3D is an amazement to me. I remember watching the great 3D pictures that were made when I was young, like Dial ‘M’ for Murder, House of Wax and Inferno. There were the big showstopping effects with the objects coming toward the camera, but the best of the 3D movies felt very special in another way: the technology was used to deepen the storytelling by enhancing our sense of the physical world in which the story took place. When I started to think about Hugo, I became very excited by the possibilities of using 3D to bring all of those objects—the keys, the clocks, the mechanical devices, the trains—to more heightened life for the viewer. In a sense, 3D is at the core of visual composition in cinema: it's a logical extension of the way that we tell our stories, block our scenes, work out our camera positions and depth of field. 3D takes movies into the future by looking back to the origins of cinema and beyond, further back to sculpture and painting and the need to represent the world in motion and in depth.
-Martin Scorsese
June 10, 2015 for the New York Stereoscopic Association's
100 Anniversary of 3D Film Celebration
Astor Room-Marriott Marquis Times Square New York
