"Filmmakers like Mr. Whedon and Mr. Abrams argue that 3-D technology does little to enhance a cinematic story..."

Guess it sounds more authoritative when it comes from these individuals as opposed to a few folks on a forum. One can't help but agree with them for obvious reasons.

The article makes an interesting point about Hollywood executives. No matter what their filmmakers say, no matter what the audience says, the suits bulldoze their way torward financial disaster.

"Nobody knows anything." (William Goldman)

"... my mother had a job of converting B&W prints to color..."

Not sure that's an accurate comparison, though, for 3D conversions.

In the right hands, I've seen tinted photos that were beautiful. And I've seen some done by hacks that were downright embarrassing.

" No matter what their filmmakers say, no matter what the audience says, the suits bulldoze their way torward financial disaster."

Apart from Abrahams co-writing Lost neither Joss Wheddon or J.J. Abrahms are known for showing the suits a return on their investment so that's a curious conclusion to draw from their words.

On the other hand a group of young student filmmakers down here concluded that shooting in 3D had enhanced their storyline.

Of course there'll be many monumental flops shot in 3D, just as there has been and will continue to be in 2D. 3D can work to enhance a great movie or not, just as some have been shot in B&W or cinemascope to embrace the narrative. Those are all options to be considered in how best to tell the story, they're not imperatives for putting bums on seats.

Bob.

"On the other hand a group of young student filmmakers down here concluded that shooting in 3D had enhanced their storyline."

Then I would suggest they have no concept of what story really is.

On target! Jay!

I wouldn't be quite so quick to jump on that conclusion.

What if a group of student filmmakers had made the statement, "we've concluded that adding some sound effects will enhance our storyline"? What if the enhancement was some visual effects? What if the enhancement was color over B&W and the storyline revolved around various colored patterns woven into fabric? What if the enhancement was having a moving picture illustrate the recitation? Or even a picture at all? What if the enhancement was having women play the female roles? What if the enhancement was having a set? What if the enhancement was having costumes and props? What if the enhancement was having characters perform the story instead of just a narrator telling it?

3D is a gimmick; 3D is a tool. Take your pick. Everything else i mentioned is also a tool ... and a gimmick.

Sorry, Kelly, that simply doesn't fly. It is painfully obvious that far too many people, who claim to be filmmakers, do not understand what "story" is.

The next level will be 2k or 4k lcd panels. The only question left is when.

" It is painfully obvious that far too many people, who claim to be filmmakers, do not understand what "story" is."

It's painfully obvious that far too many people, who claim to be filmmakers, think 'because I can type I can make a movie'.


Bob.

Jay, I am a storyteller. I mean, an actual storyteller, in the oral storytelling tradition. My teachers all believed in the simplicity of the story, and in honouring it by just telling it, you know, no voices, no movements, nothing added, just the voice and the story and the audience. I respected my teachers deeply and I know just what they meant: the direct communication of imagination with imagination is a subtle and nuanced thing. Many of my storytelling friends believe that what Walt Disney did with Snow White strait-jackets the story and stops it from living.

I was also trained in the theatre. Live theatre. Here storytelling becomes enfleshed, takes on a body and movement in a world of light and sound. Here our imaginations are still actively synchronizing with the storytelling space, not bound by what eyes see and ears hear, in partnership with actors and audience. Many of my theatre friends believe that movies are a mechanical distraction that puts barriers between the imagination and the understanding.

All my life though, I would say, I also have had a love-on not just for raw storytelling and theatre but for TV and movies. As a very young teenager I bought a regular 8mm movie camera and not long after a Super 8. Whatever my theatre and storytelling teachers would tell me later, and I deeply agree with everything they had to say, I still know that movies are a fully valid way of telling a story. Just different, I would say. I know that Charlie Chaplin stuck with silent long after sound because that’s how his storytelling sense went. I know that Hitchcock returned to black and white following his own inimitable storytelling sense.

I guess I also know that people can be disagreeable. Having been disagreeable once or twice myself, I know how much fun it can be. I think though that if stories have taught me anything, it is that being disagreeable about things which are only opinions is not a good way to build community (or one’s own standing in it).

No matter how much it might have alienated them, I do wish I had a 3D clip of some of my storytelling mentors!

