The Next Dimension - Time Magazine - March 19, 2009

Thursday, Mar. 19, 2009

The Next Dimension

By Josh Quittner

Correction Appended: March 20, 2009

The lights dim in the screening room. Suddenly, the doomed Titanic fills the screen--but not the way I remember in the movie. The luxury liner is nearly vertical, starting its slide into the black Atlantic, and Leonardo DiCaprio is hanging on for life, just like always. But this time, I am too. The camera pans to the icy water far below, pulling me into the scene--the sensation reminds me of jerking awake from a dream--and I grip the sides of my seat to keep from falling into the drink.

Most of us have seen the top-grossing film of all time. But not like this. The new version, still in production, was remade in digital 3-D, a technology that's finally bringing a true third dimension to movies. Without giving you a headache. (See the 100 best movies of all time.)

Had digital 3-D been available a dozen or so years ago when he shot Titanic, he'd have used it, director James Cameron tells me later. "But I didn't have it at the time," he says ruefully. "Certainly every film I'm planning to do will be in 3-D."

Digital 3-D, which has slowly been gaining steam over the past few years, is finally ready for its closeup. Just about every top director and major studio is doing it--a dozen movies are slated to arrive this year, with dozens more in the works for 2010 and beyond. These are not just animations but live-action films, comedies, dramas and documentaries. Cameron is currently shooting a live-action drama, Avatar, for Fox in 3-D. Disney and its Pixar studio are releasing five 3-D movies this year alone, including a 3-D-ified version of Toy Story. George Lucas hopes to rerelease his Star Wars movies in 3-D. And Steven Spielberg is currently shooting Tintin in it, with Peter Jackson doing the 3-D sequel next year. Live sports and rock concerts in 3-D have been showing up at digital theaters around the U.S. nearly every week.

With the release on March 27 of Monsters vs. Aliens, Jeffrey Katzenberg, the head of DreamWorks Animation SKG, is betting the future of his studio on digital 3-D. While he's not the first to embrace the technology, he has become its most vocal evangelist, asserting that digital 3-D is now good enough to make it--after sound and color--the third sea change to affect movies. "This really is a revolution," he says.

Over the past few years, Katzenberg has repositioned DreamWorks as a 3-D-animation company. From Monsters on, all its movies will be made, natively, in 3-D. (Many animation studios create the 3-D effect in postproduction.) That's a pretty big commitment since 3-D involves even more computer power than usual. The DreamWorks crew invokes "Shrek's law," which holds that every sequel takes about twice as long to render--create a final image from models--as the movie that preceded it. Authoring the movie in 3-D effectively doubles the time called for by Shrek's law.

That requires an extreme amount of horsepower--the computational power of DreamWorks' render farm puts it roughly among the 15 fastest supercomputers on the planet. The studio partnered with Hewlett-Packard and Intel and built an enormous test bed on more than 17,500 sq. ft. in California. The Silicon Valley companies are hot on 3-D because they believe it's how people will navigate the Web and the desktops of their PCs and that it will be standard on computers and HDTVs.

See pictures of the best animated movies.

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At DreamWorks, I watched a Monsters filmmaker peer through an elaborate camera rig that allowed him to "previsualize" a scene before shooting it. As he panned across the room we were standing in, he flew over a computer-generated 3-D image of the White House war room--the set for a scene in which the President (voiced by Stephen Colbert) meets with his staff to discuss an alien invasion. The camera let the director precisely manage the z-axis and decide which elements in the background, midground and foreground needed to be lit and focused.

Katzenberg says going 3-D adds about 15% to his costs--which is nothing compared with the profits studios anticipate as the digital transformation takes hold. Digital 3-D movies usually gross at least three times as much as their flat-world counterparts--thanks in part to the higher ticket prices and longer runs they garner. Another benefit: 3-D films are far more difficult for digital-camera-toting moviegoers to pirate. (See pictures of movie costumes.)

Beyond the venal, however, filmmakers say that 3-D, like sound and color, really breaks down the barrier between audience and movie. "At some level, I believe that almost any movie benefits from 3-D," Lord of the Rings director Jackson says. "As a filmmaker, I want you to suspend disbelief and get lost in the film--participate in the film rather than just observe it. On that level, 3-D can only help."

3-D Movies, Take 8
If the return of the 3-D movie sounds like a rerun, that's because it is. By some counts, this is 3-D's eighth incarnation, and to date, it hasn't exactly revolutionized the industry. The first stereoscopic movies appeared in the U.S. before the last Great Depression, disappeared, then enjoyed a schmaltzy revival in the 1950s with such blockbusters as House of Wax (1953). They've cropped up intermittently ever since, typically attached to high-camp vehicles like Andy Warhol's Frankenstein (1973).

