Out of the World

Will Gravity inspire a new era of 3D filmmaking?

However it will all play out in the end, Gravity will have a profound effect on the course of 3D history. Although 3D movies are playing well in the rest of the world, American audiences seemed to have grown weary of what has been seen as a new toy, but theyre gaga over Gravity, and with good reason.

For the most part, box-office information has included a breakout of people who buy tickets for 3D. IMAX also keeps score. Over the summer, there were a couple of 3D dogs, including Turbo, while The Wolverine and Pacific Rim had weak openings, leading journalists to solemnly promise an end of the 3D movies again. The thing is, 3D movies arent doing that badly. Rather, they are settling into some predictable patterns. Pacific Rim turned out to be a hit, and that being the case, a sequel is on the way. It wasnt hurt at all by having a cute Asian heroine in Rinko Kikuchi and a theme straight from the Godzilla mythology, complete with major cities, including Tokyo, getting stomped upon. We humans all love to see recognizable places being destroyed. I have no idea why.

So, back to the patterns. Childrens films dont do as well in 3D as adult or, at least semi-adult (or whatever you want to call people who like Transformer) films. Parents of young children may not have as much spending money as their childless counterparts. Parents may figure the kids arent really going to know the difference, and the parents definitely know that tickets for a family of four - with popcorn, drinks, Jujubes, and maybe even dinner - is going to cost quite a bit. Enough so that the extra pop for a 3D experience might not seem worth it.

Live-action movies do better than animated features - is again probably related to the kid thing. Audiences are making choices. Oddly enough, not very many North Americans pulled their zombie butts off their chairs to see World War Z in 3D, but even it was shoved into positive territory as a result of International audiences that will apparently see anything that stars Brad Pitt and, then again, cities being destroyed.

World War Z is the highest-grossing zombie movie ever. It has done about average for a 3D movie. (Source: Paramount Pictures)

In general, American audiences had settled into a pattern of about 35 to 40 percent of people in North America taking the 3D option for movies. The average can jump to 50 to 70 percent for movies that get good, you-must-see-this-in-3D buzz, and it drops to 20 percent or below for kid films. In the rest of the world, the ratios are much higher, but 3D got a bit of a later start, and my thinking was that as international audiences got more jaded about 3D, we would see that pattern hold for movies worldwide; and, given the slate of 3D movies coming up, there are enough dogs to even out the promising films, but Gravity will have an effect.

The Gravity Effect Certainly it helps that Gravity is a good, stylistic movie. It opens with a long scene that includes a shot that lasts over 10 minutes and resets notions of film pacing. After all, now were in space; things dont move like they do on the Wall Street, Main Street, or even Sesame Street. This scene is looking like it will be one of the most written-about opening scenes since Orson Welles opening for Touch of Evil, and that scene was only 3 minutes and 20 seconds long (God, I love Wikipedia). But like the scene in Gravity, which follows three characters on their space walk and tracks them as disaster strikes, and draws the audience in close, closer, closest, it has the same goal. It grabs the audience and says, Fasten those seat belts, this is going to be a different kind of ride.

Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki has used long shots to great effect in Terrence Malicks Tree of Life and Alfonso Cuar ns Children of Men, but in Gravity, Lubezki is able to use long shots to explore and exploit 3D. During long shots, the eye has time to hungrily wander over the scenes, taking in all the incredible detail. Theres a lot of stuff in this space. But even though the film has so many long shots, the pacing is far from slow. Its a thrill ride.

Gravitys status as a huge hit is already guaranteed, and a whopping 80 percent of audiences have gotten the memo and theyre seeing the movie in 3D (91 percent of the pre-sale tickets were for 3D theaters).

See the Gravity trailer.

Perhaps the best thing about Gravitys use of 3D is the fact that it sucks us in so thoroughly that its easy to forget about the 3D glasses. Were all just there. The movie also takes considerable advantage of Dolbys Atmos sound technology to enhance the 3D effect. Atmos treats sound elements as objects and enables pinpoint sound direction. Sound objects can be placed within the space of the movie theater, if that theater is equipped with Dolby Atmos processors.

What Gravitys filmmakers, including Cuar n, Lubezki, VFX Supervisor Tim Webber (Framestore), and others, have done is expand the language of film for 3D. Sandra Bullock is on screen throughout the film. She performed much of her role suspended in a cage with an armature-mounted digital camera for company. Webber built a lightbox that created the images around Bullock and enabled cameras to put the audience within the scene.

The film took an enormous amount of time to be completed after shooting because the film is pretty much all-CG, and during shooting every move had to be perfect. The filmmakers created a device they called the Light Box, a cube of 4,096 programmable LEDs that could be programmed to deliver variations of brightness, color, and speed to simulate the light from the Earth and the sun as Bullock spins around. Bullock was insulated in the box just as a person would be in a space suit with communications coming in over radio. All thats hard enough, but because the movie is so CG heavy, every move Bullock makes h

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