James Cameron on the Deep Impact of 3D Movies

Is it the most important part of the D-Cinema roll-out?

Will 3D save digital cinema, or will digital cinema save 3D? The answer, director James Cameron told attendees at this year’s pre-NAB Digital Cinema Summit, is a little bit of both.

Cameron, who gave the second-day keynote address, invoked the specters of piracy and an increasingly indifferent viewership in an attempt to convince attendees that 3D exhibition – a more involving experience and, at least for the time being, an unpiratable one — will help get the fickle butts of movie audiences back in theater seats.

“I’m not going to make movies for people to watch on their cell phones,” he declared. “To me, that’s an abomination.”

Three different 3D processes were discussed. There’s the Cameron way, which involves shooting a live-action feature with a 3D camera rig (generally two Sony F950s bound together in a complicated assembly); there’s the Chicken Little/Polar Express method, which involves adding 3D to a previously devised CG-animated world (simply by rendering out a second camera view); and there’s the In-Three way, which has that company “dimensionalizing” existing films. (A demo reel from the first Star Wars movie was a highly compelling demonstration of that company’s technology.)

The In-Three process takes a lot of time and costs a significant amount of money – Cameron said it’s cheaper to shoot a movie in 3D in the first place than to shoot it flat and then add the third dimension. But he said he’s “looking seriously” at having In-Three create 3D versions of Titanic and Terminator 2, calling it an efficient way to generate new interest in yesterday’s blockbuster hits.

Cameron said he’s seen the potential of 3D cinema for years, but expected the digital cinema rollout to take place sooner than it has. Digital theaters are a key enabler for 3D technology, since they can run at a high enough shutter rate (up to 144 fps in systems that “triple flash” each image) to make the viewer’s experience more seamless and less headache-inducing. He argues that 3D movies will bring audiences to digital theaters in greater numbers, and that those numbers in turn will help support more digital-cinema installations. In addition to the Star Wars dimensionalization, in time for a 30th anniversary reissue next year, Cameron ticked off a number of other 3D projects in the works, including his own Battle Angel and Project 880, a New Line/Walden Media production of Journey to the Center of the Earth, Robert Zemeckis’s Beowulf project, and Disney’s CG title Meet the Robinsons.

Cameron noted the business implications go beyond entertainment. “They could shoot live 3D that is so real that it’s practically indistinguishable from human vision as if you had been standing there,” he said. “Once you can use this installed base of 3D theaters to allow people to participate in world events that are happening thousands of miles away in 3D just like you were actually there, think of the immediacy. Think of the power of that.”

And then, with wry comic timing, he added, “Think what you could charge.”