3D's Diminishing Returns

For 3D Blu-ray enthusiasts, the last few years have been a bumpy ride, with the loss of most of the majors releasing their 3D content on disc meaning it's been down to operations like the marvelous Turbine in Germany and Kino/BayView releasing the fabulous 3DFA Restorations.

Considering that 2 years ago we didn't even have Turbine, my thought then was that if no-one else would produce new 3D content* for us, we simply had to do it ourselves. What could we lose apart from a little time and possibly hair from tugging on it at the toughest shots? And so EYEPOP-3D was born.

From the outset it did look quite promising with an okay level of support on "Nightmare Castle" and a doubling of that support when we did "House on Haunted Hill" reaching over 500 backers! Then things started to turn... *As an aside Turbine/Kino/BayView/etc. do not produce any new or original 3d content, I believe we are the only organisation offering new 3d product at any scale.

Let's Review The Backer Numbers

So here we are roughly two years on and we can finally look at the numbers across all of our EYEPOP-3D titles.

From the details above you can clearly see the apprehension and cautious approach by the 3d community as regards the potential quality of the first release, Nightmare Castle, yet still we managed to engage with 250+ backers. Now 250 backers is no huge number considering the number of purported 3D film enthusiasts around the world, so we hoped we could use this as a first stepping stone towards bigger sales volumes.

The support for the first disc was achieved with our demos and the two livestreams I produced for the online 3D enthusiast audience, demonstrating the quality of the conversions that could be expected. This was sufficient to get us over the required funding level, in fact it went much better than anticipated and we effectively nearly doubled our initial target for our first EYEPOP-3D release.

House on Haunted Hill was up next and as you can see the numbers blew Nightmare Castle out of the water - 522 backers delivering 227% of the required goal. Things looked promising indeed! The combination of a good fun, drive-in level "horror" along with the master of screen horror Vincent Price was a killer combo that really jumped our numbers up a gear, and towards the magic 1000 units we were looking for in order to switch to pressed discs over BD-Rs.

Last Man on Earth was an absolute classic film, again featuring Vincent Price in a horror/sci-fi film that retains its' power to this day. Dark and moody, and based on 1954 novel I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, this should easily have bumped us up another level. Well, whilst this still performed okay, it dipped noticeably by around 20% - taking backer numbers from 500 down to around 400 - a slight worry but perhaps it was just a less well known film? Less well liked?

Horror Express, our first color outing, featuring the talents of Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing an Telly Savalas alongside a stellar supporting cast. This well regarded British/Spanish film was already a cult classic and really delivered some stunning three d visuals. Sadly though this continued the downward trend for backer numbers, albeit having a great cast and having that cult following we saw backers drop again this time down to around 350.

I was still feeling really confident for Carnival of Souls, another amazing cult classic film and one that has been influential on many filmmakers for it's creepy atmosphere throughout and some amazing visuals. Although it didn't have known stars to speak of, it was such an influential and intriguing film that surely this one would turn our fortunes around? Well sadly it dropped backers again only managing to have a final count of just 275 people backing it. 275 people in the whole world?

And now here we are, looking at the final tally for "The Phantom Planet" of just 244* people. That's less than backed "Nightmare Castle".

*244 includes backers who chose no reward, backers who failed to pay and backers who opted for download only. The final 3D disc backing total was around 214.

Having a quick look at this visually clearly demonstrates the problem.

Even with the best will in the world, and the most optimistic approach the data suggests we are on a constant downward trajectory and ignoring this or pretending differently would be rather pointless.

WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?

In real terms we don't actually know, and apart from the obvious move towards streaming/reduced demand for physical media, we have a few more specific ideas on what may be happening.

Homebrew

When we first started our conversions there wasn't any single integrated piece of software that could produce a reasonable quality AI Depth Map based conversion, the older "one-click" solutions produced extremely poor results which to anyone used to seeing real 3d just was a mess.

So our approach, which was based on in-depth film production and fx knowledge was a barrier to entry for most, took a serious enthusiast to want to spend the time on learning and mastering everything required to even get a passable conversion nevermind a good one.

Then the landscape began to change. AI depth models improved and "one-click" tools started appearing giving home users with no FX knowledge the ability to generate basic conversions with a few control sliders and the click of a button. Sure the depth map were still off here and there, or users cranked the depth settings so high it created deformed and warped videos, but it appeared that this wasn't of concern to many users. They were simply pleased to be able to produce "3D" themselves.

