Digital Nation at Movie City News
Movie City News web article, March 2005
By Gary Dretzka

LAS VEGAS -- Slightly more than 52 years after Bwana Devil introduced 3-D to the masses, the stereoscopic process remains the Rodney Dangerfield of entertainment technologies. Not only does it “get no respect” from critics and easily embarrassed movie-goers, but, like the notoriously unkempt comedian, 3-D has been in need of a makeover for most of its adult life.

Still is.

Even the streamlined “active” LCD goggles, worn by several of the world’s most successful filmmakers Thursday at a ShoWest press conference, weren’t nearly cool enough to diffuse giggles from the audience. They’re geeky … put lipstick and eyeliner on a frog and what you’re left with is merely a slightly more attractive frog. Still, distributors of new 3-D titles might consider asking the Queer Eye fashionistas to suggest a more attractive choice of frames.

Texas Instruments‘ DLP Cinema division assembled George Lucas, James Cameron, Robert Zemeckis, Randal Kleiser and Robert Rodriguez at the Paris Las Vegas last week to introduce In-Three Inc.’s impressive new Dimensionalized™ 3-D process to exhibitors and journalists. Despite the fact that high-profile testimonials at ShoWest are about as rare as one-sheets at a film festival, this all-star panel was willing to back up its praise with concrete evidence.

In-Three’s product reel -- which included clips from popular movies that were converted from 2-D to 3-D -- was nothing short of a spectacular. That the images were being thrown onto the 48-foot-wide Theatre des Arts screen from a single currently available digital projector, fed by a dual-stream digital server, probably added to the appeal for those exhibitors deep-pocketed enough to afford such luxuries. (Translated: no need for a special dual-projector set-up for 3-D, or venue dedicated solely to IMAX and other large-format presentations.)

Lucas has tried to rally support for digital cinema at so many ShoWests that he now refers to himself as the “digital penny that keeps showing up every other year," like it or not. His enthusiasm for 3-D, while hardly out of character, was far less anticipated.

Thursday, Lucas elaborated on his plans for re-mastering the entirety of the Star Wars saga into 3-D. He hopes to have the first edition ready for re-release on the 30th anniversary of the original Star Wars (a.k.a., Episode IV: A New Hope), in 2007, and he would follow it up with yearly renewals of the franchise.

Despite a well-established reputation for selling popcorn, exhibitors haven’t always greeted Lucas’ pronouncements with open arms … let alone, wallets. Three years ago, prior to the launch of Attack of the Clones, Lucas had warned exhibitors that they risked missing out on the potential blockbuster if they didn’t install digital equipment in their venues. As he acknowledged at ShoWest, the industry wasn’t ready -- or able -- to commit to 1,000 digital venues back then, and probably still isn’t.

Distributors and exhibitors seem no closer to a cost-sharing agreement now, than when Attack of the Clones opened in 2002 on a few dozen digital screens. Today, only a couple of hundred more digitally enhanced auditoriums are in operation around the world, and industry-wide standards for projectors, servers and security safeguards remain elusive. Price estimates for digital conversion have dipped below the $100,000-per-screen price tag, but not by much.

Meanwhile, at the consumer level, the technology keeps getting better, more portable and affordable.

Unburdened by the issues that most trouble exhibitors, home-theater enthusiasts are adopting the new technology at a much swifter rate than anyone could have expected only a few Christmases ago. Two months ago, at the International Consumer Electronics Show, several manufacturers introduced lightweight digital projectors -- some using Texas Instruments’ DLP chip technology -- at prices ranging from around $800 to $5,000. Many industry observers now believe that consumers, accustomed to the sparkling clean images delivered by their DVD players, hi-def monitors and PCs, will pressure distributors and exhibitors to settle their differences, before the economic cat is completely out of the bag.

The creative community, meanwhile, already is on board. Producers of television, movie and video-game content are producing digitally enhanced content as if the revolution already was over and won.

Even so, in most cases, studios still are forced to re-convert material that’s been shot, edited and otherwise manipulated digitally to film, so it can be distributed to theaters. The process is needlessly expensive, cumbersome and counter-productive. If a Star Wars is shot and edited digitally, audiences will be paying the same good money to see a lesser product in a traditional film-only venue.

Putting their reservations aside, several thousand ShoWest attendees flooded three separate screenings of the 3-D products to hear Lucas and Cameron once again preach the digital gospel. Spreading the icing on what already was a pretty rich cake were Zemeckis, Rodriguez, Kleiser and, via tape, Peter Jackson.

The ritual began at the entrance to theater, where two different styles of lightweight and wireless active LCD 3-D glasses were handed out to attendees. Gone were the cheese-ball cardboard and plastic frames, and red and blue lenses. The cheapo glasses might have worked, as well, but not on matte-white screen on which the images would be shown.

