Link here.
I am so going to this tomorrow.
Slee
That is sorely tempting, isn’t it?
“Sorry, tickets and showtimes aren’t showing up in your area”. Dangit.
Ah, well, even if they had shown up, the closest 3D theater is probably in West Yellowstone, anyway. A bit far to bike.
I really wanted to see this! But it isn’t coming to my area (or if it is, I can’t find it.)
MilliCal wants to see this, of course – TNBC is one of her all-time faves.
I’m holding out for Nature Trail from Hell (in 3D) myself.
It’s been years since I’ve seen the film, but I still listen to the soundtrack annually (both around Halloween & Christmas) so I can’t wait (though I hope they keep the run going for a while and not pull it mid-November).
I just went and saw it this morning, taking my five year-old to his first movie theater. We’ve watched the DVD many times, so I thought that this would be a good trial run for him (you shoulda seen his mouth gape when the curtains parted and he saw how large the screen was!).
As for the 3D conversion, it wasn’t quite what I expected. Not knowing how a regular film gets converted, I assumed that this would look like a film shot in 3D. It didn’t. Instead of the experience of things “leaping off the screen,” it was more like a picture with a lot of depth. Nothing projected beyond the plane of the screen, but every shot did have this amazing depth to it (especially the flying scenes).
The promo stuff beforehand WAS made in full 3D, and kids were yelping as stuff came flying toward them (especially this really great pumpkin jack-in-the-box that did the pre-movie countdown and then zoomed right at you with an evil laugh).
I’m a huge Nightmare fan, so this certainly didn’t disappoint. And hey, you get to keep the glasses.
How does Knickknack (the Pixar short with the snowman) look in 3D? My grandmother loves that short- since it’s computer animated, I assume it would look rather interesting in 3D- especially the scenes with the snowman attempting to exit his snowglobe before it falls off the shelf.
I saw it yesterday and enjoyed it. It was the first time I’d ever seen Nightmare Before Christmas, so the 3-D was just icing on the top.
mobo85: “Knick Knack” looked great. Like Nightmare it didn’t “leap out” at you, but it didn’t suffer from some of the blurring during rapid motion either.
By the way, if anyone is catching this in the L.A. area (and thus going to the El Capitan), head downstairs: they have an exhibit of puppets and a set from the movie.
I love Knick Knack. What a great little film.
I’m really behind on my movie watching.
I went and saw this with a couple of friends yesterday. Given that the movie wasn’t originally shot with 3D in mind, I thought they did a really good job with it. I also hadn’t seen it in years, so the experience was quite fresh. I have to say, I forgot how wonderful the soundtrack is, especially after seeing The Corpse Bride with its lukewarm musical numbers. I rarely go to theaters any more, but it was worth it for this.
(Except, of course, for the projection computer freezing up halfway! Took them 10 minutes to get it running again. :smack: )
Saw it today. The 3D was really well done, but it was nice just to see it on the big screen again.
Since the original Nightmare was not created with computer generated imagery, but with actual maquettes and other miniatures, photographed in stop motion, how do they convert the images into 3-D, short of redoing the whole movie?
My WAG would be that they digitally separate each visual element and place it on its own plane. As noted above, nothing ever extended beyond the plane of the screen, but things sure were set far back from it.
The software used is similar to Rotoshop. (Waking Life, Scanner Darkly) Artists trace each element to create a spline object for it, and adjust it over a series of frames so that motion is matched. The slider that indicates the object’s position along the “Z” axis is adjusted manually. Information gathered this way is used to generate the frame for the second POV. (Say the original frame is the right eye’s view – the process reassigns every pixel according to the depth information gathered by tracing out the movie. If the pixel is part of an object at infinite distance, its position along the “X” axis remains the same. The closer it is to the foreground, the further it will be shifted to the right. )
That’s basically it, although it’s also necessary to touch up details around the objects, like filling in the pixels “behind” an object that has been shifted with appropriate pixels from another frame.
OK, you’ve already lost me. What’s a “spline object”?
Basically, it’s an approximation to a surface made up of smaller surfaces that are easy to render. Think of it as a rough draft of the object to be animated. There’s a detailed article over at Wikipedia, but it may not be that helpful to the average reader.
Oh, did anyone else figure out why they’re re-releasing the movie now?
My WAG, after seeing that ILM was responsible for the 3D effect, was that someone at ILM came up with this method of 3D-izing old footage, and several people went “Dude! We HAVE to do something with this! Hey, Halloween’s coming up…” 
Remember that the Star Wars movies are supposed to be coming out in 3D eventually, so maybe this was a trial run using some easier-to-control variables (animation, shorter running time) to get a taste of the workflow challenges, areas to streamline, audience reception, etc.