texturing, lighting, rigging and more is some of the best i’ve seen.

So why did it give me 3D heartburn? I came up with this analogy, as it’s the same experience when you rapidly ‘ingest’ a meal or gulp down packets full of MnMs at a movie….without taking the time to savor the flavor of each. This is the feeling I got watching Transformers. So much rich visual eye candy in glorious Stereoscopic 3D, with intricate details on the each of those mechanical limbs and exo-skeletons, yet not enough “Dwell time” to digest the visuals.

Devouring all that 3D eye-candy with no time to digest it, lead to  3D heart burn. Yes this is an action movie and you cannot let the camera linger, but we have to realize that in the art of stereoscopic 3D story telling, the “Dwell brings out the details”. As the various Decepticons were being shredded by the Auto-bots, it would have been nice to use a bit of slow-motion (easy to do as the 3D cameras for that part were CGI cameras).

Of Planes, Trains and Autobots in Hyper stereo.

There’s a few scenes in the movie that show aircraft such as a private jet and helicopters that break the illusion of scale in S3D. It is worth mentioning that in 3D, you can’t cheat depth and scale like you can in 2D movies. There is also a chapter in the famous book for beginners (and pros alike) in stereo 3D movie making by Bernard Mendiburu that addresses this very issue. It would be worth browsing those chapters. Asked for advice, I’d recommend framing such scenes closer up to the aircraft and behind the stereo window, and have either the small private jet or the camera pull back rapidly if the whole aircraft needs to be shown.

In the scene I refer to, although there is no stereo violation involved with the private jet and it is behind the stereo window, it is sufficiently straddling the stereo window to make it look like a toy model aircraft with the wires removed in post.

Some miniaturization was also evident on scenes where the lead character steps out of his parents mobile home. Those scenes could do with re-framing to a lower angle.

Over all, Transformers 3D was a well made 3D movie, even though in hind sight I could’nt but help think that I went to the viewing of a high end 2 hour VFX and animation demo reel (a well done one at that!)

But I am no Roger Ebert, so I can’t comment or critique the story of the movie, just as I believe that Roger does not do justice with his comments regarding 3D as a new medium of storytelling.

See the original post here: http://realvision.ae/blog/2011/07/3d-heartburn-no-time-to-digest-the-the-visuals/