"To me, 3-D has always been the circus coming to town," says Daniel Symmes, a 3-D historian and film-industry veteran. Symmes worked on the soft-core 3-D hit The Stewardesses, which was produced in 1969 for around $100,000. It grossed more than $27 million, making it the most profitable 3-D movie ever. Symmes scoffs at today's digital 3-D and its big budgets and says it's déjà vu. "Does the circus stay around?" he says. "No. If it does, attendance drops off, the novelty is gone and the circus goes away."

But proponents say digital 3-D is a different animal from the analog stuff that came before 2005. Viewers often wore cardboard glasses with red and cyan cellophane lenses (similar to but somewhat different from what you see in this magazine). As just about everyone knows, old-school 3-D was less than awesome. Colors looked washed out. Some viewers got headaches. A few vomited. "Making your customers sick is not a recipe for success," Katzenberg likes to say.

It was cumbersome to produce too. In the old days, two 65-mm, 150-lb. film cameras--each shooting the same scene in sync--were used to make a 3-D picture. The gap between the lenses simulates the space between our eyes, adding space perception. But with film, you never knew how the shot would turn out until later.

The birth of high-definition, digital filmmaking changed all that. Cameron and an associate, Vince Pace, developed the 3-D-capable Fusion camera system, which is cheaper, smaller--13 lb. each--and way more versatile than the old film rigs. "Every movie I made, up until Tintin, I always kept one eye closed when I've been framing a shot," Spielberg told me. That's because he wanted to see the movie in 2-D, the way moviegoers would. "On Tintin, I have both of my eyes open."

Read "3-D Movies: Coming Back at You."

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A Beverly Hills company called Real D took the lead on the theater side. It leases out a kind of digital shutter system that sits in front of digital projectors, alternating the two views of each frame 144 times per sec.--fast enough to achieve stereovision. The new system uses polarization, rather than color-coding. Gone are the completely cheesy cardboard glasses, replaced with slightly less cheesy disposable plastic-frame glasses that have gray lenses. "Someday," predicts Katzenberg, "people will buy their own movie glasses, which they'll take to the movies--like people have their own tennis rackets."

Even if you're willing to grant him the glasses, there's still one problem. For digital 3-D to work, the movie theater must first convert from analog to digital--that is, from reels of film to data feeds. Theaters have been slow to do it, citing the expense and security. Disney chairman Dick Cook is credited with breaking the initial logjam with Chicken Little in 2005. About 75 theaters converted to digital to show the film, and a surprising thing happened: 3-D theaters reported three to four times the box-office gross as those that showed the 2-D version. (All 3-D movies can easily be stepped down to 2-D and are typically shown in both forms.) That was the jump start digital 3-D needed. Katzenberg predicts that more than 2,000 theaters will be 3-D-ready by this week. (See the top 10 movie performances of 2008.)

But in this economy, will people spend as much as $15 a ticket for a movie? Katzenberg is optimistic, pointing out that consumers are cutting back on everything but cheap entertainment. "The movies have been the greatest beneficiary of this," he says. "So to offer a new, exciting premium version of a bargain will be a big winner."

The Future of 3-D
Cameron's Avatar, due in December, could be the thing that forces theaters to convert to digital. Spielberg predicts it will be the biggest 3-D live-action film ever. More than a thousand people have worked on it, at a cost in excess of $200 million, and it represents digital filmmaking's bleeding edge. Cameron wrote the treatment for it in 1995 as a way to push his digital-production company to its limits. ("We can't do this," he recalled his crew saying. "We'll die.") He worked for years to build the tools he needed to realize his vision. The movie pioneers two unrelated technologies--e-motion capture, which uses images from tiny cameras rigged to actors' heads to replicate their expressions, and digital 3-D.

Avatar is filmed in the old "Spruce Goose" hangar, the 16,000-sq.-ft. space where Howard Hughes built his wooden airplane. The film is set in the future, and most of the action takes place on a mythical planet, Pandora. The actors work in an empty studio; Pandora's lush jungle-aquatic environment is computer-generated in New Zealand by Jackson's special-effects company, Weta Digital, and added later.

I couldn't tell what was real and what was animated--even knowing that the 9-ft.-tall blue, dappled dude couldn't possibly be real. The scenes were so startling and absorbing that the following morning, I had the peculiar sensation of wanting to return there, as if Pandora were real.

Cameron wasn't surprised. One theory, he says, is that 3-D viewing "is so close to a real experience that it actually triggers memory creation in a way that 2-D viewing doesn't." His own theory is that stereoscopic viewing uses more neurons. That's possible. After watching all that 3-D, I was a bit wiped out. I was also totally entertained.

3D Goes to College - Mar 19, 2009

From SportsVideo.org

3D Goes to College

Posted in: HEADLINES, College Headlines

By [unknown placeholder $article.author$]
Mar 19, 2009 - 9:25:51 AM

By John Rice 

As 3D (stereoscopic) entertainment explores the potentials of cinema, broadcasting, and advertising, the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) at USC is opening new doors to explore, define, and "help accelerate the identification of what it will take to move the 3D experience into the consumer space," says Philip Lelyveld, advisor to ETC.

