3D 2024. Zombie or Pirate?

We're nearly two years into our EYEPOP-3D experiment and it's a challenging time for 3d, we launched with a blast of energy and massive support, however considering that initial trajectory things haven't gone quite as expected.

Considering the state of the 3D market we have to ask the question: is 3D a zombie technology just shuffling along waiting to be put out of its misery or is it actually thriving in an underground being taken over by automated homebrew and pirates?

Let's take a look back at the last couple of years to get the EYEPOP perspective.

EYEPOP-3D launches

When we publicly launched EYEPOP-3D with our conversion of "Nightmare Castle" in early 2023 we were met with a good deal of scepticism as to whether it was possible for one person to create a "good enough" 2D to 3D conversions so we worked incredibly hard to demonstrate not just the quality of the conversion but explaining the process, how we differed from a simple one-click auto-conversion and shared an extensive amount of demo conversion footage via YouTube and in our two 3D livestreams.

Although not stellar numbers (circa. 250) this approach got us over the funding line for our first Kickstarter and "Nightmare Castle 3D" went on to garner sufficient positive feedback that our follow-up "House on Haunted Hill 3D" more than doubled it's number of backers on Kickstarter to over 500. Which was for us a very positive sign and extremely gratifying.

They love us!

On top of that we then had loads of positive reviews from vloggers like Tommy Boy 3D & Go Find Fun on YouTube, fantastic reviews from the "supervistaramacolorscope" blog and pages of equally positive feedback posts from 3D focussed forums and facebook groups. The feedback from customers was overwhelmingly positive, the biggest complaint (early on) being shipping delays which were resolved quickly with a change of process.

The Future's so bright I gotta wear (3D) shades

So our anticipation was of sales growth, perhaps not at the doubling as seen from NC to HOHH but still, with such positivity and enthusiasm from the audience we headed into the next bunch of titles with renewed energy.

Then suddenly...

Then what happened has really confused us, and continues to do so. Take a look at the image below and specifically the number of backers from the Kickstarter campaigns.

Hang on. That doesn't make sense!

The backer numbers for our most recent Kickstarter, the absolute classic film "Carnival of Souls", is only marginally above what we achieved with "Nightmare Castle" - 18 months of continuing to prove ourselves, 10 months of converting the film, extensive month long Kickstarter campaign, paid advertising, massive social media push... yet we seem to be back at where we started. Most puzzling.

Obviously with the appearance of better, but still imperfect, AI driven one-click conversion tools people may simply be converting whatever they want for themselves so may be less likely to support these types of public domain conversions. Or as in many cases they may have purchased/downloaded pirated conversions of contemporary blockbusters, so again our black and white public domain conversions struggle to compete, regardless of quality differences. Even our more budget friendly Plan-D titles struggle, with sales barely able to break higher than double digit sales numbers.

That's not so say we don't appreciate the support we've had along the way - every single person who has backed us, purchased a disc and gone out of their way to show their appreciation has been a massive part of keeping this rolling - without the audience's enthusiasm we may have run out of steam ages ago.

For the time being let's just live in hope that the market improves and that the wider audience sees value in handcrafted 3D conversions of classic films; we desperately want to see a brighter future for stereoscopic content. I hate to be a pessimist but the sales numbers speak for themselves and that is most concerning.