Thursday, September 6, 2007
Kapor: 3D Internet is on the brink of mainstream
Kapor: 3D Internet is on the brink of mainstream
Cambridge, Mass.--The industry around virtual worlds, also referred to as the 3-D Internet, is chaotic and messy but on the brink of mainstream adoption, said Mitch Kapor, chairman of the Linden Labs and PC industry pioneer.
Kapor spoke here on Friday in an event organized by IBM and the MIT media Lab on virtual worlds. Linden Labs is the maker of Second Life, a popular virtual world environment.
During his talk, Kapor drew many parallels between the early days of the PC and virtual worlds: there are many people who are skeptical of virtual worlds and the product is not suitable for many tasks.
Mitch Kapor says virtual worlds are a disruptive technology on the brink of larger acceptance.
(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET Networks)But people's passion for virtual worlds, albeit early adopters belie the potential impact of the technology, Kapor argued. That enthusiasm is mirrored in the deluge of media coverage of virtual worlds--sometimes hundreds of articles a day.
"What's driving this and why it's so darned disruptive is this shared sense of a few thousand crazy people thinking that it is really important and a really really big deal, even though they can't fully articulate it and don't know where it's going," Kapor said.
He described a moment of insight while watching a Suzanne Vega concert recorded in Second Life. He realized the potential of the medium when he saw the involvement of the spectators who could have been anywhere in the world and the simulation of Vega performing and interacting with people.
"I realized these virtual worlds become what we imagine they could be and the limits and constraints are enormously less than that of the physical world," he said.
"It reminded me of a drug experience in the days when we didn't know how dangerous recreational drugs could be," said Kapor, a self-professed product of the 60s.
Kapor said that some of the choices that Linden Labs has made will become more commonplace in other virtual worlds.
Specifically, he said having user the ability to generate content, rather grahics professionals--which was a radical notion when Linden labs was starting a few years ago--will become the norm.
Kapor predicted that, as a disruptive technology, the 3-D Internet opens up markets for hardware and software products. For example, hardware, such as goggles and gloves, to create a more immersive experience will emerge.
He also said that there will be huge demand for "reality acquisition devices" that allow people to create replicas of physical goods in the virtual world. More technical infrastructure, such as today's application servers, will be required to create more sophisticated and scalable applications and virtual worlds.
Finally, Kapor sees a parallel in what the PC did for desktop publishing and what the 3-D Internet can do for three-dimensional printing, where specially designed printers spray layers of powder to create physical goods.
Moving forward, Kapor said that the technical infrastructure of Second Life will become increasingly standards-based and open. The first step to doing that was open sourcing the client software.
"Long-term, there shouldn't be any single proprietary standard protocol used in the thing so Second Life becomes part of something larger," he said. "My view is that it's very prudent to do this because if we don't do it, another company will and we will end up being crushed."
Digital cinema is wowing theater owners, movie fans
Producers plan to limit release of the final 90-minute version to theaters equipped with digital, 3-D projectors. Unlike animated 3-D movies such as "Chicken Little" and "Monster House," "U2 3D" will show off the format's potential for live-action special effects.
A Reuters reporter at Cannes wrote that when U2 lead singer Bono reached toward the 3-D camera, it looked as if he were about to step off the screen into the theater.
The turbocharged music video will do more than demonstrate the technical prowess of digital cinema. It will introduce many consumers to a type of entertainment the industry calls ODS, or "other digital stuff." The category includes anything other than movies - for example, sports or music - that might draw paying customers into a theater.
In recent months, two ODS projects have captured media attention.
On New Year's Eve, New York's Metropolitan Opera broadcast the first of a series of live, high-definition performances, sending Mozart's "The Magic Flute" to theaters in several cities.
In February, the NBA's All-Star Game in Las Vegas featured the first sports event broadcast in live, high-definition 3-D. The game was sent over a high-speed network to two theaters at the Mandalay Bay hotel-casino.
"U2 3D," which doesn't have a release date, will also underscore the downside of Hollywood's transition to digital: its glacial speed.
Only about 1,000 theaters worldwide are capable of screening a digital 3-D movie today, according to industry estimates. There are more theaters capable of showing digital 2-D movies, but digital theaters are still a small percentage of theaters in this country and worldwide.
It's been nearly nine years since October 1998, when the industry released its first digital movie to theaters: the obscure "The Last Broadcast."
Industry consortium Digital Cinema Initiatives is only now finalizing the digital-cinema standard and certification process intended to ensure that studios, distribution companies and hardware manufacturers have a common digital game plan.
