The Nov. 3, 2005, issue of the Kansas City Star has an excellent piece by Robert W. Butler on the significance of the current 3D version of Chicken Little and puts it in perspective in terms of what has been before and what’s coming ahead . . . with ‘Chicken Little’ opening in 3-D, more films will follow . . . Butler’s piece is one of the best background pieces on the film and how it was made as well as the history and significance of the current wave of 3D cinema . . .

Half a century after Hollywood turned to 3-D movies to meet the challenge of television, America’s movie theaters are once again dabbling in technology gives the illusion of birds flying over the audience and characters are leaping off the screen and into our laps. Once the stuff of exploitation, 3-D now appears poised to take up permanent residence at the nation’s movie houses. On Friday Disney’s first computer-animated feature. “Chicken Little,” opens on thousands of movie screens around America. And on 85 of those screens, Chicken Little and his barnyard friends will be cavorting in 3-D. Two auditoriums in this area – at AMC’s Town Center 20 and Dickinson’s EastGlen 16 – have been converted to 3-D digital projection. The installation required new silver screens, state-of-the-art digital projectors and a gizmo known as a high-speed modulating stereoscopic panel. This unremarkable-looking object – not unlike a framed pane of smoky glass which can be positioned in front of the projector lens – provides what proponents say is a near-flawless three-dimensional moving image. Of course you still have to wear special glasses. But instead of the uncomfortable cardboard specs of decades past, “Chicken Little” patrons will get stylish glasses patterned after those worn by the movie’s title character. And they’ll get to take them home at the end of the movie. “We think this is the natural evolution of cinema,” said Michael V. Lewis, chairman of Real D, the company that is developed and licenses the new 3-D process. “If you’re used to color and sound, do you really want to go back to black-and-white silent films? We believe that once you experience Real D, film’s that aren’t shown with this technology will appear quaint. It’s a fundamental shift in the way people see movies in their local multiplex.” Last summer Real D put on a demonstration at ShowWest, the huge movie industry confab held annually in Las Vegas. Exhibitors and filmmakers saw examples of computer-animated and live-action footage, including Gene Kelly’s splashing dance routine from “Singin’ In the Rain,” which had been converted from flat-screen to 3-D. “It was terrific,” recalled Ron Horton, director of operations for Overland Park, Kan.-based Dickinson Theatres. “Better than any 3-D I’d ever seen.” Afterwards George Lucas announced he would re-release his “Star Wars” movies in 3-D versions. James Cameron said all of his future films would be in 3-D. And Robert Zemeckis announced that his “Monster House,” due next year, would be available in a 3-D version. In the second half of the 19th century enterprising photographers spread across the globe snapping photos of people and places with double-lens cameras which captured two slightly different images representing how a left eye and a right eye would view the scene. These photos were placed in a handheld contraption called the stereopscope (a fixture of every Victorian parlor and the precursor of today’s View-Master) and viewed through separate eyepieces. The result was a three-dimensional image with items in the foreground appearing closer to the viewer than those in the background. The first feature film to be presented in 3-D was the silent “The Power of Love” in 1922. It employed the anaglyph process, in which the right-eye image was printed in red ink and the left eye in blue ink. Red and blue lenses on the eyeglasses worn by customers created the 3-D effect. This primitive system is essentially the same one used earlier this summer for the film “Spy Kids 3-D.” Drawbacks included an inability to present films in full color and headaches as a result of the colored lenses. More expensive but providing better results was Polaroid 3-D, developed in the `30s and employed mostly in the `50s when theaters were trying to coax audiences away from their TV sets. This system separated the left and right images by means of vibrating light waves – vertical for one eye, horizontal for the other. Polarized lenses in eyeglasses decoded these images and created the illusion of depth. Again, there were drawbacks. The system required two projectors (one for each eye) which had to be absolutely in sync. Frequently they weren’t. 3-D was modestly successful in attracting curious audiences for exploitation fare like “Bwana Devil” (1952), “House of Wax” (`53) and “Creature From the Black Lagoon” (`54), but “serious” filmmakers were unimpressed. Two big hits of 1953-`54 – “Kiss Me Kate” and Hitchcock’s “Dial M for Murder” – where shot in 3-D but released as conventional flat films when their creators became disillusioned with the limits of the technology. In fact, said Real D’s Lewis, “One of the biggest issues for us has been the perception that 3-D is a gimmick. After all, it’s usually been associated with movies that are less than stellar. Now that major filmmakers are using the process, that should change.” Since the early `90s the IMAX 3-D system has proven extraordinarily reliable. It employs the polarizing process, but here both strips of film are run through a single projector which perfectly synchronizes the right and left images. This system currently is used in the IMAX auditorium at AMC’s Studio 30 in Olathe, Kan., where the 3-D version of last year’s animated hit “The Polar Express” will open on Nov. 23. Yet another system that reportedly provides a realistic 3-D effect has been developed by NuVision. This system can use a standard movie screen but requires audience members to wear expensive electronic eyeglasses. So far exhibitors have been reluctant to get on board because of the cost and nuisance of maintaining, cleaning and providing security for the high-tech eyewear. So far the Real D system has been adopted by two dozen U.S. theater chains, among them giants like AMC, Loews and Regal. Others, like Dallas-based Cinemark, have taken a wait-and-see approach. The key factor is that Real D’s system is digital. Instead of strips