On March 26, ETC will launch its Consumer 3D Experience Lab on the USC Campus. Intended to provide a showcase of products and services oriented to the consumer 3D market, the lab will also be a place where broadcasters, film studios, and manufacturers can demonstrate and test their offering and plans for 3D. 

"The questions we have to answer are, How deep can the depth of 3D be for a comfortable consumer experience?, How do you cut from something really close to something really far away?, and What are the rules for creating the viewing experience and what types of responses does the equipment have to have in order to reproduce the original intent of what the event is that's being captured?" explains Lelyveld. 

The Consumer 3D Experience Lab breaks down into three distinct areas, or rooms. One offers a home environment for 3D viewing with an 8-ft. screen and consumer 3D projector. The second showcases a variety of consumer 3D products, including the variety of glasses being offered for 3D viewing. 

"It shows that there is a need for some standardization or some convergence," Lelyveld says. "Otherwise, the market won't take off. You can't author for all those things economically." Offering side-by-side comparisons will allow people to "make their own judgments about what they like and what they don't like. We hope this will lead to better understanding of what makes a really good, long-duration 3D viewing experience. We're talking about multiple hours as opposed to five minutes." 

The third area is a market-research lab, where groups of USC students will be shown "some aspect of the 3D experience, and [we'll] do empirical research," says Lelyveld. 

"Sports is one type of content that we definitely need to cover as we move forward," he adds. "It has unique issues. For example, football is very horizontal. Basketball, surprisingly, is vertical." 

He says that different 3D systems and glasses being demonstrated and tested in lab perform at varying levels for different sports. "You see some effects work better on one [system] than on another. That's something we want to smooth out. We don't want that differentiation down the road." 

Founded in 1993, the Entertainment Technology Center is supported by most of the major Hollywood studios, broadcast networks, and manufacturers in the broadcast and consumer-electronics arenas. The ETC has a history of working on developing technologies and playing a role in adoption of those entertainment technologies.

"Its biggest development to date," Lelyveld notes, "has been helping drive the deployment of digital cinema into movie theaters."

He sees the role of the Consumer 3D Experience Lab as "broadening the markets for motion-picture companies and networks — the content industry — as well as creating whole new markets for electronic devices and service devices. Our focus is not just in the home but also personal devices and public spaces, including advertising," he says, adding, "We're still learning what makes a really good 3D experience."

