THE CONVERSATION: FUTURE OF 3-D CINEMA
Oct 19 | Author: Roger Erik Tinch
Photos courtesy of ChristopherA
In the quaint Pacific Film Archive Theater the opening of The Conversation started off with a bang. An eye-popping three-dimensional bang nonetheless. John Batter, Co-President of Production at DreamWorks Animation, introduced the packed audience to the future of 3-D filmmaking and watching. First we were privy to a never-before-seen R&D experiment from KUNG FU PANDA. The sequence was taken from the traditional 2-D version of the film and reconstituted to a 3-D experience. 70% of the scenes had to be re-storyboarded and re-cut to work to it’s maximum potential in the three-dimensional realm. We donned our Dolby 3-D glasses and watched as the film’s villain Tai Lung broke out from his chains and made an escape while all sorts of 3-D elements and camera movements pushed the sequence to a much more dynamically involved experience.
After the lights went back up there were two flat panel plasma screens hooked up to a blu-ray player that played the same sequence. It was off-the-shelf, straight-out-of-the-box equipment and by just switching over to the provided REALD glasses we got the same immersive 3-D effect just seen on the big screen. The blu-ray material was authored in 3-D and with the simple addition of glasses it was shocking to see how easily the effect translated to readily available devices. John wasn’t quite done yet and previewed a short never-before-seen sequence from next summer’s MONSTERS VS. ALIENS that clearly proved DreamWorks Animation’s grasp of this newly dimensional medium.
Scott Kirsner sat down with John after the demonstrations to take part in a conversation regarding what we had just seen and what to expect in the future. Here are a few notes:
- Without great story, new tools mean nothing
- The belief at DWA after seeing the success of SHREK was that traditional animation was dead
- The first SHREK took a total of 5 million hours to render, while SHREK THE THIRD took 20 million hours to render
- Samsung has already started to build 3-D capabilities into their TVs that can be switched on once the industry is ready
- Since ANTZ, DWA has been interested in this new technology
- They’ve done studies to know when to give the audience’s eyes a rest within a 3-D film so there is no eye strain
- Audiences do not like things being poked into their face
- Every film that DWA makes from now on will be “authored in 3-D”, meaning from conception to execution the 3-D tools will be an integral part of the workflow
- U23D motivated the DWA crew that the time was now
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