of celluloid running through a projector’s mechanical innards, it employs what is essentially a big computer capable of throwing an image on a screen dozens of yards away. Moviegoers have been hearing for years that the conversion of theaters to digital projection is inevitable. But until now there hasn’t been a catalyst to push exhibitors into taking the leap. 3-D provides one. Installing the Real D system in one auditorium of a multiplex – the conversion costs about $85,000 an auditorium, with payments spread out for as many as ten years – allows exhibitors not only to show 3-D releases, but to gingerly dip their toes into the world of digital projection. “When we talked to exhibitors about their issues with 3-D projection, we always heard two things,” Real D’s Lewis said. “One was the glasses. Theater owners didn’t want to be in business of cleaning 3-D glasses so they could be reused. So our glasses are disposable. Patrons can take them home as a souvenir. “The other big issue was whether the system was good only for 3-D. Theater operators didn’t want a system that would leave the auditorium dark when they didn’t have a 3-D film. This system is good for 3-D or regular flat projection.” Although it’s being shown as a 3-D film in a few theaters, “Chicken Little” wasn’t conceived as a 3-D movie. In fact, Disney animation leaders only made the decision to put out a 3-D version after the movie was completed. Last spring studio executives asked Industrial Light & Magic, George Lucas’ visual effects business, to convert “Chicken Little” to 3-D. “Lots of people here were ready to turn them down,” Joel Aron, ILM’s digital production supervisor, recalled during a phone call from the company’s new offices in San Francisco’s Presidio. “But I’m such a technology yahoo, I asked them to give me a couple of weeks to figure out how to do it.” Computer animated films are ideal for 3-D, Aron said, because what goes on inside a computer is a lot like a real movie set. Inside this “fishbowl” or “box,” he said, are programs that represent different layers of the film. There are layers for the background. Layers for individual charac
ters. And with those layers in hand, it’s relatively easy to create a “left eye” image to complement the “right eye” that is the original film. “I knew it could be done if we could get the basics, the source materials from Disney,” Aron said. “But here’s the thing … they were making the movie as if nobody was ever going to go back and look at the source material ever again. Thankfully nobody had gone in and deleted that data. So we got all their animation, their sets, all the rendered layers.” In many instances a computer program was able to automatically adjust the two “cameras” (left eye and right eye) to produce a 3-D effect. At other times humans had to make slight tweaks to the material. ILM completed the conversion of the film’s 1,400 individual shots in just 12 weeks. “Every time we went to Disney to show the progress we were making, they had their animation teams from other movies sit in,” Aron said. “Because of `Chicken Little,’ Disney has directed its animators to view every computer-animated film as a potential 3-D project. “I think that in the same way `The Jazz Singer’ became a movie landmark for introducing synchronized dialogue, `Chicken Little’ will be remembered as the point at which 3-D became a part of everyday moviegoing.” The ability to convert already-existing films to 3-D exists and several Hollywood special effects houses offer that service. All that’s required, said Real D’s Lewis, is for some studio to make the investment by converting one of the titles it owns. There probably are plenty of fans out there who would pay to see `The Matrix’ again if they could watch it in 3-D, he said. But the conversion of theaters to 3-D digital projection involves more than just movies, Lewis said. “This technology changes what a movie theater is. With digital a theater’s programming can be as live as that of television. There are now 3-D digital cameras that can be held in one hand. This could change the way we experience sports and concerts. “In fact, some time next year I expect that people will be paying to see a major sporting event live and in 3-D at the multiplex.” First, though, the industry wants to see how the 3-D “Chicken Little” does at the box office. But here’s something to consider: Of the $289 million earned by the computer-animated “Polar Express” last winter, nearly $40 million was generated by the 3-D version that played in only a handful of IMAX theaters. “It’s really exciting being on the ground floor of a new technology,” said Dickinson’s Horton. “And I think it’s going to be a great way to get patrons back in the theaters.”

Nicely done piece. However . . . this caught my eye . . . from Lewis of Real-D . . . “This technology changes what a movie theater is. With digital a theater’s programming can be as live as that of television. There are now 3-D digital cameras that can be held in one hand. This could change the way we experience sports and concerts” . . . anyone want to fill me in on what manufactured 3-D cameras are out there that can be held in one hand? He is talking about video digital cameras, not just photographic digital cameras . . . although I’d be interested in knowing about any of those too. The only ones I can think of are not manufactured pieces but twin rigs that are put together by putting two cameras on a rig or cameras that use an adaptor that goes over the lens (I have an old 3D adapter for my camcorder for this purpose and my Digital Rebel is setup with a 3D lens adapter as well . . . however, these are still considered rigs and shouldn’t qualify as all-in-one single hand pieces of equipment).

Of course, I do believe we are moving towards such equipment becoming readily available . . . in all honesty, there aren’t any technical hurdles to create a good solid 3D digital camera, although video has more challenges than cameras for straightfoward photography.

Really, the manufactures could start putting out good solid models within six months if they just wrapped their heads around a couple simple principles. If I had a company in camera manufacturing, I would already have my variation out by now as the player who gets wide penetration first sets the standards.

In any case, asides aside, the Butler artlcle is well worth the read.