Up until recently, 3D film has been considered a fad, waxing and waning with the times. But, after initially getting hip to the idea that stereoscopic versions of 3D CG animated features could be created, Hollywood is now eyeing large-format 3D versions of 35mm blockbusters and original 3D content. We’ve come a long way from The Creature from the Black Lagoon.

What forces are turning the 3D movie into a going concern? Digital Cinema and the DCI standard take the lion’s share of credit. In the pre-digital days, exhibitors had to put two projectors side by side and projectionists had to assemble double reels. Getting it all in sync was a laborious analog (and therefore imperfectly repeatable) process. As anyone who has seen out-of-sync 3D images can attest, the badly synced 3-D film is enough to make you quite literally sick. Exhibitors shunned 3D films rather than risk unhappy audiences demanding their money back.

With the Digital Cinema Initiative complete, any DC-compliant theater can project 3D imagery. Playing off a server also takes the onus off the projectionist – who lately is less likely to be a union pro and more likely to be a high school kid working an after-school job.

Technologically adventurous directors are already gravitating to the possibilities of a 3D stereoscopic aesthetic. Robert Zemeckis is at work on Beowulf, while James Cameron is in production on Avatar.

Just as digital projection and DCI-compliant theaters offer a boost to 3D exhibition, digital cameras and techniques such as performance capture can make it easier to acquire 3D images. Avatar is being shot using the Fusion Camera System, a high-resolution stereoscopic-3D digital camera developed by Cameron, cinematographer Vince Pace and VFX supervisor Rob Legato. Beowulf is acquired with performance capture, the same technique used in Polar Express.

Post-production remains the only part of the 3D movie chain that hasn’t improved. Yes, nonlinear editing systems have improved the overall editing process, but there has still been no easy answer to the fact that the editor has to cut two versions-left eye and right eye-of every frame in the film. Post-production for the 3D film relies on jury-rigged toolsets, despite the fact that post-production is arguably the most crucial step in creating a successful stereoscopic film.

Figuring out where to converge the image – which part is in the foreground, mid-ground and background – creates the successful impact of the image and ensures that it doesn’t create eyestrain or nausea in viewers. But non-real-time tools make it a dicey proposition to sync the images properly and turn convergence into a trial-and-error adventure.

Quantel's beta software may help change that. The Quantel Pablo, a digital-intermediate platform, was designed with dual output so customers could want to output an HD and SD version of the same DI. The idea that that dual-output could also be used to handle the left eye and right eye of a 3D image got its start during conversations between Quantel senior product specialist Milton Adamou and Marty Sadoff, VP of 3D digital at Digital Jungle Post Production in Hollywood.

“Marty planted the seed,” says Adamou. “And his enthusiasm was very important from day one, especially with early research.” In particular, says Adamou, he researched – and confirmed – Sadoff’s assertion that “3D was coming back in a big way.” Adamou soon realized that the dual output of the Pablo could be put to use for the two eye views required for 3D post. “Marty had the idea of being able to do stereo with the Pablo,” he says. “As I know the overall capabilities of the system quite well, I came up with the idea to repurpose the dual output.”

At the heart of the new software is a very cool capability: the editor can see and work not just with 2D images but also with 3D stereoscopic images. In other words, the editor can look individually at the right eye and left eye and, simply by donning glasses, can also see the converged eyes for a 3D image. This offers maximum flexibility – the editor may want to tweak individual eyes, but gains immeasurably by being able to see the converged image in real time. Up until now, editors have had to make a lot of guesses, and only see the results of their work in the screening room. The Quantel software promises to dramatically speed the process of editing stereoscopic images.

Senior group leader Simon Rogers was the principal software developer behind the 3D software. “The beautiful thing about the Pablo is that it’s all integrated, with the horsepower to do it,” says Adamou. “If we’ve got a 4K system, we can clearly give you two stripes of 2K. We’re starting very high up with a solid foundation.”

Adamou’s goal was to make the software robust enough to demonstrate it to interested film-industry professionals during the last week of June at Pace's studio. “We wanted to get something out there to gauge enthusiasm and get feedback,” says Adamou, who reports that well over 100 studio heads, post-production supervisors, VFX supervisors, cinematographers and directors attended.

“The overall consensus was that it worked well and seemed easy to use,” says Adamou. And, as he had hoped, industry professionals suggested additions and changes. “We were also asked to be able to flip the left eye and right eye if they were brought in incorrectly, and to be able to take one eye and paint into the other eye to correct lens flare. And there was talk about being able to color-correct with the 3D glasses on.”

“We not only took away the suggestions but the realization that every studio, director and post professional has his or her own idea of how to do it,” he says. “Right now, there is no standard way of post producing 3D.”

One company that has tried is Digital Jungle Post Production, a post facility in Hollywood that has created pioneering 3D editing and DI capabilities. Whereas Real D has gotten much of the press for its 3D conversions of standard movie theaters, Digital Jungle is a beta site for NuVision 3D. Most notably, Jungle Digital president Dennis Ho, with Sadoff, has created a room built exclusively for 3D digital intermediates. “The room is capable of a number of major tricks,” says Ho. “You can compare 3D film dailies, with left- and right-eye projectors, with 3D digital cinema dailies. The concept here is to be able to really think about how to do a 3D movie from the beginning to the end.” That includes editing in 3D. Digital Jungle is already on board to do full color timing and editing off the Quantel Pablo using the new 3D software.

Features available with Quantel’s 3D software include (in addition to being able to play back two 2K streams), real-time masks, real-time pan-and-scan, real-time 3D LUTs, and the ability to work on both eyes at the same time. “You can splice them at the same time, cut out edits at the same time, trim at the same time, slip and slide them at the same time,” says Adamou. “You can also do all of these on each individual eye. And you can go between left eye and right eye on the display as well. That’s very important, since one camera may have a filter on it, for example. You can easily correct it.”

Digital Jungle is involved in post producing 3D movies for the home. Ho says that his facility has recently transferred Universal Pictures’ 1954 Taza, Son of Cochise (with Rock Hudson) and the 1983 Jaws 3-D, realigning and color-correcting them for 3D. Sensio (Montreal, Quebec) bought the 3D home distribution rights for these films and others. Sensio markets a 3D home-theater system designed to work with conventional DVD players and CRT, LCD, DLP and D-ILA projectors.

In a quest to become the leading 3D post house in Los Angeles, Digital Hollywood continues to test, edit, screen, and color, opening its doors to filmmakers interested in seeing the nuts and bolts of a stereoscopic finish.

“We feel that the advent of 3D will be like the advent of sound,” says Sadoff. “It’s more than just shooting with another eye. It requires knowledge and you need an incredible crew. It’s an amazing learning curve.”

Stereoscopic movies are not likely to push actors out the door, but they will require editors and DI artists, among others, to hone their skills and learn a new aesthetic. Gimmicky 3D movies used the extra dimension to throw spears at the audience; today’s sophisticated moviegoers will need 3D as a storytelling device to keep coming back.

Quantel’s software, which will come out with the Pablo’s next major code release, is a good start.