Tim Robertson

"" It is painfully obvious that far too many people, who claim to be filmmakers, do not understand what "story" is.""

It could also be said... It's painfully obvious that far too many people, who claim to be filmmakers, think 'because I own a video camera, I can make a movie.'

This could go on forever!

Tim, I too am a storyteller, an actual storyteller, in the written tradition (and I have also taught it on the university level). Like you, I have also had theatrical training in storytelling and have directed many plays.

If you are a storyteller, then you should well know what a "storyline" is. You should also know that 3D (and the items Kelly mentioned) has nothing whatsoever to do with the storyline, as claimed by the "young filmmakers." This has absolutely nothing to do with opinion or with being "disagreeable." It's fact.

Jay, what is essential to storytelling?

To a bee what is essential may not be what is essential to a dancer or a mime artist, even though all are wordlessly counting on their audience to pay attention to their every move. As I understand many of the responses in this thread, there is a mature appreciation that 3D in movies—like sound and colour—is not essential, but is governed by technical ability, audience expectation, and artistic wont. Even if something is not essential, it doesn’t mean it’s a fad or gimmick or trick or fluff. Poets and storytellers will use whatever is at hand and suits their purpose (and regardless of what their peers and mentors say).

Which direction is 3D going? If I don’t account for the angle of the sun to the bee’s dance, I might just get the answer wrong.

Tim Robertson

So Jay, you've never had a story grow and take on life in the telling of it?

It just astonishes me how some people can hate a technology so much. Apparently there isn't a single redeeming quality to 3D and there is no reason to continue to perfect it.

I suspect we have a fundamental problem.
We don't know what we're talking about i.e. we might actually all agree except for the semantics.
I would suggest that great cinema can exist without any overt storyline at all but then again I'm far from certain if we're even on the same page in our understanding of what is meant by "storyline" or "cinema".

Bob.

and sometimes by the makers idea of storyline and cinema.....

mr warhol's empire state building unfortunately comes to mind (i wish it didn't).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_%281964_film%29

of course the italian recut was much more.... yawn

Tim, Kelly, and John, you have TOTALLY missed the point of the latter part of this discussion. You’re so eager to defend 3D you have blinded yourselves to what’s being said.

Tim, Kelly, and John, I’m talking about story and storyline, where the original discussion took its turn at Bob’s post of 8/4/2010, 10:36:58 AM. It is obvious that you do not know what story and storyline are.

"Story" comes from the word history, a sequence or course of events. So when we tell a story, regardless of the medium or technique, we’re telling a course of events—a history, as it were. It’s also known as a "narrative." Leslie is correct in saying that Warhol's Empire State Building has no story—it is a “non-narrative” film, just like the film Baraka, which was mentioned in another thread recently. Neither of these two films was attempting to tell a story.

Story contains five elements: plot, setting, character, point-of-view, and theme. Notice, there never has been, nor will there ever be, any mention of 3D, CGI, lighting, camera format, color, B&W, or anything else. Why? Because they have absolutely nothing to do with the story!

"Storyline," in many circles, is synonymous with plot, the first element of story. Plot (storyline) is the sequence in which the story is told; it details the order in which the dramatic events unfold within that specific story. Hence, the use of 3D, CGI, lighting, camera format, color, B&W, etc., will have no influence—one way or another—on the storyline. Like it or not, that is a cold, hard, indisputable fact.

End of discussion.

John, you have repeatedly and harshly chastised other posters in this forum for the dissemination of erroneous and/or false information. Yet you insist on putting false words in my mouth because I do not share your total enthusiasm with the current incarnation of 3D. I challenge you find one post of mine where I said: 1) I hate a technology, 2) there isn't a single redeeming quality to 3D, and 3) there is no reason to continue to perfect it. Your lack of tolerance of other people’s thoughts and opinions is one thing, but attempting to speak for me or put words in my mouth is totally unacceptable. I will not tolerate it.

Bob, it appears, has been one of the few who have attempted to exercise any critical thinking in this discussion. Thank you, Bob.

