CAPTAIN AMERICA EXCLUSIVE: Director Joe Johnston Discusses Shooting Captain America in 2D vs 3D

3D sucks

Great stuff as always Ed. :)

Thanks! He continues to impress me more and more as he discusses the film and his approach to it.

MaxJaybo@ don't worry your not missing anything. the 3D fad is moronic.

I just dont get that cameron can make great movies filmed in 3d but no one else can .

Go Joe!!! He makes sense. Not a big fan of 3D. Avatar was a fine novelty, but it's starting to wear off.

@Thunderforce- I think Cameron made it work because he had to. Avatar was just a big tech demo of what a lot of research and money was put into. It had to look good to justify the cost involved. Otherwise, we'd see panhandler Cameron.

@thunderforce: But Cameron didn't make a great movie filmed in 3D. He made an average movie look great in 3D. Big difference.

I'm guessing you didn't even bother reading the actual article, because Johnston gives extremely good reasons why they're doing it the way they are. And he also points out that quite a bit of Avatar was actually shot in 2D and converted later, but you don't notice because the shots were carefully planned for that ahead of time (unlike many of the post conversions we're seeing now).

The difference between the way Cameron did it for Avatar and Johnston's doing for Cap is that they're planning the shots to be converted right from the beginning, whereas movies like Clash only decided to add it at the last minute AFTER all the shots had been composed and shot as an afterthought and was therefore badly done.

Shooting it in 3D would have been more expensive and therefore would have meant less sets, extras, vehicles and scenes and would have made some of his shots more difficult or impossible to get as he wanted, because of the technical limitations of the 3D cameras.

I'm not a fan of 3D for the sake of it, but at least if they're going to do it, planning it properly from the outset is better than the alternative.

Great work Ed! I had some major doubt about Johnston but he's saying all the right things so far which has me feeling a hell of a lot more positive! (not to mention the awesome cast he's put together!)

have u guys heard on theplaylist.blogspot.com they a new issue of 'Entertainment Weekly' were they a interview with James Cameron and he said The Hurt Locker Would Have Been Better in 3D.

heres what he said

"I think [The Hurt Locker] would have been better in 3D. Absolutely. It wouldn’t have been hugely better in 3D, but I’m talking a future where you don’t have to put ‘in 3D’ on the movie poster anymore, the same way you don’t put ‘in color’ on posters anymore."

if you want to read more heres the link

http://theplaylist.blogspot.com/2010/08/james-cameron-says-hurt-locker-would.html

@jazzman.... I never liked The Hurt Locker... I could care even less if it was in 3D. My cousin is a war vet from the Gulf War and he couldn't stand watching THL because it reminded him too much of some of his buddies that died over there. THL may be the most "real" war movie most people ever saw to date but there are a few that actually did the time in the real battlefield that don't like to be reminded of some memories.

As for 3D, its just a fad that keeps coming and going... I could care less about 3D especially if what comes out is crap. A good 3D movie done right, ok I am fine with that... but even 3D would suck balz if the story's trash, it won't save the movie at all regardless of the fact. Some of us can't even watch 3D at all, like my kid niece who got caught in a car accident due to a drunk @ssh@t to no fault of her own and is now blind in one eye due to shrapnel.... 3D don't do jack for people like her.

@LOL

u could say that for every war movie out there aswell. some people wont watch WW2 movies cause of family and friends lost love ones. anyway James Cameron feels movies like THL or even other war movies will benefit to be in 3D his ego has gone big.

i agree 3D is fad the problem with the technology is alot of people i know get headache and they hating wearing the glasses. the technology they should try and learn for films IMO is 3D hologram.

@jazzman: His ego IS big, without a doubt - I don't think you'll get much argument there. :) But I think his point is that sooner or later, ALL movies will be made in 3D and the fact that it's 3D won't even be worth mentioning, just as being in "COLOR" used to be a big thing once upon a time, but now it's just the norm.

It'll be a long time before old-fashioned 2D dies out, for sure, but he might have a point in the context of the evolution of the medium. It'll only happen when it stops being a 'gimmick' and the ticket prices become 'normalised' rather than nearly twice the price of a normal ticket now - and, as you say, we can get rid of the glasses.