© Copyright 2009 by SportsVideo.org

3-D takes a giant leap into the future - USA TODAY

3-D takes a giant leap into the future By Susan Wloszczyna, USA TODAY Hollywood is looking at the future through tinted plastic glasses. My Bloody Valentine, Coraline and the Jonas Brothers concert film were just warm-up acts. The attack of the 3-D movie revival begins in earnest next Friday when Monsters vs. Aliens, the latest computer-animated funhouse from DreamWorks, is launched into theaters. At least 12 other titles will follow this year, including such milestones as Up, Pixar's first foray in the format; Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, a rare chance to see that disaster-prone Scrat get flattened in 3-D; and Avatar, James Cameron's return to feature filmmaking after a 12-year hiatus that will attempt to do for live-action futuristic thrillers what his Titanic did for sinking ships. If ever a digital-age update on what was once an Ike-era novelty were going to take hold — and persuade more theater operators to invest upward of $100,000 to convert to the technology — it is now, with such already anticipated titles ready to give it a real workout. "What's going to happen in the next few months is that theater owners will ask themselves, 'Do I want to be the guy watching cars drive by to a screen down the road?' " predicts Jim Gianopulos, co-chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment, which is behind both the Ice Age sequel and the Cameron release. "With Monsters vs. Aliens and Ice Age ramping up to Avatar, there will come a tipping point." Studios seem to have at least solved most quality issues. While DreamWorks (aka the House that Shrek Built), has taken longer to join the 3-D revolution than Disney, Warner Bros. and Sony, the wait apparently was worth it, if early reactions to Monsters are any indication. Families who packed a recent screening chuckled their way through the sci-fi shenanigans as a gang of misfit creatures led by Susan, a 49½-foot woman with the vocal spunk of Reese Witherspoon, battles a teeny four-eyed squid man from another planet. But it was the visual effects, such as the galactic blast that caused smoky spirals and fiery rocks to shoot into the audience, that earned the biggest reactions. They ooohed. They aaahed. And at least one youthful voice was heard paying the ultimate compliment: "Cooooool!" Not just an afterthought Until recently, most 3-D fare produced for non-IMAX movie screens was an afterthought, converted from 2-D.Monsters, however, was designed and filmed with added dimension in mind. "What better movie to do in 3-D," says director Conrad Vernon, referring to his sci-fi spoof's allusions to B-movies from the '50s. "It felt like perfect timing." But even though he and fellow director Rob Letterman borrowed from such old-school 3-D scare fare as Creature From the Black Lagoon and House of Wax, they tried to avoid the trap of overdoing the depth-defying tricks. "We didn't want it to be a gimmick," Letterman says. "We wanted to use it as a tool and made decisions based on the medium. A gimmick will run out of steam quickly." The difference, at least to those at the preview, was discernable. "The effects were coming out at you," enthused Alex Lundgren, 9, of Great Falls, Va. "It felt like you were exactly right there. In other movies, it was like they were just popping out. This one was more real to life." David West III, 11, of Sterling, Va., agreed: "This is probably the best 3-D movie I have seen. There was more detail." Bill Pagnella, 63, of Fort Washington, Md., says he and son Joey, 8, would go to the movies more if there were more 3-D offerings. They plan to seeUp, whose trailer is attached to Monsters. "It's exciting that it's coming back into vogue. I like the quality of the 3-D and the sound." Even hard-to-impress teens gave Monsters a thumbs-up. "I see a lot of 3-D movies because my friend works in a theater," say Karl Dobias, 18, of Chantilly, Va. "This one is a lot better. Usually when you go to a 3-D movie, you have to sit in the back or the effects don't work well. We sat right in the front row, and it looked fine." Monsters star Seth Rogen, who lends his boomy voice to blue-hued monster B.O.B., initially was taken aback when told that the movie would be in 3-D. "I'll be honest," says the actor, 26, "I'm one of those people who hear 'new' and '3-D' and think it doesn't make sense. Hasn't it been around since the '60s?" But after boning up on the latest technological advances, he became a believer, especially once he actually saw Monsters. "I thought it was awesome." Such reactions don't exactly surprise Jeffrey Katzenberg, the DreamWorks 'toon titan who spent a good part of last year traveling the world to preach about the wonders of digital 3-D. He likens its potential cinematic impact to the advent of sound or arrival of color in film. "There hasn't been any real innovation in the moviegoing experience in many decades," says the Hollywood honcho whose company's output will be all 3-D from now on. "People want to be excited by something special and unique that happens in movies, something that can't happen anywhere else." All the better to compete with pimped-out home media rooms. Other benefits include cleaner prints and a deterrent to piracy. However, the financial crunch has put a major crimp in the 3-D crusade. Theater conversions to install special projectors and other upgrades have slowed. With fewer outlets than expected, Coraline and Jonas Brothers: The 3-D Concert Experience had to scramble for space when they came out within a few weeks of each other. Of North America's nearly 40,000 screens, about 2,000 will be 3-D capable in time for Monsters— thousands less than Katzenberg predicted last year. That means fewer chances to charge an extra $3 or more a ticket to see the atomic-age-inspired romp in all its extra-dimensional cheesiness — a premium that audiences have been glad to pay in the past for such movies as The Polar Express and Journey to the Center of the Earth. Monstersalso will be available in standard 2-D on multiple screens at about 1,400 locations. Katzenberg thinks that is enough to cover the $15 million or so the process adds to a film's budget as well as make a profit, especially given the recent surge in theater attendance. But he seems less concerned about whether Monsters, budgeted at an estimated $165 million, conquers the box office than he is about 3-D taking over the planet. "Almost every movie would benefit from being 3-D, the way nearly every movie benefits from being in color," he says, though the format has been best served by animation so far. "When James Cameron comes forward with Avatar, it will mark a whole new era of live-action films. When other filmmakers see what he has done, they will want to use it." Katzenberg won't discount serious Revolutionary Road-style dramas from getting the 3-D treatment someday. "It would be fascinating to see what a director like Sam Mendes would do with the technology," he says. Disney is in deep Disney, one of the earliest adopters of next-gen 3-D ever since 2005's computer-animated Chicken Little, has 16 releases coming out in the next 2½ years. Yet despite the volume of product, the studio is being selective, with the focus still on animation. "We look at each movie individually," say Mark Zoradi, head of marketing and distribution. "That filmmaker will decide whether it will enhance the experience." That means not even every Pixar production is guaranteed to be in 3-D. In fact, Disney is literally going back to the drawing board this November with The Princess and the Frog, a throwback to such old-fashioned cartoon musicals as 1991's Beauty and the Beast— which is being transformed into 3-D next year. This summer brings G-Force, the studio's first attempt at live-action 3-D with computer-animated guinea pigs as elite crime-fighters. "It came down to us saying, 'Let's try a Jerry Bruckheimer movie,' " Zoradi says. "It's classic, high-octane adventure with so much CG that it felt like it would benefit." As for the superstar producer behind the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, Bruckheimer is taking a wait-and-see attitude before committing to any more 3-D. That includes redoing older titles for rerelease. "There are not enough screens right now to justify costs yet." But he feels the change is inevitable, especially for action thrillers. "We will see quite a bit of it in the coming years, a big explosion." Overly 'fixated' on technology Not everyone applauds the rush to 3-D. "Animation studios fixate way more on technology than they should," says Ellen Besen, author of the how-to book Animation Unleashed. "There was a big transition in the mid-'90s to computer animation. Everyone thinks that the audience stopped liking 2-D." What really happened? "They forgot to worry about the story." Animation historian Leonard Maltin also is not totally convinced that 3-D is necessarily the answer any more than it was when TV threatened the film industry in the '50s. "If you read the press releases and interviews being given today, they bear an uncanny resemblance to the press releases and interviews from 1953," he says. "Back then, Jack Warner announced every film would be shot in 3-D. Not to be pessimistic, but there have been big claims and expectations before." He does concede that the process now is a far cry from the less-reliable gadgetry of the past. "The technology today is fantastic." Are actors ready for their close-ups if live-action 3-D catches on? Rogen, for one, prefers to hide behind the façade of a character like B.O.B. for now. "Me in 3-D? No audience should be subjected to seeing that. I'm much better in two dimensions." Contributing: Mike Snider

