To add to the problem, games consoles have taken the movie experience and made it interactive. How can theatres compete with the chance to role-play as if you were actually there? The Hollywood answer: let’s make the audience feel like they are really there. Let’s make going to the cinema something that can’t be recreated at home. Let’s bring back the event experience of going to the cinema. Let’s bring back 3D!
But we’ve been here before, haven’t we? In the 1950s popular home television knocked cinema for six, so to compete with the small black and white square, the studios reacted by making bigger, wider, more spectacular, more colourful and more expensive movies in an attempt to repackage the ‘cinema experience’. One of the more unusual technical advances in their campaign against armchair viewing was Stereoscopic cinema, otherwise known as 3D. The films were shot using special rigs, such as M L Gunzberg’s Natural Vision system, which combined two movie cameras filming simultaneously. The two separate film prints of slightly different viewing angles were then projected together, superimposed as one image on a silver screen using two interlocked projectors fitted with orthogonal polarising filters. The audience were required to wear plastic Polaroid glasses that restricted the amount of light reaching each eye. The way the brain interprets time delay in the processing of visual information generates an illusion of depth.
The ‘new’ 3D effect was used across a variety of genres, including musicals such as Kiss Me Kate, horror movies such as House of Wax and The Creature from the Black Lagoon plus a whole slate of westerns such as Gun Fury and The Nebraskan. Even Hitchcock experimented with the system with the taut thriller Dial M for Murder, while the Three Stooges got in on the act by making several Stereoscopic shorts. However, the system was a costly one for both studios and theatres, as for each movie two film prints had to be created and projected with often two projectionists working to keep the prints in synchronisation. If the prints did not remain exactly aligned after repair, they could not be run in sync and the picture would become very difficult to view, with much ghosting, accounting for a lot of audience headaches and eye strain. On top of that, the silver projection screen was very directional and caused sideline seating to be unusable with both 3D and regular films.
Against competition from other technical advances that did not require glasses, such as Cinemascope and Cinerama, and with audiences tiring of the ‘uncomfortable’ viewing novelty, Stereoscopic cinema was abandoned after only a few brief years. But that wasn’t the end of the story, as with each new decade 3D cinema has returned with new formats and new processes.
Space-Vision 3D
During the 1960s the two-projector set-up was replaced with Space-Vision 3D, where two images were printed on top of one another in a single academy ratio frame and needed only a single projector fitted with a special Polaroid lens to deliver Widescreen Stereoscopic cinema. The 1970s saw the development of Stereovision, a different single-strip format which printed two images squeezed side-by-side and used an anamorphic lens to widen the pictures through Polaroid filters. With the rapid adoption of the VCR in the 1980s came a tsunami of 3D titles such as Jaws 3, Friday the 13th Part 3: 3D, Amityville Horror 3D (can you see a theme developing here?), Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone and the animated feature Starchaser: The Legend of Orin; all screened using the Anaglyphic 3D process and viewed using cheap cardboard two-colour Anaglyph glasses with blue and red lenses. This method uses two captured images printed together in a single frame with the coloured filters moderating the light reaching each eye so that the eye covered by the red filter will see only the blue parts of the image while the eye covered by the blue filter will see only the red parts of the image. The brain blends these images together, interpreting the difference as distance. As with all other revivals of the 3D system, it was the low budget genre movies that dominated the subject matter. Event movies were for teens, so were the genre movies, and it was this market that was staying at home to watch pre-certificate video nasties.
Enter Spy Kids
Despite their familiarity to modern viewers, the number of Anaglyphic Stereoscopic films is extremely low. Although the technology has existed since the 1950s, it has mainly been used for comic books and still images. The big drawback with Anaglyphic movies is their inability to represent colour accurately. The 10-minute 3D segment from the 1991 horror movie Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare is marred by the problems caused by the main character’s red and green banded sweater. But just like Freddy Krueger, 3D refuses to stay dead and when modern filmmaker Robert Rodriguez wanted to recreate his childhood experience of screaming at objects coming out of the screen for Spy Kids 3D: Game Over (2003), he managed to avoid the same problems by cleverly limiting the colour palette to gun metal grey with minimal use of primary colours, thereby reducing the colour flicker caused by the retinal rivalry that bright red and green induces in Anaglyph.
