ryanbrennan wrote:
While we were there, FXRH demonstrated the 2-D to 3-D conversion of non-3-D material.  Arch was there before me and saw many more examples.  I only say about 30 seconds and material from three or four films.  The only shot I remember was of Count Floyd on an SCTV appearance.  The converter turned Floyd concave so it looked like I was looking into a cake mold.  I'm told, though, that it looks particularly good with certain films.

The process worked fine on a few clips. It seems to work best on bright exterior scenes, as with a clip from ARMY OF DARKNESS when Ash first arrives at the castle. It had good depth and was uniformly even during the sequence, but nothing really came out of the screen at you.

The 2-D to 3-D conversion had many more misses than hits. In a scene from ANIMAL HOUSE, characters are sitting in a theater row and all of their heads look like they're about two feet closer to us than their bodies. In a scene from SALEM'S LOT, we dolly past a jail cell and a horizontal bar sticks out at us while the vertical bars are recessed, making the shot look ridiculous. That concave effect Ryan mentioned appeared in several other clips, too.

I can't imagine anyone wanting to watch an entire movie with the process, as the obvious bugs in it would be distracting and annoying.

However, real 3-D movies look great. HOUSE OF WAX was truly exceptional. I watched CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON last week and it was amazing, although the underwater sequences were not as dimensional as the topside stuff.