Sports Illustrated - The future of sports in 3-D

Posted: Tuesday March 17, 2009 11:06AM; Updated: Wednesday March 18, 2009 9:00AM Bill Griffith > MEDIA WATCH The future of sports in 3-D Story Highlights This year's NBA All-Star Saturday was shown in 3-D at 85 theaters With the movie industry moving towards 3-D, sports could be next With advances in technology, you soon will be able to watch 3-D on your TV Peek around the bend on the technology highway and you'll catch a glimpse of the future -- in 3-D if you're wearing polarizing glasses. Now that high definition (HD) television has gone mainstream for sports viewing, it's OK to wonder "What's next?'' Sure, HD is great, but the nature of technology is that many people are working hard to make things even better, such as HD in 3-D. Ask some of the 15,000 who watched last month's NBA's All-Star Saturday in 3-D at 85 theaters around the country. Viewers were jumping out of their seats to cheer diminutiveNate Robinson's dunks in New York, Toronto, and Los Angeles, according to the NBA'sSteve Hellmuth, the NBA's executive vice president of operations and technology. So what about the biggest game of all, the Super Bowl? "The Super Bowl is the absolute killer application,'' said Buddy Mayo, CEO of New Jersey-based Cinedigm, the industry leader in delivering 3-D software and content to theaters. A 3-D presentation won't be a first for the NFL, which aired a Chargers-Raiders game to invited guests in three theaters across the country last December. "There were eight cameras used for the broadcast as opposed to 20 to 24 for a regular telecast,'' said NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy. "There were a couple of great shots of the ball coming right at you in a tight spiral. It was so real you wanted to reach up and make the catch.'' One reason is a different approach to using cameras -- leaving a shot on screen and giving the viewer time to digest all the information that's presented instead of making the now-standard quick cuts to other cameras. The NFL has been a leader in expanding the televised sports frontiers from Monday Night Football, to cable coverage, to NFL Sunday Ticket, to leading the adoption of high definition. So is the question will or when do we see the Super Bowl in 3-D in theater settings across the country? Maybe it will be the coming season's Super Bowl XLIV or XLV in 2011, but bet that it's coming. At first, it may be only for VIP parties, mostly because of the limited number of theaters currently equipped to handle live 3-D events -- about 100 today but one that will be growing exponentially. And there are issues. For starters, the NFL discourages mass viewing because it cuts the ratings for its broadcast partners and would need to adjust its policy, something it is willing to do. "3-D would be an opportunity to enhance the viewing experience,'' said the NFL's McCarthy. "There's the question of diluting the audience [ratings] to implement new technology. And you're always asking: 'How soon and how expensive?' One application is instant replay and coaches' challenges. "In 3-D, there's no question about whether the receiver's feet are in bounds,'' said Michael Lewis, CEO of RealD, a Beverly Hills, Calif., company that is the leader in 3-D hardware. There's no question the movie industry is moving towards 3-D but, unlike the sports-led move to HD, this time sports is following with only special (read Really Big) events likely to be shared in the theater environment. Televisions with 3-D chips are available, but even the industry is wondering about home applications while acknowledging that widespread use is at least three to five years away. "People would need a new TV, and I cringe when I say that,'' said Lewis. In theaters now The current big 3-D release is The Jonas Brothers: The 3-D Concert Experience, which opened in theaters on Feb. 27. It's a Disney 3-D release that follows the band's recent concert tour and -- important from a marketing perspective -- introduces a new song. "We put you right up on stage,'' said RealD's Lewis. As for the future, it's not difficult to imagine a band doing a special pre-tour concert to introduce new tour dates and market a new album/DVD. And once one does it successfully, a new market paradigm will be in place. Glasses & technology 3-D is the technology that adds depth perception to a two-dimensional picture by using high-speed HD-3-D cameras to rapidly give our brains alternating images to the left and right eyes, providing the viewer wears special -- usually circular polarizing -- glasses. The technology developed by RealD uses a one-camera technique that takes 144 frames per second, 72 from the perspective of each eye, as opposed to the usual 24 frames per second rate. TV manufacturers are working hard at developing "glasses-free'' sets, but that innovation is farther down the aforementioned technological highway than the evolution we're seeing today. And that product is attractive. Just as the children. Where sports to drive the HD revolution, major movie studios now are using movies and concerts -- and marketing to the youngest generation -- to increase attendance and fill seats. Kids know the difference. Attendance at houses showing 3-D films runs 40 percent -- or more -- higher than at houses where the show is in 2-D (standard definition). Patrick Olearcek, a legal counsel for Mass. Mutual Insurance Company, knows about 3-D because his daughters Caitlin, 8, and Erin, 6, have brought him and his wife, Julie, to Disney 3-D movies, such as Meet The Robinsons, and Bolt. "They love the shows, and they think the glasses are so cool,'' he said. "They see the commercials for the movies on TV and know what 3-D is. They love the feeling of the characters coming out of the screen at you.'' His kids saw the Jonas Brothers movie on opening weekend. "From a parent's perspective, you're not paying concert prices, you don't have to deal with the traffic -- and they get the equivalent of a front-row seat,'' he said. The disposable and recyclable glasses are a cost of doing business; however, manufacturers of high-end eyewear are making plans to market designer 3-D glasses, including clip-ons and maybe even contact lenses. But even the present theater-issue ones are nice. Sam Allis, a columnist for The Boston Globe, recently wrote about taking home the glasses -- as opposed to putting them in the recycling bin -- being his No. 1 memory of the 3-D movie experience. Chicken or the egg? When HD TV came on the scene, the big arguments were: From the consumer: "Why should I buy an HD set when there isn't much HD programming?'' From the broadcast industry: "Why should we invest in HD cameras, production trucks, training, and broadcasts when there aren't many HD sets out there?'' Eventually, a critical mass was achieved, and the technology took off on both sides, pushed largely by sports. In a major agreement, the major movie studios, including Sony, Disney, Fox, Paramount, Universal, and Warner Brothers, have settled on a common 3-D technology -- DCI or digital cinema initiatives. And now, with a 40 major films set for release this year, there's a logjam at the consumer end. Sure, viewers can see the shows in standard def, but there won't be enough 3-D screens for pictures to have extended runs. "We've got about 3,800 screens converted,'' said Cinedigm's Mayo, "and plan to have another 10,000 done in the next three to four years.'' RealD's Lewis figures James Cameron's anticipated blockbuster Avatar -- a futuristic sci-fi thriller that's coming late in the year -- will open in 4,000 3-D theatres. There are even fewer -- about 100 -- that have the higher level of technology to present "live'' 3-D broadcasts of special events -- games, lectures, concerts, fashion shows, premieres or finales of TV series. "The goal is to have at least one in every major market,'' said Mayo. Sports in a 3-D perspective Mayo sees the potential for all sorts of sports -- including boxing, golf, tennis, extreme sports, motor racing as well as the traditional big four US major league sports -- being aired live in 3-D. But the circumstances have to be right. "Sporting events are a one-shot deal,'' said Mayo. "You see the game, and it's over. There's no shelf life. So you have to be sure to have a guaranteed audience and plenty of sponsorship. The box office take alone won't pay the costs.'' Concerts, on the other hand, are a different model. "They can have legs for extending showing and offer marketing opportunities down the road for concert tickets, CDs, DVDs, and merchandise,'' Mayo said. "Anything you think is better in HD is made that much better again in 3-D.'' Like that killer ap, the Super Bowl.

