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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Topic: Cineplex to install digital 3-D - to combat piracy
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Ron Keillor
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 166
From: Vancouver, B.C. Canada
Registered: Jul 2003
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posted 08-05-2007 02:01 AM
Saturday » August 4 » 2007
Movies go 3-D to try to regain audiences
New version of old technology being deployed to attract crowds to theatres and away from pirated DVDs
Marke Andrews
Vancouver Sun
Saturday, August 04, 2007
Vancouver Sun / The number of 3-D screens in movie houses around the world is set to increase from about 750 today to 5,000 in two years time.
The film exhibition industry has had a tough half-decade, battered by new media, falling attendance, and piracy of its product -- which enables people to see new films on their computers or DVD players the same week they open theatrically.
However, the industry is hoping that new versions of an old technology will halt the piracy and once again make going to the movies an event: 3-D.
According to Screen Digest's June report "The Business Case for Digital 3D Cinema Exhibition," the number of 3D screens worldwide will increase over the next two years from the current 750 (85 per cent of them in the U.S.) to 5,000. Dreamworks announced this year that all of its films will be released in 3-D by 2009. Cineplex Entertainment, the largest exhibition chain in Canada, is converting most of its theatres from 35-mm projection to digital projection, and will add 3-D screens.
Last week, Vancouver production house Rainmaker Animation announced that the three feature films it will make in the ReBoot franchise will be shot in 3-D.
Interest in 3-D has been sparked by the box office performance of a handful of feature films projected in digital 3-D and in regular 2-D. Opening weekend box-office takes for 3-D versions of Meet the Robinsons, Chicken Little, Monster House and Nightmare Before Christmas tripled that of the same films in two dimensions, with attendance 2.4 times higher per screen (ticket prices for 3-D movies are slightly higher than those for 2-D).
Advancements in 3-D technology makes the medium much easier to watch than some of the earlier 3-D formats. In the past few years, two kinds of digital 3-D have emerged: Real D, the frontrunner of the two, and Dolby 3D. Both systems have sharp images where both foreground and background details are clearly defined. The new formats are designed so viewers can watch a two-hour movie without getting eye strain or headaches.
"Our goal is to expand our digital projection units, to replace 35-mm with digital systems -- and an important component of that would be 3D," said Pat Marshall, vice president of communications and investor relations for Cineplex Entertainment.
Cineplex currently has nine 3D IMAX theatres in the country, including the Lower Mainland's SilverCity Riverport and Colossus Langley. (CN IMAX, at Canada Place, also has 3D capability. OMNIMAX at Science World does not.)
Marshall said the entire exhibition industry will convert from 35-mm projection to digital projection over the next three years, and as it does a lot more Real D systems will be put in place, including at Cineplex theatres.
"I can't imagine a time when all digital projectors would be 3D-capable, because not all films will be produced in 3D," said Marshall.
In addition to the cost of a digital 3D projector (between $75,000 and $100,000), theatres would need to invest in silver screens, which better reflect images, and the special 3D glasses that patrons must wear to polarize the images.
Warren Franklin, CEO of Vancouver's Rainmaker Animation, said that if theatres are converting their projection from 35-mm film to digital, then it makes economic sense to make them also capable of 3D.
"If you're going to convert to a digital projection system, that gives you the capability to go 3D," says Franklin. "You just have to make the investment in the right screen and the right glasses.
"This is something that's going to help get people out of their home theatres with their 60-inch plasma screens and into the movie theatre."
Because 3D screens will only account for five per cent of total theatre screens by 2009, Franklin said Rainmaker would likely release the 3D ReBoot movies first in 3D, then widely in 2D after that.
Leonard Schein, president of Festival Cinemas in Vancouver, said that although he's impressed with the new 3D technology, he isn't about to spend $100,000 to convert any of Festivals theatres (Park, Ridge, Fifth Avenue Cinemas) to the new digital format.
"The type of films we normally show are not in 3D," said Schein. "3D films are usually animation, special effects or concert films, and we're a smaller player that shows specialty films."
Another advantage 3D has over its 2D brethren is the fact that movies cannot be pirated. A laptop camcorder will only capture 2D images, and some of those would appear muddled. And the technology isn't available for a pirate to convert a 2D movie to 3D.
"If you're stealing it in 2D, you can't reproduce it in 3D," said Marshall.
The Screen Digest report projected that in order for conversion to make sense economically, theatres would need to exhibit three 3D movies a year. Currently, there are nine 3D movies scheduled for release in 2009, including James Cameron's Avatar, made for 20th Century Fox, and Dreamworks' Monsters vs. Aliens.
mandrews@png.canwest.com
© The Vancouver Sun 2007
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[ 08-05-2007, 02:54 AM: Message edited by: Adam Martin ]
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Mark J. Marshall
Film God
Posts: 3188
From: New Castle, DE, USA
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted 08-13-2007 09:17 AM
quote: Peter Castle
In a digital system, the glasses could show each frame three times for each eye, alternating. I doubt that anyone could detect that, as the delay would be about 1/72 of a second not 1/24th.
I'm very familiar with how the digital systems work, and there are some that agree with your statement, however I can see it very easily even in scenes that do not contain a lot of motion. The issue isn't about your eyes being able to tell the difference between frames alternating at 1/72 of a second. It's about your brain being able to detect that one eye is 1/72nd of a second behind the other. Thanks to persistence of vision, there is a period of time where your two eyes are simultaneously seeing two different frames, 24 times a second, for the entire show.
Imagine doing the same thing with two 35mm projectors with three blade shutters, and one shutter is completely out of phase from the other. You would absolutely notice a difference in the picture compared to when the shutters are in perfect sync.
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