Now major studios are once again beginning to take the format seriously. Spy Kids 3D was commercially very successful in theatres, although the DVD did not fare well on rental or in retail because of suppliers’ reluctance to deal with paper glasses.
The 3D version of last year’s performance capture animation feature The Polar Express from Warner Bros grossed more than $45 million at IMAX theatres. IMAX has been screening 3D documentaries and short films since the 1980s using the same polarisation system today as cinemas did in the 1950s, but with two projectors mounted on top of each other to accommodate the large format 70mm film running sideways. When The Polar Express was released November 2004 in 2D at 3,550 theatres in the US and only 62 IMAX locations, the film broke the one-day box office record for an IMAX film, earning 14 times as much per screen as the 2D version, with the teen market completely bypassing the 2D version in favour of the 3D IMAX experience instead. The film was the first 3D IMAX 90-minute feature and it generated an intense interest in Stereoscopic cinema and the 3D presentation of animated films.
A major media profiling at Showest in Las Vegas on 17 March 2005 brought together a band of some of the most successful Hollywood filmmakers, all pledging their support for the 3D format. As Texas Instruments’ DLP Cinema unveiled its prototype for 3D cinema projection, George Lucas, James Cameron, Robert Rodriguez, Robert Zemekis, Peter Jackson (via video testimonial) and director of Grease Randall Kleiser were all on hand to announce their own Stereoscopic projects. The size and scope of the projects has got film fans watering at the mouth. George Lucas plans to release all six Star Wars movies in 3D, one per year, beginning summer 2007 with the 30th anniversary edition of Star Wars: A New Hope. Meanwhile James Cameron, already no stranger to the format, announced his much-anticipated return to feature filmmaking – his first since 1998’s Titanic – with a 3D live-action/CG sci-fi film entitled Battle Angel, based on the manga by Yukito Kishiro; expect a summer 2007 release. With such big guns blazing and the prospect of seeing other classic films such as Top Gun, Grease and even Casablanca re-released, it’s no wonder everyone is taking 3D seriously again.
Dimensionalized 3D
The films showcased at Showest represented the first public display of the classically 1950s retro-sounding Dimensionalized 3D Feature Motion Pictures from Real-D. But what does this mean for theatres? And do we still have to wear glasses? Well the Real-D system is designed to be projected digitally using a single projector with a dual-stream digital server onto a silver matte screen. The single digital projector alternates images clockwise and counterclockwise at 144 frames per second and the audience wear ‘passive’ Polaroid glasses (NuVision 60GX Stereoscopic Wireless Glasses made by NuVision Technologies LLC of Beaverton, Oregon) similar to those worn at IMAX 3D screenings, which diffuse each circular polarization for one of the eyes. Like the original polarization system, the time delay is interpreted by the brain as depth. The use of circular polarization improves on the older technique of linear polarization in that there is no ghosting or leakage. Of course, running digitally eradicates the problem of loss of sync due to print wear or damage. It also heavily reduces distribution costs, rather than adding to them as in the 1950s, as digital files can be reproduced much more cheaply and are far easier to distribute than film prints.
The Real-D system can be added like an upgrade to an existing digital projection system with a dual-stream server. Theatre chains can pay as much as $200,000 for a five-year licence for the special screen, software and digital projector that can also show regular movies. When not in use for 3D, the system can show conventional digital cinema or live presentations such as sports and music concerts.
An alternative to the polarization system makes use of Alternate Frame Sequencing (AFS), using ‘active’ LCD glasses with shutters that open and close alternatively over each eye at speed, delivering a different image to each eye. The advantage of this system is that it uses a standard white matte screen. The disadvantage of course is that, unlike polarised 3D, the AFS system can be reproduced at home quite easily, which would destroy cinema’s new edge over the home market.