Despite the slow transition, digital cinema has many fans. Proponents say it improves the moviegoing experience, whether it's a 3-D basketball game or "Rocky 17."
Traditional film is prone to slight movements, up and down and left and right, as mechanical sprockets speed individual frames past the projector bulb. Dust and other objects leave scratches and dings on images after repeated showings.
Digital movies aren't subject to jittery movements and don't degrade, no matter how many times they're projected onto the big screen.
Digital cinema is expected to simplify theater operations. To show a traditional film movie on six screens, a theater owner would need six copies of the film. But one digital copy could run on all six screens.
Digital-cinema proponents include Ultra Star Cinemas, which has digital projectors in all 102 of its theaters and side-by-side film projectors pointed at some of those screens.
The Southern California movie chain says digital films are far better, so it uses only its film projectors when a movie isn't released in digital.
"Why would we offer our customers chuck steak when we have filet mignon?" said Damon Rubio, Ultra Star operations vice president.
In recent months, roughly 90 percent of movies have been released in digital.
"Every summer blockbuster will be released in digital," Rubio said. "About the only time we use the film projectors is around the Oscars. The art films from smaller studios are not always released in digital."
While the digital transition has crawled through the past nine years, there are signs that things are picking up.
At the beginning of the year, there were about 2,500 digital theaters in the United States, said Andrew Stucker, director of Sony's digital-cinema division. By the end of the year, that number should double.
"Still, with about 39,000 theaters in the U.S., that's a small percentage," Stucker said.
A number of forces will speed the transition, including 3-D, he said. With digital, it's easier to shoot and display 3-D movies, he added. And moviegoers are embracing 3-D movies.
"Movies shown in 3-D are bringing in from 30 to 50 percent higher box-office revenues," Stucker said. "In 2007 and 2008, something like 18 major movies will be released in 3-D."
Although film technology stays much the same year after year, digital technology continues to evolve. While some companies push a version of digital cinema roughly equivalent to today's HDTV, Sony and others are backing a technology known as 4K - four times the resolution of HDTV.
Capitalizing on the popularity of 3-D and the current interest in the latest "Spider-Man" sequel, Sony remastered the movie in 4K and showed it in 3-D in a handful of theaters around the world in May.
Stucker said films using the 4K technology will rival the visual appeal of such movies as "Lawrence of Arabia," which was shot on 70 mm film, instead of the more economical 35 mm used today.
"We should see the first film shot in 4K within 12 to 18 months, max," he said.
Longtime Hollywood film production company Technicolor sees digital cinema as the inevitable future, despite the slow start and competing technologies. The company's digital division provides a number of services, including testing of digital hardware and installing digital projection systems in theaters.
With the expectation of major cost-cutting and the potential to lure customers back into the seats with 3-D and alternative content, "it's mostly a question of when," said Curt Behlmer, chief operating officer of Technicolor Digital Cinema.
With industry standards nearly complete, Behlmer sees 2008 as the year digital cinema takes off.
"Right now, nobody's making any money from digital cinema," he said. "The studios still have to print a lot of film, along with the cost of producing digital versions. The exhibitors aren't making anything extra from digital.
"But when you put digital side by side with film, everyone agrees it's the future. Right now, everybody is investing in that future."
3-D: The Killer App/Cinema Expo
June 18
3-D: The Killer App/Cinema Expo
VARIETYPosted: Fri., Jun. 15, 2007, 6:40pm PT
Heavy hitters bet big on 3-DPlexes to upgrade with top directors
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Over the years, audiences have been jabbed in the eye often enough to be wary of the faddish, even gimmicky nature of 3-D, compounded in the past by headache-inducing red-blue anaglyph glasses. But this time around, the format is here to stay, say top execs from virtually every studio. Thanks to advances in digital projection, the picture looks crystal clear and supports, for the first time, the prospect of a wide 3-D release.
"I couldn't be more excited about it," says DreamWorks Animation topper Jeffrey Katzenberg, who recently announced the studio's intention to release every toon in 3-D, beginning with 2009's "Monsters vs. Aliens."
"I think it is the single most important transformational innovation that has occurred in the filmmaking business in 60 years, since color," he tells Variety. "To have spent all these years here, to see something come along that could literally transform your business and give you new opportunities -- creative, financial, just on every level -- is pretty amazing. It answers a critical issue about piracy and video windows."
