Baz Luhrman to make The Great Gatsby in 3D?
http://blogs.forbes.com/ericsavitz/2011/01/08/the-great-gatsby-in-3d/
Will director Baz Luhrman film his pending version of The Great Gatbsy in 3D?
The answer is that he very well might. That could be a boost boost for the 3D business, which until now has largely been dominated by animated fare like Shrek and big-budget spectacle like Avatar. Luhmann was in Las Vegas this week, where he participated in a panel of Hollywood film directors talking about the impact of technology on their work. (Most of the discussion, as I noted in a post yesterday, was focused on the wonders of Blu-Ray.) Also on the panel were directors Oliver Stone and Michael Mann.
L.A. Times' Geoff Boucher interviews Michael Mann, Oliver Stone and Baz Luhrmann
Shortly after the panel, I got a brief audience with the trio of directors. Luhrmann, the director of Moulin Rouge and Romeo and Juliet, among other films, says he recently workshopped Gatsby in 3D, and will decide soon whether to shoot the Leonardo DiCaprio/Carey Mulligan film in 3D.
During our chat, the directors noted that there is precedent for filming dramas in 3D, nothing Alfred Hitchcock filmed Dial M For Murder in 3D in 1954; Mann asserted that 3D enhanced even the less spectacle scene in Avatar, noting that the technology provided a higher degree of immersion in dialog scenes. Stone was far more skeptical. Would he use the technology to film a drama? It would help to have Grace Kelly, he joked. (Kelly was one of the starts of Dial M For Murder.)
On a more serious note, Stone said that filming in 3D would add about 20% to the cost of production for a serious film, which might not be recovered at the box office; Mann said the extra cost would be about 30%. Stone points out that not many drams are actually making money in 2D.
Luhrmann says hes not surprised to see some skepticism about widespread adoption of 3D. He notes that the Jazz Singer, while the first film to include sound, you heard only the songs, and not the dialog Luhrmann says there was a view that filmgoers wouldnt want to see actors speaking. He added that while the use of 3D started with gags, an then moved on to spectacle and drama in Avatar, still could be used for the kind of poetic cinema filmed in 2D like his version of Romeo and Juliet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpvcfv5FjfE&feature=related