And we're not that far away either:
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/3DTV-autostereoscopic-CES,review-1490.html

http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/06/microsoft-develops-lens-for-3d-displays-without-3d-glasses.ars

No holodecks yet though. ;)

@jazzman:
Thanks for posting the link to that - I probably wouldn't have seen it otherwise.

Cameron is a hack. I know alot of people love the guy - but his films are so watered down and cliched that they become too accessible, which is why I think they do so well at the box-office. Avatar was the most predictable movie I've seen in my entire life. Atmospherically it was this huge achievement - visually it was so vast and beautiful and it was done on such a huge scale. But in terms of storytelling the guy blows balls.

I know just from CBM that alot of people still want the guy to direct a Spider-Man movie - but if you read the leaked script that he wrote for his proposed Spider-Man film, I swear by the end of you'd be begging for another Spider-Man 3... The source material was butchered beyond belief. He made so many unecessary changes for no reason that it almost wasn't a Spider-Man movie at all.

But I digress. Thank you for this article Ed :)

hey makes good points about conversion and 3d except for say " i find that after 10min i forget im watching 3D." Thats the entire point of a correctly done 3D movie. is to be so immersed that you forget its 3D. no body wants to watch a 3D film where they are being reminded every 3 minutes that its 3D movie by things popping off the screen at them. Avatar should be the standard of what 3D should look like whether its shot that way or converted,

And another thing. Johnston complained about the added time to production from the 3d camera system, but i noticed he said it takes time to change the LENSES, as in plural. the Avatar camera system did not have 2 lenses. it had one and split the image via an internal prism i think. So maybe he should try shooting 3D for the next movie with James Cameron's camera system.

grif@ you are a f*got. i mean its ok for you to not want to see thes films in 3d but the fact that you strait up tell everyone is just idiocracy.

same goes for you tevavizion and any other low life who keeps b*tchin about chriss evens as cap you all know all the other choises were bullsh*t. and your never going to se evenns non comic work because your to insisnint( i know some of you will and join the pro side). your probably going to go on a rampage when jonny depp isnt cast as docter strange(whicth he wont leee becaus hes to expensive and people dont want to see him leeding a cbm so loive with it). once again do you peoplee have any real life?

HERE WE GO AGAIN.....AS AN EXPERIMENT, AVATAR, WORKED FINE....HOWEVER, I WAS BORED TO TEARS WATCHING IT.... 3D WAS ALWAYS A NOVELTY.... IT WAS USED BASICALLY TO GET KIDS TO SEE REALLY BAD B-MOVIES BACK IN THE LATE 50'S THRU THE 70'S. EVEN LOCAL TV STATIONS WOULD BROADCAST FILMS(MOSTLY BAD KUNG FU, CHEESY SCI-FI OR B-MOVIE HORROR FILMS)IN A 3D SIGNAL SO BAD THAT EITHER THE 3D GLASSES DIDN'T WORK OR THE SIGNAL WAS TO WEAK TO ENJOY 3D. I STILL BELIEVE IT'S A NOVELTY AND ANY FOOL WHO SPENDS 3 TO 4 THOUSAND DOLLARS ON A 3D TV AND BLU-RAY DISC PLAYER IS EXACTLY THAT..... A FOOL.... STICK WITH 2D IT'S WORKED WELL FOR 100 OR SO YEARS AND COUNTING.... TRUST ME I'M THE SUNSCREEN....OOPS! I MEAN BRYANFERRYFAN.

I'll watch both versions. Probably twice each lol

@jazzman true... with today's research into the holography field, they should at least try making it truly "3D" - but that is still a ways off even though the tech is slowly making its way there, so what we have is optical illusion 3D at the moment by using 3D glasses and it requires us humans to actually have two working eyes to "see" it to work... that's where the headache comes in for some people that can't stand it for very long, and its not applicable to people with a lack of depth perception. I would welcome 3D wholeheartedly when people that can't fully enjoy 3D currently start enjoying them without the bad side effects and the need of having two fully working eyes, like my niece who's only got one.

And yeah, I quite agree that James Cameron's ego has gone through the roof thanks to his success in Avatar and its overhyped-ness. He's good, but he isn't all that.