3D Vision Blog

Panasonic has made available a special page, dedicated to providing James Cameron’s Preferred Settings for watching Avatar in 3D on a Panasonic 3D HDTV and these settings take advantage of the “Advanced (isfccc)” mode that the television sets have. This initiative is due to the fact that the company is bundling their line of Viera 3D-capable Plasma HDTVs along with a Blu-ray 3D version of the movie Avatar, an exclusive deal that probably will delay further the availability of the movie as a standalone product. And I’m curious if these settings are recommended just for watching Avatar, or they will be good for watching movies in general… I will have to try them and compare to the default THX settings for example when I start testing my new Panasonic VT20E HDTV, although I do not have Avatar on Blu-ray 3D yet ;)

Here are the recommended settings from James Cameron for Avatar 3D (for European TVs)…

Switch “Advanced (isfccc)” to ON.
Set the “Viewing Mode” to “Professional 1″.
Set the “Contrast” to “48″.
Set the “Colour” to “33″.

Set “White Balance” to the following values:
- Move the scale of “R-Gain” 10 times to the right.
- Move the scale of “G-Gain” 8 times to the left.
- Move the scale of “R-Cutoff” 2 times to the right.
- Move the scale of “B-Cutoff” 1 time to the right.

Set “Colour Management” to the following values:
- Move the scale of “R-Hue” 3 times to the right.
- Move the scale of “G-Hue” 4 times to the left.
- Move the scale of “R-Saturation” 3 times to the right.
- Move the scale of “G-Saturation” 11 times to the right.
- Move the scale of “B-Saturation” 8 times to the right.

Set “Gamma” to “2.4″.
Switch “24p Smooth Film” to OFF.
Switch “3D 24p Film Display” to OFF.

- To visit the official James Cameron’s Preferred Settings page on Panasonic’s website…
- To visit the official James Cameron’s Preferred Settings for Asia on Panasonic’s website…

The new Alice in Wonderland movie, featuring Johnny Depp, that officially premiered in 2D and 3D on 5th has managed to generate around $116 million in the North American weekend boxoffice for just 3 days. Just as a reminder James Cameron’s Avatar has opened with a $77 million weekend last December, so Alice in Wonderland clearly topped that, but will it manage to reach Avatar’s $2.6 billion gross worldwide… I seriously doubt that. The movie Alice in Wonderland has managed to take another $94 million internationally in its opening weekend, generating about $210 million in total which is a very good start, but it will most likely remain with a good start only and the interest will quickly diminish…

Avatar is still in the top 5 (number five actually) in the North American weekend boxoffice charts for the last weekend and this was its 12th week already, but still managing to make a little over $8 million. As for Alice in Wonderland I suppose that the interest will be big only in the first 3-4 weeks maximum, but then again the interest here might not be coming from the movie being converted to 3D (it was shot in 2D) and also screened in 3D cinemas as most people suspect. Without a doubt one for the reasons for the big interest is Johnny Depp and him making another great role as the Mad Hatter. But I don’t see a lot of people going to watch the movie more than once in 3D or because of Johnny Depp, unlike what happened with Avatar – people going two, three or even more times to watch it. And Avatar has opened the doors for everything 3D (not only movies) as now everyone is talking about 3D becoming available to the masses, so you can say that Alice in Wonderland had the right timing, but that might simply not be enough. The Monday boxoffice results (day 4) kind of show this negative trend as Alice in Wonderland managed to make just about $9 million in North America compared to over $16 million for Avatar in its day 4 (first Monday). The drop from Sunday’s results is over 3 times for Alice in Wonderland compared to less than 50% for the same time frame with Avatar…

Anyway, enough with the speculations, lets see how things work out for Alice in Wonderland and meanwhile if you’ve watched the movie in 3D please share your thoughts in the comments below. Did you find the 3D effects impressive enough and comfortable to watch or got your eyes quickly tired or maybe got a headache? How would you compare Alice in Wonderland in 3D to Avatar in 3D? And just about any other comment you find interesting to share with other people interested in stereo 3D.

- If you are interested in the 2D to 3D process used for Alice in Wonderland…

This fun brief comparison between the main idea of the story behind the Pocahontas and Avatar has been circling around for some time, but that is nothing new… we already know there are just a few dozens of well know hit scenarios and a lot of the popular movies do follow them. Of course the time, place, characters and some things that happen can be quite different, but the movie still follows the general old as the world idea. Some people said that Avatar has got a lot of cliches too, but then again the movie is still worth watching… you can even say that it even redefines some of these cliches you find in a lot of movies. There is however one very different thing that sets apart Avatar from a lot of the other movies and that is the movies being 3D… stereoscopic 3D to be exact and that makes a hell lot of a difference.

Avatar is the first really big scale stereoscopic 3D movie, on a scale similar to that of Titanic, but we know that James Cameron prefers to make things this way. So what if he utilizes the good old movie formula that a lot of other directors also build their success on, he is at leas trying to not only make things on a big scale, but also to invest in new solutions and technologies thus moving things further. And Avatar is definitely going to be the thing that fuels all things stereoscopic 3D not only this year, but in the following years too… and the success the movie is having worldwide with a lot of people watching it at least a few times in different 3D cinemas is also contributing to that. People want good 3D movies, people want to watch them in in quality 3D cinemas using the best possible technologies so that they can fully enjoy them, and this year they also want to have the same 3D cinema experience at home in front of their big-screen TV.

So what is your opinion on this topic? Please share your thoughts it in the comments below.