Pay close attention

3D cinema has arrived in Egypt and we popped along to City Stars to see A Christmas Carol last night. The 'wow' factor of the 3Dness distracted the audience from their mobile phones for a good twenty minutes before the usual nonsense of phone-glare and conversations kicked in, albeit by a much smaller percentage of the audience than normal.

The 3D effect is very impressive. It's the first film I've seen with the new glasses and the perception of depth was a treat in every scene. I wasn't overly impressed with the 'gimmick-effects' where objects were supposed to fly out the screen at you. I think the problem is that whilst your eyes don't mind being tricked when the floaty object is bang in the middle of the screen with nothing to connect it to the edge or border, if there is any point of reference that guides your eye towards the edge (an arm connected to a pointy finger for example) the illusion is lost somewhat. Scenes involving whooshing camera pans didn't really work that well either unless the subject was again in the middle of the screen.

Another possible reason behind the disappointing coming-out-the-screen-at-you aspect is the inclusion of subtitles. Every film released out here has Arabic subtitles running along the bottom of the screen (also subjected to the 3D treatment) which always sit at the front of the depth of field making it very difficult for the brain to be tricked into seeing things between them and the viewer's eyes. (The best 3D effect was actually in the trailer for Alice In Wonderland where the Cheshire Cat appeared to float right in front of your eyes. Clever.)

The Scrooge character obviously had the most money spent on it, although eyes and hands still seem to be proving rather difficult for the animators to mimic realistically, even with the actors all being motion-captured. Still, the technology has come on leaps and bounds since Zemeckis's Polar Express where Tom Hanks got far less flattering treatment.

The film itself was very enjoyable. Jim Carrey was, as ever, brilliant, and his delivery of the line "Bugger it!" when he dropped his keys will remain in my chuckle-bank for a while.

After being mighty impressed with 3D blips by Paul Ransom, fiori, wingpig and TFP, I thought I'd give it a go. It's remarkably easy to do and I'm very pleased with my first effort.

As for 'seeing' the 3D here, it may seem that you can either do this sort of thing or you can't. For those who can't, it's not as hard as you think (it's the same technique used in those Magic Eye posters from the 90s) and I'll leave you with instuctions how to do it, wingpig-style:

"Go large, cross your eyes, concentrate on the glasses but try and stay as far back as you can get before your binocular accommodation kicks back in."