Cinefantastique Online

 I think digital 3-D offers an opportunity to do something as profound for today’s movie going audiences as the introduction of color and sound. This is the next big thing, and I think people are going to respond to really high quality 3-D images. Animated films and fantasy films really benefit from 3-D. You get a heightened sense of being personally present in the space of the movie. You’re drawn into it. It’s like the movie wraps around you and takes you into its reality. That’s a very exciting thing for a filmmaker.

-James Cameron  

I recently attended a demonstration of Dolby’s new 3-D Digital Cinema process at the companies acoustically perfect San Francisco presentation theater.  Well, I was quite astounded by the clarity and amazing depth of the images on view.  Dolby’s technical wizards, led by John Gilbert, discussed their new system and showed clips from several 3-D movies, including BEOWULF, and previewed a clip from STAR WARS: ATTACK OF THE CLONES.  It featured the speeder chase of Anakin and Obi-wan through the skyscapers of Coruscant. The digital sets which always seemed a bit too apparent as CGI to me, now gain a much more realistic edge when seen in Dolby 3-D.  George Lucas is now working on converting all six of his STAR WARS movies into 3-D, a process made possible by a company called In Three.  

Given the rather spotty history of 3-D movies, due to cumbersome dual projection systems and the mostly awful films that were made in the process, it now appears that many of those problems have finally been solved by the use of today’s digital projection. Dolby’s system involves using a spinning color wheel that breaks the digital files into three colors, much like the old dye-transfer process for making  Technicolor prints. Only in this case, it’s the projection light itself that is separated into the primary colors of red, blue and green. The spinning wheel alternately lets one set of color images through, at the rate of 144 times per second.     

When the projected light is viewed by an audience wearing specially layered 3-D glasses, it is recoverted into the slightly different left-eye and right-eye images, creating an extremely sharp 3-D image on-screen, with little or no eye fatigue.  In addition, colors are rendered more naturally on a regular white screen, with no need for theaters to install a special silver screen, which often slightly alters or muddies the color balance of the projected image.   

The custom 3-D glasses Dolby provides are extremely lightweight, with concave lens and since they cost about $50. each, are of a much higher quality than disposable glasses could hope to be.  It also means they are re-usable, making them much more environmentally friendly than making cheap paper or plastic glasses.  

Whether the new digital 3-D catches on with today’s audiences remains to be seen, but it has already caught the attention of most of today’s biggest directors.  At the 2005 ShowWest theater owners convention,  Lucas, Cameron, Robert Zemeckis, Robert Rodriguez and Randal Kleiser said they were commited to make films in 3-D digital projection, and since then have all announced projects that will be shot in (or in Lucas’ case, coverted to) 3-D.  In addtion, Disney and Dreamworks animation both seem to have fallen in love with the 3-D format, and are planning many of their future animation films to be done in 3-D.  

However, James Cameron’s inter-planetary space thriller, AVATAR, now shooting for Fox in New Zealand, with effects work being handled by Peter Jackson’s WETA digital, seems to be the kind of epic project that really could put 3-D over in a big way. It’s now scheduled for a Christmas 2009 release date, to allow enough time for digital 3-D cinemas to become equipped to show the film.   

Beyond that, while Peter Jackson couldn’t possibly say so at this point, given his ongoing fight with New Line Cinema, it would appear that if he ever actually gets to direct THE HOBBIT, he would like to make it in Digital 3-D 

Here are some of the comments made by James Cameron, George Lucas and Peter Jackson at ShowWest in 2005 about Digital 3-D cinema: 

JAMES CAMERON: With digital 3-D projection, we will be entering a new age of cinema. Audiences will be seeing something which was never technically possible before the age of digital cinema - a stunning visual experience which ‘turbocharges’ the viewing of the biggest, must-see movies. The biggest action, visual effects and fantasy movies will soon be shot in 3-D. And all-CG animated films can easily be converted to 3-D, without additional cost if it is done as they are made. Soon audiences will associate 3-D with the highest level of visual content in the market, and seek out that premium experience.

GEORGE LUCAS: When I first saw In-Three’s Dimensionalization process I was truly amazed. The 3-D was of a quality better than anything I had previously experienced. Seeing my own STAR WARS images in authentic 3-D convinced me that it would be a whole new way for audiences to be able to re-live the STAR WARS films. Dimensionalization will significantly enhance the realism of any movie presented in this process. 

PETER JACKSON: I’m here to lend my support along with the other filmmakers in saying that I think this is one of the most exciting developments in cinema to come along for a long, long, time. The fact that we can now make three-dimensional films that don’t have eyestrain, they’re bright, they’re sharp, they’re clear, there’s no muddiness, there’s no double imaging. The technology now exists to do perfect 3-D.  

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