Find this article at:  http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/bill_griffith/03/13/3D

Can You Make a Live-Action 3D Movie on a Budget?

Shooting Dark Country With Silicon Imaging, Red, and Iridas

By Bryant Frazer

May 8, 2008    Source: Film & Video

It's been known for a while now (at least since the 2005 release of Chicken Little) that animated films do especially well in 3D versions. But the success of recent 3D projects like U23D, and especiallyHannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour — which opened to a stunning $31 million weekend on a relative handful of digital 3D screens in the U.S. — has many in Hollywood taking another look at the feasibility of 3D for live action, especially on a tight budget.

This summer's release of Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D will help answer some questions about the business model for live-action 3D, but it's doubtful that anyone has pushed the low-budget envelope quite as far as the crew behind Dark Country, a 3D thriller from Stage 6, a new distribution label within Sony Pictures for low-budget films. With a reported budget of just $7 million, director/actor Thomas Jane, cinematographer Geoff Boyle, and the team at digital-3D specialist Paradise FX had their work cut out for them.

That work included constructing what may be the world's smallest 3D camera rig—small enough to be mounted inside the new MK-V AR camera-stabilization system, a Steadicam-like rig that allows the operator to switch from high-mode operation (with the camera on top of the rig) to low-mode operation (with the camera picking up extreme low-angle shots from the rig's low end) in the same shot. That's where the SI-2K Mini—a 2K optical block about the size of a cigarette pack—came in. 

