Is it real 3D?

One of the sites I use at least a half dozen times a year or so is Is It Real of Fake 3D? It lets you know if a movie that is coming out in 3D was actually shot in 3D or converted into 3D in post. I don't love 3D movies unless they were shot natively in 3D. When technicians convert a 2D movie into 3D in post, they choose different parts of each shot to place at different depths, and the final product resembles dioramas seen straight on, with objects placed on several fixed planes of depth.

What's worse is that since a 2D movie is shot with only one camera, it can't replicate the full arc of vision of a movie shot in 3D, with two cameras. Typically, the two cameras used to shoot a 3D movie are shot with two cameras separated by the average distance between two human eyes. As you know from closing one eye, then the other, the distance between your eyes allows each eye to see a slightly different perspective on all objects in space, and our brains learn to combine those two images to produce a 3D perspective.

2D conversions can't just conjure what the 2nd camera would have seen from thin air. But since 3D tickets command a price premium, and since enough viewers seem to go for the fake 3D conversions, studios continue to crank them out in ever greater volume.

I bring all this up just to remind you that when you go see Mad Max: Fury Road, the movie I'm most excited to see this year, go see it in 2D. It opens Friday.