Is 3D a passing fad, or will it become a regular component of the live touring effects arsenal? If you ask ESPN, which launched with much ballyhoo its slate of 3D sports channels in 2010, the most recent answer would be “fad.” The über-sports broadcaster announced in June that it would be pulling the plug on its 3D channels by year’s end. Shooting concerts in 3D for Blu-ray and cinematic release seemed like it was going to become a healthy industry niche, but has instead slowed to the point where just “niche” is all you need to describe it.
The 3D holograph of Tupac Shakur at 2012’s Coachella festival seemed to augur a new landscape of multimedia imagery that no concert would feel complete without. Now? Tupac’s still dead, and so, apparently, is the company that digitally resurrected him, Digital Domain Media Group — one of whose founders was Avatar director and 3D champion James Cameron — which declared bankruptcy less than two months later.
Regardless of the complexity and sophistication of the technologies that are behind them, 3D and related special effects find it hard to shake their perceptions of being ephemeral novelties. ESPN, Disney, Sony and other media entities that had made grandiose announcements about 3D in the last two years have turned their attentions instead to 4K, a.k.a. UltraHD. Can 3D get even a little
respect?
Primed for Primus
Primus seemed to think so. The trio embraced the concept for both legs of their 2012-2013 U.S. Green Naugahyde tour, which ended in June. Los Angeles-based 3D Live was the 3D technology provider for the shows, whose three-dimensional center screen was flanked by the 2D video screens the band has used before, in some cases with the content from the two overlapping. What made the application of 3D tricky — and what consumer-electronics analysts have accused of sinking the entire category — was the need for the audience to wear anaglyphic glasses to get the 3D effect, the first-ever 3D enhanced tour where concertgoers view the show with 3D glasses. Aaron K. Craig, Primus’ lighting designer, says they band had to carry as many as 30,000 pairs of plastic glasses with them on their tour of 1,500-seat clubs and 3,000-seat theaters. Recycling stations were set up around the venues to collect the glasses at the end of show, but even the higher level of awareness that alt-band audiences tend to have around environmental issues wasn’t enough to keep hundreds of pairs of glasses a night from being trampled underfoot along with the beer cups. “These were pretty nice plastic-rimmed glasses, too, not the usual cheap cardboard ones,” Craig observes.
Nathan Huber, a partner in 3D Live who co-founded the company two years ago and who toured with Primus, often coding new 3D content on the bus between shows, says it’s wrong to look at 3D as a win-or-lose proposition. “It will have setbacks and it will have achievements, but that’s part of its evolution as a technology,” he asserts. “It’s still not well understood, and that’s why some who have tried it have failed in the marketplace.” He added that badly produced live 3D can induce eyestrain and headaches in audiences, which can keep artists from even considering it.
Huber, who began his 3D career working on This is It, the shows planned for London’s O2 Arena that had to be canceled due to Michael Jackson’s death in mid-2009, says 3D as a business is following the usual arc for new technology. “Back then, it had the kind of price tag that only an artist like Michael Jackson could afford,” he says. Since then, he says the cost is getting closer to that of 2D projection as the technology matures. However, it’s not quite there yet, and Huber says he cut Primus “a very good deal” on the weekly rental of the 3D rig and his services, as well as the supply of 3D glasses, for the tour.
Primus’ next round of shows — the festival circuit this summer and a tour of Australia in the fall — will not include 3D Live’s effects, but Huber says that’s a function of the normal need to mix up effects to keep shows fresh. The real return on investment, he says, comes from the fact that 3D effects engage the audience at a limbic level. “The experience locks on to your brain — it stimulates your entire visual cortex in a way that 2D cannot,” he claims. “That’s the real ROI here — the audience will remember this show like no other.”
3D’s future in live production remains unclear, however. Huber says new technologies and adaptations of existing technologies, such as auto stereoscopic displays that do not require the use of glasses, are under development, including by his company, trying to overcome issues the keep 3D tethered to the need for glasses, such as a narrow field of effectiveness for glassless 3D. He envisions 3D becoming not the star of the effects world, but rather one more tool in the palette of the lighting designer. And if that doesn’t work, we still have all those old Vincent Price horror movies to watch.