On the second day of the Los Angeles Times Hero Complex Film Festival, Christopher Nolan participated in an extended Q&A between the screenings of his 2002 film Insomnia and 2008 film The Dark Knight.Nolan came directly to the event from the Warner Brother’s lot where he had been working on the final reels of Inception, stating the film is one week from being completely finished.
He went on to describe how Inception had been an idea he had pitched it to Warner Brothers right after Insomnia. They had liked it and told him to write it. He figured it would take him a few months but it took 10 years, over which time he was able to further prove himself to the studio.
When the discussion turned to the topic of 2-D versus 3-D, Nolan confessed, “I’m not a huge fan of 3-D.” This was met with loud cheering from the audience. He went on to describe his frustration with the idea that non-3-D movies are flat:
The truth is, I think it’s a misnomer to call it 3-D versus 2-D. The whole point of cinematic imagery is it’s three-dimensional. … You know, 95% of our depth cues come from occlusion, resolution, color and so forth, so the idea of calling a 2-D movie a ‘2-D movie’ is a little misleading.
He then went on to describe in technical terms about how the usage of 3-D technology darkens a film, and changes the viewing experience:
The truth of it is when you watch a film in here, you’re looking at 16 foot-lamberts, When you watch through any of the conventional 3-D processes you’re giving up three foot-lamberts. A massive difference. You’re not that aware of it because once you’re ‘in that world,’ your eye compensates, but having struggled for years to get theaters get up to the proper brightness, we’re not sticking polarized filters in everything… On a technical level, it’s fascinating, but on an experiential level, I find the dimness of the image extremely alienating.
However, his reservations with 3-D have not prevented him from the eventuality using the technology in his films, as Inception had the potential a 3-D release. “We did tests on Inception with the different post-conversion processes, and they all went very well. It’s quite easy to do, in fact. But it takes a little time, and we didn’t have time to do it to the standards that I would be happy with.”
Who knows, perhaps the third Batman film, which he is due to start filming in March, will follow the studio trend of screening in 3-D. Only time will tell.
What are your thoughts on 3-D?