What we’re likely to see in the immediate future is a wave of polarised 3D releases that the studios will consider as reasonably safe bets. Top of that list will be The Polar Express band wagon, as already extremely popular CG animated family movies are given a simultaneous 2D and 3D release; both at converted theatres and at IMAX for some. The traditional Disney hand-drawn approach to animation has proved a reliable failure at the box office in recent years, thanks in part to the popularity of Pixar, and so Disney has now abandoned hand-drawn animation altogether. Chicken Little is the studio’s first fully CG animated feature. Released in the US in a 3D version across 82 theatres using the Real-D system, it earned nearly three times the gross of its much wider 2D release. Other animated movies slated for a 2D/3D release in the US for 2006 include the Robert Zemekis and Steven Spielberg co-production Monster House, which like The Polar Express will be shot using Sony Pictures Imagework’s performance capture technology; The Ant Bully and Happy Feet from Warners (IMAX 3D), while Disney plan a December release for Meet the Robinsons, which will be produced with 3D in mind from the outset. Robert Zemekis is also behind Dreamworks’ Beowulf due in 2007.
The other safe bet is to re-release already successful cult status features and movie franchises with massive fanbases. At Showest a whole raft of popular movies were trundled out and specific eye catching scenes given the 3D treatment, including the speeder chase from Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones, the whole first reel of Star Wars: A New Hope, plus John Travolta singing Greased Lightning from the musical Grease, which celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2008. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the prospective income 3D re-releases of similar big movies would mean for box office: let’s consider the financial return on films such as The Lord of the Rings trilogy or the Indiana Jones franchise, or even The Rocky Horror Show. Now bring into the equation the cost of converting a two-hour film to 3D, which is currently around the $7 million mark. What studio couldn’t see the potential for profit?
The company handling the conversion process is In-Three, Inc of Agoura Hills, California, hand-picked and recommended by none other than the George Lucas. While a number of 3D digital conversion demos have been made to ILM over the past 20 years, In-Three was the first to meet Lucas’s standards. Its video post experience includes James Cameron’s 3D capture documentary Ghosts of the Abyss.
In the battle with home entertainment, Hollywood needed an edge. Will 3D provide the goods or fall flat as just another gimmick? Will cinema audiences accept wearing glasses to see a film in the long term? Will there ever be a 3D system that doesn’t require glasses? And what happens if consumer electronics companies begin to develop 3D for the home market? While we don’t have the answers to all these questions just yet, it’s likely that the resurface of 3D will achieve several things. A combination of the 3D event with the right kind of popular movie re-releases and animated family features will get people back into theatres to watch films for at least the short term. It will also revitalise the IMAX 3D experience while regular cinemas rush to catch up. There is no doubt that a huge amount of theatres will also finally adopt digital projection despite the hefty price tag.
When summer sci-fi blockbuster Battle Angel is released to a Cameron-starved public in 3D ahead of the 2D release, audiences are likely to be queuing round the block, especially given the huge publicity campaign that is bound to be attached to the release. The question is: as a theatre chain are you going to miss out on that initial rush or wait to pick up the 2D stragglers? Do you want to miss out on the opportunity to charge your audience to see all the Star Wars features (yet again)? Well, of course the answer is no. Such a rally of big 3D blockbusters should boost box office enough to pay for the digital conversions, particularly as prices begin to fall, and when the dust settles and maybe 3D is gone for another decade, we’ll be at a new age of digital projection in theatres instead of film. We’re still somewhat short of Aldous Huxley’s ‘feelies’ with their ability to transfer physical and emotional sensation to the audience (at least in the direct sense), but only six years into the new century and the US film industry is looking to take us one step closer to the Brave New World of futuristic cinema.
www.nuvision3d.com
www.reald.com
www.in-three.com
Part two
A fusion of ideas
David Valentine continues his investigation into the world of 3D acquisition by looking at the cutting-edge technological innovations devised by James Cameron and Vince Pace.
The current whirlwind of activity and promotional buzz surrounding the world of stereoscopic 3D, with all its desires to revitalise cinema, push theatrical digital conversions and make good old-fashioned money is nothing new to two particularly forward-thinking filmmakers. While studios and distributors are looking at ways of converting classic movies into certified money-spinners and animators are adopting the 3D conversion process into their projects at an alarming pace, Hollywood director James Cameron and accomplished cinematographer and camera engineer Vince Pace have been at the vanguard of 3D acquisition for over four years. The two award-winning filmmakers have been pushing the boundaries of camera technology since working together in the very extreme deep sea locations required for The Abyss (1989).