And of course for home viewing users weren't concerned about copyrights, so it was open season on any and all of Hollywood's biggest films from Citizen Kane through to Star Wars and beyond.

And of course, Piracy

This technology then left every film ever made as easy picking for the pirates to churn through, and based on the little we've seen, carelessly pump out "one-click" conversions at the rate of 2 or 3 a week!

So with a limitless supply of online and offline pirated 3D blockbuster films - despite often mild 3D and/or being riddled with conversion errors - the market for our higher quality and hand crafted conversions of public domain or even original material appears to be getting crowded out.

And finally as each generation of AI depth estimation model produces better results the detail that the auto-converts deliver is equally improving. It's still far from perfect, but it is getting better.

SO DID WE DO SOMETHING WRONG?

I don't believe we did - unfortunately though based on the points raised above the audience willing to pay for our conversions is shrinking to the point that it is too small to be sustainable. In reality this never was a financially viable operation, had I not been semi-retired and had sufficient other resources to cover bills we would likely not have got as far as we did.

We can't compete against the pirates as we want to be above board with what we produce, plus we care about the conversion quality. We're constantly trying to better ourselves and looking for new tricks to improve the viewer's experience. You need simply compare our output against any one-click conversion of the same film and you'll see the difference - from the opening credits onwards, the handcrafted approach delivers better and more consistent results.

We equally can't compete against pirates in quantity as they can produce massive amounts of popular (though illegal) content - even if only at "good enough" quality - with very little effort. Literally click a button, let the computer render for a day and upload the resultant file. While being mostly mediocre and sometimes awful there's still seems to be a substantial audience spending money on this.

Online posts often praise the "quality" of these auto conversions and convince many users that the homebrew/pirated quality matches Hollywood FX Studios. This is simply untrue - even our conversions which take days, weeks or months of manual handcrafting can't equal a $2.5 Million+ conversion - if it did why would Marvel still be spending that level of cash to convert their films? To believe otherwise is simply naive. Marvel could simply subscribe for $10 a month and churn out their conversions that way if it were that good.

Another limiting factor we've found is the community itself, with a percentage of individuals having rigid thoughts on post market conversions and a whole heap of other related topics. There's apparently a multitude of reasons not to buy the product.

Some of my least favourites:

• All conversion is "fake 3D".

• If it wasn't shot in 3D then it simply isn't 3D.

• It's only good enough if it's produced by the studio and/or overseen by the director.

• Using Public Domain sources is bootlegging.

• It was never planned to be 3D so it shouldn't be converted.

• I don't like your choice of genre.

• It's too expensive.

• I hate BD-R's.

• I hate AI.

• I don't like the cover.

• I don't like your marketing.

• I've never heard of you.

• My 3D TV does conversion.

• I can do my own conversions.

• Etc.

All of these could be answered as to why choices have been made, but it is unlikely to change minds that have been made up already.

SO WHAT NEXT?

Well, now that Phantom Planet is shipped I'm taking some time to review options.

Based on the diminishing numbers I can't currently see the market sustaining projects and the level of commitment needed for full 3 to 6 month long EYEPOP conversions along with the month+ long Kickstarters and all that associated design, production, distribution & marketing. And so at the moment I can't see another full EYEPOP-3D title/Kickstarter happening for the foreseeable future.

Never fear though, there's still a fair number of Plan-D titles in the pipeline (I have a habit of starting about 3 or 4 films at once!) which I want to at least get finished off and out there, beyond that I can't speak for Phil or Alex as to exactly what they want to do.

To add to our woes eBay's AI has now decided to start removing our titles, apparently unwilling to accept their sources public domain status, there is no human interaction here simply an AI bot making a decision and any attempt to appeal the decision has proved pointless as a blanket generic denial email seems to be the regular response. So this further limits our options in increasing the market reach, further limiting sales and leaving me with shelves full of stock.

To sign off I'd like to thank you all again for all the incredible support you've given us, we knew that AI advances at an incredible pace and that we would be superseded by a killer AI Conversion App at some point - I guess we thought it would need to be producing better results to our work to replace us, but that does not appear to be the case.

Thanks for reading.