"When you think of 3D, you think of a camera half the size of a VW bug, and of Alfred Hitchcock literally digging trenches in the studio to film Dial M for Murder," director Thomas Jane tells Film & Video. "In the past, you were very limited by a 3D camera. But in this film, we were extremely mobile. Most filmgoers will probably take it for granted. They won't realize all the new ground that we've broken with this." Dark Country also used a stereo rig with Red cameras, but because it was very heavy and hard to fit into tight spaces, the smaller and lighter SI rig was used for Steadicam-style shots.

Jane calls Dark Country a "film noir psychological thriller," and says it's great subject matter for 3D. As an example, he cites the film's key location — the interior of a baby-blue 1961 Dodge Polera. "When we put the camera in the back seat of the car, you feel like you're in the back seat," he says. "You have the background, which is the landscape out in front of you; the midground, which is the bonnet of the car and the windshield; and the foreground is your subjects, the people and the seats. This enhances the stereoscopic effect. The idea of getting inside people's heads and creating a universe the audience can really feel like they're participating in was the challenge of making Dark Country."

So what is it about a low-budget thriller that demanded all this cutting-edge hardware? Jane doesn't hesitate to describe one shot that made it all worthwhile. "We did a shot where we tracked along with a character, did a 360-degree move around the car as he got into the car, and then the car took off out of the parking lot and onto the highway, disappearing into the mountains," he says. "We ended in a big, wide high shot — we had to build a ramp. Our MK-V operator followed me out of the restaurant, went all the way around the car, then followed the car, ran behind the car as the car exited the parking lot, and then, as we exited on the highway, walked up a 40-foot ramp that we constructed to get this big, high vista. 

"Of course, we shot it all in stereo. It proved to be quite challenging, but it's really effective when you see the final shot. It's great, because you start on a rather close subject, and then as the car takes off we get farther and farther away and end up on this wide, beautiful vista."

Workflow

No matter how great the subject is, 3D isn't easy. With the exception of cinematographer Geoff Boyle and A-camera operator Howard Smith—who wielded the MK-V AR rig—the entire camera department on location was affiliated with Paradise FX, a Van Nuys production company that's been doing 3D work for more than 15 years, and digital 3D for almost nine, according to Jim Hays, digital workflow supervisor. That meant the company had the knowhow to make connections between production and post-production workflows, which is key to making the process work.

To date, Hays says, 3D workflows handled by Paradise FX have largely involved Final Cut Pro and After Effects, partly because those tools are friendly to lower-budget productions. For Dark Country, however, Paradise decided to work with Iridas SpeedGrade—partly because Iridas was compatible with the CineForm RAW codec out by the SI-2K Minis, but also because it had a built-in feature to automatically flip one of the two eyes when stereo footage is dropped on the timeline. (The mirror used in the 3D beam-splitter rig reverses one of the two camera images during acquisition.) "None of the tools that we had before would allow us to do that," Hays says. "That was the biggest help in terms of working with the footage on location in Albuquerque."

Small and light as it was, that's not to say the SI-2K Mini stereo rig was a breeze to work with. For one thing, the first-generation camera-control and recording system was fairly primitive, with separate gigabit Ethernet cables running to two different laptop systems that were mounted on a board that had to be kept near the camera operator. Each computer recorded one of the two stereo views, including Iridas .Look files (metadata for non-destructive color grading), in the CineForm RAW format. (Silicon Imaging has since demonstrated a new version of the control-and-recording system, dubbed SiliconDVR, that will record the footage from both cameras to a single system via gigabit Ethernet.) 

Although SpeedGrade could feed a Samsung DLP screen for 3D playback using active stereo glasses, it was still difficult to organize a timely schedule for viewing dailies on the time-strapped, low-budget production. "It was a very grueling struggle to make Dark Country on budget, and everyone had to do a lot more than would normally be expected of them," explains Hays. "They didn't get a chance to see the 3D dailies until about a week into production, mostly because of time commitments. But once they saw it on the Samsung DLP TV that we took there, the people who hadn't been involved in 3D before got it. It's an intangible benefit."

'Free-Viewing' in 3D

For a dedicated 3D buff like Jane, however, there were ways of checking his work in stereo as he went along. "With the Red cameras, we had a live image in stereo—we had a monitor on the camera so we could put on polarized glasses and see the image, which was really great," he recalls. "But with the SI cameras, we just had the two images on the laptops that were nailed to this goddamned board, and because of our budget we didn't have a monitor that could flip [the images] back and forth in stereo.

"We ended up free-viewing," he says, referring to an age-old tactic for merging a side-by-side stereo image pair by working your eye muscles to overlap two images and create a fused 3D image. "Some people can do it more easily than others. Fortunately, I had some experience, so I could check the stereo in an image if I crossed my eyes. It was really primitive, but it worked."