Most of the people in the audience had already experienced 3-D -- indeed, some were old enough to have seen or even booked Bwana Devil -- in one form or another, and waited in line merely to get a sneak peek of Lucas and Cameron’s new work. For all it mattered to them, the clips could have been in 2-D, 3-D or 5-D.

Instead of sneak preview of the all-digital-all-the-time Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, however, Lucas introduced newly "dimensionalized™" clips from In-Three of the first Star Wars and Attack of the Clones. Scenes that originally had been rendered in 2-D were now being shown in 3-D, and they looked great.

"It's really a beautiful system, and some of this test footage is shockingly good,” Lucas explained. “One of the reasons I'm promoting it today is I'm extremely anxious to reissue that old group of films I did so long ago in a galaxy far away. You can see how people would want to go see it, again.

“It means we can repurpose a lot of old movies, and at the same time it really gives a whole new dimension to the movies we're making now. A lot of ideas have come across my desk over the past 30 years, but this is the first one that’s really worked.”
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Addressing the audience from New Zealand, where he’s working on King Kong, Jackson called the In-Three process, “one the most exciting developments in cinema in a long, long time. It's not just the use of digital projection, which we all know is on the horizon, but that this particular technology can be used to create three-dimensional movies that go far beyond the quality and the spectacle of anything we've ever seen before.

“Forget the old days of wearing the red and blue glasses and the eyestrain. All of that is behind us now. These new active glasses that you're wearing and seeing 3-D with are a breakthrough in technology."

Cameron, too, was effusive in praise for 3-D, which he employed in his return-to-the-Titanic documentary, Ghosts of the Abyss, for IMAX and specially equipped 35mm venues. He is in pre-production on the 3-D film, Battle Angel, which is set for a 2007 release.

"I'm a man on a mission, when it comes to 3-D," Cameron enthused. "I will be making all of my films in 3-D in the future. We need exhibition to come in to own a big chunk of the market."

He refused to pick a favorite between the IMAX and In-Three’s Dimensionalization® process, visually. He did note that part of the beauty of In-Three, though, comes in its ability to work in existing 35mm houses equipped with a single digital-cinema projector and QuVis dual-stream server. (At ShoWest, the 3-D images were projected through Christie’s 2K CP2000, equipped with a DLP Cinema chip.)

Besides scenes from Star Wars and Ghosts of the Abyss, the audiences sampled 3-D sequences from Top Gun, The Adventures of Shark Boy & Lava Girl in 3-D, Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over, The Lord of the Rings and The Polar Express. Each of the choices was ideally suited to the re-conversion process, with images and action literally erupting from the screen.

In his introduction, Cameron reminded theater owners that The Polar Express -- which nearly tanked in its opening weekends -- was resuscitated at the box office by revenues generated in IMAX venues, where it was shown in 3-D. Nearly 45 percent of the CG-produced film’s revenues, he pointed out, were generated in 2 percent of theaters at which it was shown.

In a Q&A with reporters, Zemeckis said that teen audiences largely avoided The Polar Express in its 35mm release, thinking it was “too soft and just for kids.” In 3-D IMAX, the film became a far more exciting proposition, drawing from a “four quadrant” audience.

Rodriguez said that the success of Spy Kids 3-D prompted Disney to ask for more family-oriented films in the stereoscopic format.

Lucas estimated the cost of the In-Three conversion process, for one of the traditionally produced Star Wars titles, was below $5 million. Movies already shot and edited digitally could be converted for much less.

All of the directors agreed that exhibitors likely would face their greatest competition in the future from owners of sophisticated and affordable home-theater systems. Portable digital projectors can throw images on nearly any surface -- including glass and water -- and at sizes ranging from compact to the broad side of a barn. Video gaming is also expected to provide an attractive revenue stream for backers of true 3-D.

Because of this, exhibitors were urged to embrace entertainment technologies that couldn’t be replicated at home by amateurs. These include 3-D and IMAX properties, as well as dynamic computer-generated special effects.

None of the panelists thought, however, that the theater experience would ever lose its appeal to young adults, teens and kids accustomed to sampling both theatrical and DVD versions of the same movie. Cutting-edge action-adventures and great period romances, too, they felt, would continue to attract multi-generational crowds to theaters.

“People still go to the opera and ballet … they didn‘t go away,” Lucas reminded. “People in Green Bay will sit in the freezing cold to see the Packers, even though the game’s on television. It’s that social experience -- going through the same thing, together -- that sells out the stadium.”

There’s an idea: turn down the thermostats at the mega-plex, then offer customers parkas and flasks filled with ginger brandy … just like they do in Wisconsin. Throw a tail-gate party in the parking lot, even. Unfortunately, that won’t help boost box-office much, if the freshest thing being served inside the theater is newly popped kernels of corn.