3D, desensitization, and new expectations

The new 3D graphic technology allows you to experience more sensation compared to 2D movies. With the depth perception, you get a sense of presence and recognize more details in the "environment". Moreover as this technology is relatively new, it makes you cheer for its inventor, while you are enjoying the adrenaline rush... for a little while. Then it blends into the movie, becomes part of it. What you are left with though, is an overall heightened threshold for a new set of sensations (we also call that arousal, but usually to refer to violence in media effects studies)

The more you get sensation from media, the more you get desensitized overall. Conventional thrilling techniques become limited as you are now introduced to different sets of feelings with 3D: Those you can not experience even in real life. (I am pretty sure that you would not ever see a nail flying towards you in glowing colors/slow motion in real life. Even if you did so, you would not think "cool!" but something else). You get this weird luxury of enjoying a made-believe danger.

The audiences' increased expectation of heightened sensation will have implications on the future of the media technologies. It will be like Disneyland in the neighborhood movie theater. Today the "soaring ride" in Disneyland is an amazing experience. You do not have the 3D glasses, though. You only feel, see and smell. Tomorrow, we will be seeking the "all in one" experience any time we go to a movie.

I am looking forward to witnessing where the next available technology will take us.

Movies in 3-D

Ever since I got out of the 2D version of the movie Final Destination 3D tonight, I have been thinking about the 3D technology in movies.

I have to see it again in 3D! I will do that tomorrow. But before I do, I would like to brainstorm a little bit.

Obviously, the movie was made for integrating the 3D technology. The images that the main character was "seeing" were designed so that something (sharp) was flying towards your face almost constantly. (There was even a reference to watching a 3D movie in the movie!)

Technologies that become available and popular can encourage the movie industry to change the ways they write the scripts, edit the movie or integrate the visual effects.

What would a 3D movie do to you? And mind you there are a bunch of them out there. It surely would heighten the senses. In Dreamworks' Monsters vs. Aliens, or Disney/Pixar's Up, it is to give you more excitement and joy. The colors look brighter, and the audience feels almost right in the room. I wonder whether in a horror/thriller movie like Final Destination, 3D takes the fear and disgust to the extreme, or would these 3D effects work as an excitement in itself. Does it matter if it is a sharp hook or a funny bug flying onto your face in terms of creating excitement? I am thinking, if I am watching an intensely violent and horrifying scene, a 3D effect would not only intensify the story, but also have an additional effect; an effect of its own.

It does not make much sense to experiment on oneself, but I have to see the movie in 3D tomorrow and identify what I felt...