"We were basically beta-testing these new systems," Jane continues. "Different problems arose through production, all of which we were able to solve, but it slowed us down a little bit. Future productions will benefit from the ground that we broke. The second-generation SI-2K Mini cameras and the MK-V system will be tetherless. The capturing systems will be on board, and hopefully the motors will get smaller. What we want is ease of use. We want to be able to use the system just as quickly and conveniently as we would a 2D rig."

So what is the prognosis for stereo filmmaking on a budget? Iridas CEO Lin Kayser is bullish, encouraged by what he sees in the marketplace. "I think it was last year at IBC, when I walked through the aisles and saw all the 3D playback technology being presented, that it struck me that this is a totally different situation than [the previous big surge in 3D production] 50 years ago," he says. "There are so many technologies converging that allow you to see stereo on the screen that I think it's here to stay. To prove the point, we've got this wonderful little small-budget movie, Dark Country. It shows that the tools have evolved to a point where even if you don't have a big budget, you can work with them."

Hays is a little more cautious. "I think a number of 3D features will be made this year in the $10 to $20 million range," he says. "I'm not sure if it's possible to repeat it on the budget Dark Country was made on. Bob Johnston, one of our executive producers, works really hard with people on a scenario to transition from a 2D budget to a 3D budget with the tools we have. What it takes to create not only a 2D movie—because, obviously, every 3D movie can be a 2D movie—but also the 3D movie as well, with all the potential additional revenue associated with that.

"When people see good live-action movies in 3D in the theater, it's really going to be a turning point. But the material is not out there. Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D, the first 3D digital live-action feature, is coming out in July, and hopefully Dark Country will come out later this year. But 3D so far has been mostly for children. And when adults go and see that they can enjoy a movie in 3D even better than they can a standard 2D movie, that's when you're going to see an additional push in the market."

 

Keane to make history with 3D web broadcast

From Times Online
March 12, 2009
Keane to make history with 3D web broadcast

(Max Bodson)
Keane will make history with their 3D broadcast
Patrick Foster, Media Correspondent
Multi-million selling British band Keane are to enter the history
books by making the first live broadcast over the internet in 3D.

Keane, whose three number one albums have sold nearly ten million
copies worldwide, will perform for 20 minutes on April 2, at Abbey
Road, from the studio where the Beatles made the world's first live
satellite broadcast, in 1967. The event will cost nearly £100,000 to
produce and has been in development for six months.

The band will play four tracks from their latest album, Perfect
Symmetry, which viewers will be able to see in 3D on their monitor
screens by wearing anaglyph glasses, with red and blue frames, which
will be given away with their latest single, Better Than This,
released next week.

The desire to bring 3D technology to the home, considered the Holy
Grail for television manufacturers and film producers, has stepped up
in the past couple of years, with Sky pouring money into research and
development of the format. A number of television manufacturers
already have 3D sets on the market, using new methods that require
polarised glasses, rather than the traditional bi-coloured lenses.

That technology can not yet be used over the internet, as computer
monitors are not able to render the images. But now that broadband
internet has become widespread across UK, observers are keen to gauge
public appetite for 3D web broadcasting.

Adam Tudhope, Keane's manager, said: "It's going to be all about 3D in
the not too distant future. The band felt like they wanted to be doing
something when it's at its early stages, and doing it in a way that no
one has ever done before. It's about exploring every single possible
creative outlet.

"They're approaching it like a live music video. They have a large fan
base all over the world and with stuff like this on the internet they
can be everywhere at once."

Keane are known in the music industry for being at the forefront of
technological innovation, and were the first band to release a single
on a USB memory stick, as opposed to a CD, because of the dominance of
the digital format among young people.

Tom Chaplin, lead singer of the band, said: "We believe that the
tradition of rock'n'roll is to always innovate, to bring new ideas and
concepts into music. We hope that this will become a similarly
powerful new way for music to connect people all over the world."

The performance, which will go live on at 8pm on April 2, will also be
the first live broadcast of music in three dimensions. U2 led the way
in the format, releasing a film last year, U2 3D, that featured
footage from nine of their concerts spliced together into what was the
first live-action film to be shot, produced and screened in digital
3D.

Vicki Betihavas, head of Nineteen Fifteen Production, the company
that will produce the broadcast, said she was working with other major
bands to perform in three dimensions.

She said: "3D seems to have a buzz about it. We thought it would be
really cool to up the stakes and take the technology to the next
level, and Abbey Road was the ideal place because of its heritage with
the Beatles satellite performance. That was groundbreaking for its
time."

Dust Off Your 3D Glasses ...

Dust Off Your 3D Glasses ...

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Your favorite 3-D movies at home, in all 3 dimensions

CABA SMARTBRIEF | 03/03/2009

Recent 3-D movies such as "Coraline" and "Journey to the Center of the Earth" are eye-popping in movie theaters, but what happens when they hit home systems? Some content makers say all-new equipment is needed, which is not what home viewers want to hear. But Dolby engineers have created an encoding system that compresses a 3-D film onto a disc, which enables it to be encoded onto a Blu-ray disc and played back in 3-D. CNET (03/02)