After diving to the wreck of the Titanic for James Cameron’s hugely successful and top-grossing feature, the two men decided to re-visit the famous deep sea grave for a 3D IMAX documentary entitled Ghosts of the Abyss. James Cameron had already filmed the $60million 3D ride Terminator 2: Battle Beyond Time for the Universal Studios theme park in Orlando, Florida back in 1996, but his experience of shooting with bulky 35mm film camera rigs at night had quite clearly demonstrated the limitations of the medium. What they needed underwater was a system that was light, small, very mobile and capable of shooting in very low level light. They also needed a system that would function for lengthy periods of time without the need to reload film.
Born out of rough sketches on napkins at informal meetings, the technologically avant garde duo put together the Reality Camera System (RCS-1). As Vince Pace explains: “There were a lot of ideas that, between Jim and I, ended up sketched out on a napkin. I think the most significant design was really attributed to some of the optics we dealt with for deep water. Almost everything you design with Jim Cameron is not necessarily a formal conversation; it’s usually a casual conversation. At one point we had some design challenges with the optical interface for the deep water housing. The lens sits behind a 3.5in acrylic port which changes the optical path dramatically. Jim decided that we really needed to research this situation and investigate any solutions. I went back and came up with five. Jim had ten. It was amazing to see that one of his sketches pretty much overlaid what I was trying to do almost exactly, and that was the ultimate and eventual design that we ended up with.”
Abandoning the idea of shooting on film, they approached Sony to develop the RCS-1 using HD camera technology. The adaptation of the Sony HDC-F950, which has been used to film a number of successful features, including Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City, required a major overhaul of the camera structure, but the two designers knew they were heading in the right direction when they viewed the impressive quality of 3D images delivered by the 10-bit 4:4:4 capture (to HDCAM SR). The opportunity HD provides for immediate creative adjustment and response is another advantage over film.
“Jim recognised early on that instead of making it a mathematics challenge it was a creative challenge – that was the gift of HD for 3D,” says Vince. “You can see the results instantaneously and that is certainly what he embraced more than I think anybody else out there. What better than to look at it on the screen at the time it’s happening and creatively interpret that image regardless of what the mathematics say.”
Getting two HD cameras working side by side in stereo to capture two slightly different independent images simultaneously meant a separation of the camera optics from the camera chassis and the rest of the engineering. This allows the two slightly smaller Fujinon lenses to be brought extremely close together, making the RCS-1 the first large format camera system capable of placing the focal planes in exactly the same location as the human eyes. To further the camera system’s ability to mimic human vision, an active convergence system allows the lenses to cross and uncross, much as our eyes do when tracking objects moving closer or farther away. The convergence can be driven independently or slaved to focus, iris and zoom controls.
“The processor is still the Sony HDC-F950 and we’re also using the specialised Sony optical block referred to as the J-Cam, which Sony built for us to allow two-and-three-quarter inch interocular – basically a 69mm interocular distance (our beginning parallel distance). Almost all of the optical blocks from a T-Cam (telescope) configuration are much wider than that.”
It took two years of developing not only the Reality Camera System but also the underwater Remote Operational Vehicles (ROVs) to be able to shoot Ghosts of the Abyss for a 2003 release. The 3D documentary took $1.4 million in its opening weekend in the US and has earned a total of £17 million to date. A second deep sea documentary for IMAX 3D, Aliens of the Deep (2005), proved less successful, but is still continuing to pull in audiences both in the UK and in America.
However, all new technologies are not final designs but works in process. With two new feature films in pre-production for theatrical release in Polarized 3D (the much-heralded sci-fi blockbuster Battle Angel and the more shrouded Project 880), James Cameron and Vince Pace are upgrading their camera system once again.
“Jim is a very creative thinker, very much outside the box,” explains Vince, “and I think we make a good combination because we don’t think of what has been done before as the final design – we just think of that as the beginning. We had a complete design review about two years ago after completion of Aliens of the Deep in order to implement design changes for feature requirements. Basically, we took everything that we had learnt over three years of shooting and put it into a new design.”
