Entries Tagged 'Digital Cinema' ↓

Variety is reporting that a U2 concert has been shot in 3D and that the movie could be released this fall. The movie called “U2 3D” will be shown using the Real D technology that is currently installed in 700 3-D-capable digital theaters.

In the meantime, Disney’s animated feature Meet the Robinsons will be released in 3D on March 30th.

Looking for a reason to give up the comfort of your front projection screen home theater to see a movie at the Cineplex? Well the release of Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas in 3D may be your excuse.

The 3D translation uses the same process as used in the Chicken Little 3D movie. The special digital projectors and screen technology was only in 85 theaters for Chicken Little but the number of theaters for the 3-D Nightmare Before Christmas has been expanded to nearly 200 for this release.

As many of us realize that the movie-going experience is no longer worth the hassle when home theater technology is often better than the Cineplex, it takes something special like 3D Digital Cinema to lure us back to the public movie theater.

Here is an interesting interview with Oscar-nominated producer Don Hahn who oversaw the 3D conversion process.

Nightmare Before Christmas 3D opens October 20, 2006

James Cameron, most famous for directing the blockbuster movie Titanic, is another visionary who sees 3D cinema as the catalyst to get viewers back into seats at the cineplex. He is considering a re-release of Titanic in 3D.

Cameron is no stranger to 3D digital cinema. He filmed an IMAX movie in 3D several years ago that I happened to see. He is joined by such big name directors as Peter Jackson, Robert Zemeckis and George Lucas who see three dimensional movies as the next frontier in movie making. Even Steven Spielberg has shown an intention to bring movies out of the flat screen.

I personally believe that the Cineplex is in a losing battle against Home Theater, DVDs, Internet downloads and other alternate modes of movie entertainment. Whether deserved or not, I think that 3D movies will always be perceived as a tacky gimmick that will never be accepted by the mainstream movie goer.

The movie theater business has been suffering as of late in part because of competition from home theater entertainment. Sales at theater chains are down nine per cent from last year.

One industry idea for getting people to leave the comfort of their high-def home theaters to fill the empty seats at the cineplex is to offer live sporting events in 3D.

Will I be enticed away from my La-Z-Boy and beer-stocked fridge by the prospect of squeezing into a stinky theater with a bunch of belching, 3D glasses wearing men who all rush to compete for the bathroom at commercial breaks? I don’t think so.

Is this the weekend that will change the future of cinema?

Disney will release a Digital 3-D version of “Chicken Little” on November 4. The special version of this film will be shown on 84 digital 3-D projection systems that have been installed in theaters in 25 cities especially for this movie. The presentation requires new, silver oxide coated screens and special digital projectors to show it. In addition, theater owners had to pay as much as $200,000 to license the technology from Dolby Laboratories and a company called RealD.

The RealD system, originally developed for NASA, displays images at 144 frames per second as opposed to the 24 frames per second used for regular films. The digital 3D projector alternates the left and right eye images which, in conjunction with special polarized glasses, give the viewer the perception of depth.

George Lucas’s Industrial Light and Magic converted the computer animated 2-D film to 3-D at a cost of $7 million above the original production cost of the picture.

Some say that 3-D films will resurrect the fortunes of chain theaters which have seen declining attendance in recent years. Disney has so much riding on this new, unproven technology that they have assigned a digital cinema engineer to each theater for this weekend’s debut of Chicken Little 3D. They have also assembled a war room on the Disney lot that has been dubed “the chicken coop.”

Several more 3-D movies are in the works. “Monster House” is due next year, and “Beowulf,” is expected in 2007.

A complete list of RealD equiped theaters can be found here.

A children’s movie currently in production in Belgium is being shot digitally and recorded direct to hard disk. This marks the latest advancement of the trend to produce movies with digital cameras rather than 35mm film. Other movies, most notably, Star Wars Episode III, and Sin City have been shot digitally but the data was recorded on digital videotape which required compression of the bit stream which compromised image quality.

S.two, a Nevada based company developed the Digital Field Recorder (DFR) which is about the size of a small suitcase. The DFR was previously used to record a Heineken beer commercial with Brad Pitt.

“Le Poulain,” is the second movie to use the S.two Digital Field Recorder. “Silence Becomes You,” which stars Alicia Silverstone was captured using the DFR and is set to be released by December.

With movie audiences declining in recent years, Hollywood desperately needs something to bring people back into the theaters.

Will Steven Spielberg save the day? He says that he has invented a display technology which surrounds the viewer on all sides, top and bottom. His invention, which he calls “the future of cinema,” aspires to bring the moviegoer inside the experience in what seems to be some kind of advanced 3-D technology.

Spielberg is tightlipped about the details because he says “it is patent pending.”

I just want to know if I’ll have to wear those silly 3D glasses.