So like just about everyone else in the known universe, I went to see Avatar in 3D the other week. While the story was solid enough and the effects were just stunning, I walked out of the theatre feeling a bit empty.

It was the 3D. It just didn’t work for me. Admittedly I’d had this element of the film oversold to me by various parties, but ultimately I found it annoying for the following reasons:

1) Unless an object is in full view, it doesn’t really work. A ball in the centre of the screen works great, but as soon as the camera moves in and the edges of the ball touch the edge of the screen, the 3D effect is lost – sometimes distractingly so. Several times in the movie my eyes were pulled away from the action by a branch or something that was floating in the middle distance, apparently between me and the screen, suddenly snapping back as it hit the side of the screen.

2) Because of the depth element to the image, I found it took me a fraction of a second longer to get into the shot and adjust my brain to what I was seeing after each cut. Towards the end of the film my poor noodle was struggling to keep up with some of the faster cut action sequences, and I often found myself mentally two or three shots behind trying to process what I’d seen (This may just be me getting older and stupider…).

3) One of the key weapons a Director has in his cinematic armoury is depth of field. With the aid of a good focus puller he can draw the eye around a scene and add punctuation and stylistic elements to a shot that greatly aid the storytelling. This means that quite often much of the foreground and background is out of focus (the ‘filmic’ look), so burning embers falling down, apparently just in front of me, are also out of focus. When I try to look at them, they stay out of focus and it makes my eyes go funny.

I think this is possibly the biggest flaw with 3D. A perfect 3D system would be like life, where your eyes can alight on something in the near distance and everything in the background goes out of focus, then, when you shift your gaze to the wide blue yonder, objects near you go out of focus. But this is no good to the Director who is saying, ‘Oi! Over here – look at this wonderful actor, see our story’!

The problem, I suppose, is that 3D is cheating – you’re still looking at a two 2D images and your brain is being tricked into perceiving a depth that’s not really there.

The only solution to this would be to open up and have a wide depth of field, which would destroy every cinematographer living and make all films look crap. Even then it still wouldn’t work as everything would be in focus and it would still seem wrong.

I think for sports events, this is a good thing. You want a wide depth of field to keep the fast moving ball in focus at all times and get a much better sense of where the ball and players are in relation to each other, greatly enhancing the experience. But for cinema, it just doesn’t cut it.

It’s a shame as I went in really believing that 3D was upon us, but now I think it’s just a novelty, a gimmick that really adds no great value to cinematic storytelling. It’ll just take one major 3D film to flop (Alice in Wonderland?) and it’ll all be over (again).

What do yo think? Does 3D have a future for you? Do we just need to rethink or refine how we shoot it? Or is it dead in the water?

Things never quite go the way you expect, do they?

Last month, more on a whim than anything else, I applied for a management position within the company I work for, and ended up getting it. And rightly chuffed I was too.

So for the past two weeks I’ve ended up more or less doing two jobs as I tidy up affairs from my old IT Applications position and start my shiny new Marketing Communications role.

Rao and quite a few other people offline have, in the meantime, been asking about Return to Earth. Well, through all of this, I’ve had my thinking cap on, and thanks for some very good feedback from the previous draft I’ve finally nailed what the actual film is about.

I’ve also been playing with Mariner Software’s Contour, which has also made me realise that even though, after all these years, I thought I was starting to get what all this screenwriting malarkey was about, ultimately, I knew Jack. Quite a humbling experience.

Nonetheless, the fourth draft is starting to take shape now and muchly pleased I am with it too.

On top of that, I’ve been encouraged by various parties to make another short film. So, together with Blogger/Twitter friend @draconianone, we’ve been plotting a new featurette.

More details of this will emerge over the next few weeks as the script is finalised. Most of the actors are already lined up (the usual suspects plus a few surprises, hopefully).

Watch out for now customary Twitter onslaught of begging/pleading for finance to begin!

Trust me, it’ll be pure gold.