Paramount, New Line, Disney, Sony, Warner and Fox all have major 3-D projects in the works. The live-action "U2 3D" wowed auds at Cannes, where the market was buzzing with pitches for stereoscopic projects. And with helmers like James Cameron, Robert Zemeckis, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Peter Jackson and Robert Rodriguez sold on the format, exhibitors can rest assured that content from the industry's top innovators is on the way.
Content will drive conversion, first to digital projection, and then to 3-D with a simple upgrade offered by companies such as Real D or Dolby. For the digital 3-D releases of "Chicken Little," "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and "Meet the Robinsons," Disney helped push Real D installations in several hundred theaters. Those pics, in turn, delivered per-screen grosses two to three times those for "flat" 35mm presentations of the same film (aided by auds' willingness to pay premiums of up to 30% for tickets).
"It's just a matter of time before the tipping point for 3-D happens because, like anything else, if the content exists, the technology will come up to support it," says Buena Vista distribution prexy Chuck Viane.
By May 29, 2009, a date on which two 3-D films are currently scheduled to open wide -- "Monsters vs. Aliens" and Cameron's "Avatar" -- there should be at least 4,000 screens capable of projecting digital 3-D, estimates Real D chairman-CEO Michael Lewis. "3-D has sort of been the killer app of digital. As more and more of these films come out and we see them perform well, there's going to be an even bigger push to get more screens out there. So if the content keeps up, I think we'll see a lot more than 4,000."
That's a realistic estimate, explains Nancy Fares, business manager for Texas Instruments' DLP Cinema Products division, since there are already more than 4,000 DLP projectors in the market. "With the deployment happening today, potentially every single screen that is a DLP cinema can be 3-D enabled," she says.
In the meantime, Paramount hopes to release "Beowulf" on at least 1,000 screens in November, and New Line expects that number to double before "Journey 3-D" (the first live-action narrative feature shot in digital 3-D) opens in August 2008.
Walden, which produced "Journey," is fully committed to the format, which the company has been investigating since 2001, when co-founder Cary Granat first partnered with Cameron to produce two underwater docus, "Ghosts of the Abyss" and "Aliens of the Deep," as a way of exploring stereoscopic filmmaking.
"In fairness, there really hasn't been a film in the last 10 years that's been purposefully produced only as a 3-D film, versus films that have been converted to 3-D for select sequences and theaters, which is why we shot 'Journey' the way we did, with every scene in mind for fully immersing you in the frame," says Granat.
The 3-D format has a very bumpy history, and even though the polarization method (a major improvement over those red-blue lenses used for "Spy Kids 3-D") has existed for more than 70 years, the method's dependence on two projectors made it largely impractical.
For the past two decades, only Imax programmed polarized 3-D pics with any regularity, crossing over from special-interest docus to Hollywood tentpoles with "The Polar Express" in 2005.
The film earned $65 million in Imax 3-D and prompted the company to try the same approach with computer-animated "The Ant Bully" and "Open Season" as well as select live-action sequences from "Superman Returns" and "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix." (To stay competitive, Imax will also upgrade to digital projectors, planning to switch from its current two-strip 70mm system in 2009.)
"When 'Polar Express' came out, I think we were a little euphoric, and we thought, 'Put it in 3-D, and they will come,'" says Imax co-chair and co-CEO Rich Gelfond. "Since then, our views have been refined a little bit, and we've learned it really has to be the right kind of project. It's not the magic bullet."
"You can't just start making 3-D movies on any script," agrees "Journey" producer Beau Flynn. "It really only works for sci-fi, fantasy, action."
But others are more optimistic. "It's going to be a lot broader than that," says Katzenberg. "If you look at the 500 movies released each year, you'll see pretty consistently that about 65 movies represent about 75% of the business. I went back and looked at the last three years using my own litmus test, and I think more than two-thirds of those 65 films would lend themselves to 3-D, so if you do the math, that's more than 50% of the business."
"The biggest thing about 3-D is education," says Buzz Hays, a senior producer on Sony Imageworks' 3-D stereoscopic pipeline. "Very few directors have any experience with it whatsoever, but if you get them to step away from the video monitor for a few seconds, the whole world is 3-D."
And even if the learning curve is steep at first, it's a new toy that's already attracted the business's top helmers. If Cameron can make it work with "Avatar," and Spielberg and Jackson are ready to try it on "Tintin," surely the rest of the industry will follow.
Based on technology already in development for home viewing, Granat forecasts another major innovation facing the theatrical 3-D experience.
"Eventually, what you're going to see is that you don't need glasses," he says. "That's probably about two years away."
Thomson Media and DLP predict it's farther off than that, but confirm the possibility.
In 3-D's bright future, maybe you won't need shades after all.