>>>>>Apparently there isn't a single redeeming quality to 3D and there is no reason to continue to perfect it.<<<<

John, fair enough comment. 3D is potentially good, but presently (mostly) used as a gimmick. Today read a review of a dance film in which the reviewer remarked that 3D brought one into the excitement of the dancing without needing fast cutting; there is an encouraging thing.

Now we are making some progress :)

However we now have a problem. By your (and mine as it so happens) definition the story exists only as an abstraction and it can only exist in one persons mind. If you wish to get the story from your mind into mine then you must convert it into language and utter the words. I will hear the words and they will be converted back into symbols. They almost certainly will not be the same as the ones in your head.

Many things will determine what ends up in my head. My life experiences, your choice of words, the manner in which you utter the words and if I can see you, your body language, in fact an almost endless list of factors may come into play. This is only for one of the most basic forms of telling a story, it becomes orders of magnitude more complex with a hot medium such as the moving image.

Narrating a story the words "old woman" may invoke very different symbols in the listeners mind. When they see the old woman they no longer have to pull "old woman" from their memory, they are shown the old woman.

Bob.

Ahhhh, Bob shows exceptional clarity again.

Just for the record i'm not a huge fan of 3D. It's a fun thing to see once in a while, but it looks very fake to me and any more than 10 minutes at a stretch is more than i can handle comfortable. So, i'm not specifically defending 3D.

What i'm getting at is that, along with Bob's description, a story, on it's own, is nothing. It needs presentation in order to become something. How well that story is related to others depends a lot on the presentation. If it didn't, all we'd ever have for stories in this world would be plain typewritten pages or monotonous radio recitations.

So, once presentation is in the picture, how it is presented can certainly have an effect on how the story is perceived, and that perception determines a lot of how the story ends up in the receiver's mind. Knowing this, a good presenter will make use of various presentation tools to maximize the desired effect. Since the tools aren't constant but are evolving, a good presenter will experiment with new tools or new ways of using old tools. And ... the main point i was making is that this experimentation can also feed back to the original story itself, since some tools will help emphasize areas the story may have been weak on so the presenter may amplify them. It may also help make other areas of the story obvious or even obviate them, so they can be de-emphasized. A really good presenter might also make the choice that some form of presentation will be a good reason to change the story to better take use of that presentation.

So consider Bob's comment that the story is not just the original fixed script, but how that story is perceived and interpreted, and then yes, all the "gimmicks" do in fact become tools for improving and enhancing the story.

I make an assumption when I am in a discussion even with people that I do not know that they are approaching me with the same goodwill I am extending to them.

When someone tells me what “I should know” or that “I obviously do not know” the only polite thing is to ask them not to “should” all over me and not mistake their own misunderstanding for mine.

When someone with a loud opinion starts claiming it as fact, how am I to respond? Should I be quiet, and hope they don’t notice me? Should I engage them in conversation? And if then engaged, and claims are made about me, should I refute those claims, clarify them, satirize them? When am I called to be silent and when am I called to speak? What is bait and when am I hooked?

The word “story” comes from an ancient Indo-European root [weid-] that means “to see”. Stories are all about seeing. Other English words which come from that same root are “vision”, “wisdom”, “idea”, “guide”. (Our particular form of the word comes through the Greek “histor” which meant “a wise and learned person” and has nothing overtly to do with “history” as we know it today.) Stories are wise guides that helps us envision the idea world of possibilities and map it onto the real world. Stories are the only way a mature person can truly understand anything. The absolutely essential features of a story are a storyteller and a story-listener; a beginning, middle and end (although any one of the parts can be implied); and characters of some sort who are in a situation where they must make choices and where the outcome of those choices imparts wisdom—if not to the character, then hopefully to the storyteller and story-listener.

As for the novel accusation of having missed the point of the latter part of the discussion in this thread which was initiated by Bob, it certainly seems to me that all of my subsequent replies (and the replies of others singled out by the initiator of this thread) are in the same spirit as Bob’s: 3D is just another technological tool or technique or means or way or parameter for telling stories, in itself neither good or bad. Will this technology survive and thrive? I don’t know. The graph referenced at the beginning of this thread lacks the necessary scientific rigor for it to be helpful in making a determination.

If the wise and learned person reviewing this thread must remark on the froth in the teacup, please know that however unskillful, I yearn that all be steeped in happiness.

Tim Robertson