3D Comes of Age

The movie I just saw is going to change the way a lot of people in this industry think about 3D.

With apologies and much respect to everyone who’s done good and necessary work in the 3D realm to date, I’ve gotta say that U23D is the first movie I’ve seen where the 3D perspectives become an organic part of the experience. They’re not used for added “realism” (whatever that means in this medium) or to add depth to a fundamentally two-dimensional photographic experience. They’re used to reconfigure the environment where a rock concert takes place for the benefit of a movie-theater audience. Yes, some shots seek to put viewers in the audience, amid the flailing hands, raised cell phones, and flamboyant splashes of bottled water flipped through 3D space. Others create a perspective that has never existed before, using split-screen composites and lengthy dissolves to juxtapose members of the band who occupy different parts of the stage. There are long moments where one image hangs in the air, creating a kind of scrim through which is seen the new action occupying the background of the frame. And elements of the band’s large-scale stage show, with low-res imagery filling the gigantic square-pixel screens towering over the stage, are layered on top of one another, in front of and behind images of the musicians, adding at-times abstract visual accompaniment to the thunderous sound of a veteran band in fine form. (This movie should be played loud.)

I’m no expert on 3D acquisition, but I know conventional wisdom on the subject holds that certain rules should be followed to avoid taxing the audience. U23D seems to follow some of these rules, like the one that says you should avoid quick, MTV-style cuts or the general caution about actually extending the images so they appear to break through the screen and into the theater proper. (I think these moments are restricted to a couple of carefully framed Bono gestures.) But it seems to break others with impunity – the filmmakers don’t seem to have worried, for example, about cutting between drastically different perspectives (the film moves easily from close-ups and medium shots of the band members performing to wide-angle shots that take in the huge stadium around them), and they seem positively giddy about the possibilities that come from superimposing disparate images on top of one another. The strategy pays off. The first few songs are a goose-pimply delight, showing off the wonders of the 3D cinema space and the startling apparent proximity of the audience members who can be seen bobbing with the music at the very bottom of the frame. And when the band comes back for an encore, ripping through “The Fly” from the band’s information-overload themed Achtung Baby/Zooropa era, the filmmakers first create a layer of typographic imagery to accompany the song, splashing it across the screen in a way that makes it seem as if you’re looking through some kind of high-tech TelePromTer display to see the band behind it. And then a veritable rainstorm of colorful letters seems to drop from overhead, cascading over the band members, who perform inside the downpour. Conceptually, maybe it’s not exactly revolutionary. But in 3D, it’s unlike anything I’ve seen before. U23D is a tour de force.

Granted, your mileage with this technology may vary. Co-directors Mark Pellington and Catherine Owens (the latter a longtime visual collaborator with the band) obviously had access to many of the brightest minds in 3D to help troubleshoot and problem-solve, and the film enjoyed a relatively lengthy post-production schedule. (The first time I heard about U23D, it was from a source who thought it was slated for a year-end 2006 release, so I gather the footage has been in the can for a while.) We at F&V are going to try to track down some of the people involved to see how it all came together.