The Fusion system
The new design is called Fusion. Building upon the functionality of the original RCS-1, the Fusion system has been improved in three main areas. “We wanted to reduce the amount of cable from engineering but we did not want to give up any signal integrity or control over that signal, so we turned to Telecast to design a fibre optic bridge for us. Were we using multi-core cable, a typical RCS rig would have about 65-70 pin connections with several wires going back and forth from engineering to the camera system, but on the Fusion we now have a single fibre optic link, so we’ve gone from cables the size of your wrist to cables the size of a pencil.
The other area we addressed on was reactionary time, because the depth of field of convergence was so much narrower than the depth of field of focus that we had to concentrate on a quicker response – so that convergence could react almost immediately, much like what your eyes do. We implemented a quicker motion control system for that. It is a nine-channel motion controller and inherently you have a lot of mechanics, motors and electronics all coming together, and so we concentrated on the quietness of the motion controller for synced sound during acquisition. And that’s the big three major differences between the Fusion System and the Reality Camera.”
Another upgrade from the RCS is the ability for interocular control. Without the interocular control mechanism the Fusion camera system weighs just 32lbs (14.4kg): “Increasing the interocular control adds about 3lbs (1.35kg) to the system so we can adjust not only convergence on the subject, we can adjust interocular as well. If I was doing a two camera shoot you would notice that, depending on the proximity to the subject, one camera could be more aggressive in the 3D or flatter in the 3D, again depending on how close they were to the subject and how much they were zooming in or using wide angle. So the interocular control allows me to cut from one camera to the other and match that 3D effect perfectly. In other words, I could have a two-and-three-quarter interocular on A camera and be eight feet from the subject and be shooting a four inch interocular and be 18-20 feet from the subject with my B camera; and when you cut them together the 3D would look perfectly similar between the two.”
Shooting miniatures
But what happens if you need to be much closer to the subject and require an interocular distance of less than 69mm? How do you shoot miniatures or attempt macro photography? The only way to bring the two lenses closer together is to use mirrors, and so the RCS-1 was developed in another direction and this gave birth to the Beam Splitter Unit.
“A Beam Splitter takes the two images and reflects them through a mirror,” explains Vince. “One camera is shooting through a 50/50 mirror with half of its image being reflected down and the other camera is on top at 90 degrees to the mirror and is shooting the reflected image. So at the end of the day you end up with two 50/50 images and you lose about a stop of light. In this configuration you are no longer restricted by the difficult constraint of the camera in interocular. So if I want to do a one inch interocular shot, the only way to do that is through a Beam Splitter. Normally these Beam Splitters are rather large, but we have what we consider the smallest Beam Splitter at 42lbs (18.9kg) – we’re actually building even smaller ones for hand-held use.”
Back at Vince’s headquarters, Pace Technologies, the current Cameron/Pace inventory consists of five RCS units, two RCS Beam Splitter units, one RCS underwater and seven Fusion systems. Other filmmakers are being encouraged to use the new technology. One such early adopter was Robert Rodriguez, who used the RCS units and RCS Beam Splitter units to shoot both Spy Kids 3D: Game Over and The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl for theatrical release in Anaglyph 3D.
As cinematographer, Vince Pace shot the state-of-the-art Las Vegas Star Trek attraction Borg Invasion 4D “I think what we’re really focusing on is generating content, and that necessitates us building the equipment,” explains Vince. “So our real driving factor is to generate good 3D content both as a company and personally, with Jim Cameron and other innovating filmmakers. We’ve done some sports shooting with long lenses from Fujinon and wider interocular, and some of those results have been just spectacular. So that’s an application that we hope will start to take hold, whether it’s in the sports bars or for theatrical release, also there are the natural history subjects that I want to continue promoting.”
It remains to be seen whether 3D will be just another fad aimed at getting people back into cinemas or used to push through theatrical digital conversions. Vince Pace doesn’t see it that way. For him 3D represents the future of entertainment. “I think it’s a shame that we call it 3D because what we’re really trying to do is mimic human vision and a lot of people think of 3D as a gimmick, but I think to be able to see a movie as if you were there and to make that form of entertainment is really what I would like to accomplish at the end of the day. If we could come up with another name for it other then everyone’s preconceived expectations of 3D, that would be great.”
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David ValentineDavid Valentine is a freelance writer and filmmaker currently working with arts organisations and education providers to support community filmmaking projects for young people. He is also a proponent of Free Media. |