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ShoWest gets peek at 'U2'

3-D film gets the rock star treatment

By DAVID S. COHEN

LAS VEGAS -- ShoWest saw another boost for 3-D content on Thursday morning when Real D unveiled the first previews of footage from the upcoming concert film "U2 3D."
Aud watched the teaser trailer and perf of the song "Sunday, Bloody Sunday."

Pic's producers call it the first live-action film to be shot, posted and exhibited entirely in 3-D. It will include 14-15 songs in 80-90 minutes.

Shot at the band's concerts in South America, the film was independently produced by 3ality Digital. Producers are hoping for a fall release though a distributor has not yet been secured.

Film will play only in 3-D-capable digital theaters.

Real D prexy Joseph Peixoto made a point of telling the aud that the presentation was shown with a single 2K Barco digital projector -- a typical commercial digital projection system.

That became a concern after it turned out that Sony's Wednesday presentation of 3-D footage from the NBA All-Star game, while impressive, was shown with two projectors, a setup far too expensive and high maintenance for most commercial applications.

Producer Jon Shapiro of 3ality said U2 was the perfect subject for a 3-D concert film because "there's a connectivity at a U2 concert you can't describe unless you've been there."

Film's directors, Catherine Owens and Mark Pellington, have long experience creating the band's concert visuals.

Ironically, the quality of the 3-D picture in "U2 3D" may reveal a whole new set of challenges for cinema owners, warned sound maven Michael Leader, prexy of Leader Cinema.

"Cinema sound systems are not up to what we just experienced," Leader told Daily Variety after the "U2 3D" preview.

He said that current theater sound systems don't even play back all of what's on typical movie soundtracks, especially in the bass, and don't have anything close to the dynamic range needed to properly play rock-concert films.

"You need a Formula One racing engine in your sound system to do this," Leader said.

Pumping up the volume on the bass would also exacerbate problems with sound leaking between theaters in multiplexes, he said.

Preview was part of Real D's demonstration of 3-D for alternative content. Demo also included a look at the "Chicken Little" videogame in 3-D.

"A lot of people spend a lot of time in front of computers, and they are people we want back in theaters," said Peixoto.

Demonstration did not include multiplayer games, however, and Peixoto spoke only of single-player games.

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Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 03-16-2007, 09:25 PM:
 
I would pay to see this, provided I was confident the theatre could do it justice in terms of video and audio quality.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 03-16-2007, 09:38 PM:
 
The audio end of things could be a whole lot better if movie theater companies actually kept everything in the sound system properly maintained (which many stupidly do not do in the vein of pinching pennies).

Along with routine maintenance, a qualified theater technician should be re-tuning theater sound systems on a regular basis, 2-4 times a year bare minimum. I don't expect a sound system to be re-tuned for each different movie that plays the auditorium. However, some top flight theaters have had policies of doing just that. By that virtue, those same theaters typically had sound quality that just stomped the dog shit out of all other competitors.

Lastly, another thing that would help is the abandonment of the same-ness in movie theater sound system design. With a lot of theaters that have gone up in the last decade there is a nagging sense of "one size fits all" sound system design. You end up with audio that will never sound right regardless of EQ settings, especially in the largest and most echo-prone of auditoriums. Not enough is being done to beef up the walls to contain bass leakage. There's a number of other issues that could be handled in a more professional manner with new movie theater designs.

Even still, if the current movie theaters were being properly maintained, even with compromised auditorium and sound system designs, they would be delivering much higher levels of presentation quality.
 

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Posted by Cameron Glendinning (Member # 3516) on 03-16-2007, 11:19 PM:
 


I would like to hear that movie on this Lenard horn loaded system!

quote: Bobby Henderson

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Along with routine maintenance, a qualified theater technician should be re-tuning theater sound systems on a regular basis, 2-4 times a year bare minimum.

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quote: Cameron Glendinning

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This I do not understand? Do the rooms acoustics change somehow seasonally? Or are you implying projectonists like using micro screwdrivers in processers?

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The room's acoustics don't change. The settings in the electronics do. They shift out of balance and have to be re-calibrated. It's a normal process of wear and tear in movie theater electronics. And that, of course, goes along with taking care of other issues like blown speaker drivers, amplifiers going on the fritz, etc. Even if no components have to be replaced, it usually is a noticeable improvement when a technician comes in and gets the room's EQ set back into proper balance.

Premiere class movie theaters that are actually run like true premiere class movie theaters usually re-tune the sound system for the nature of each movie playing in the auditorium. No two movies are mixed exactly the same and settings get optimized for each movie.

The crappiest sounding theaters are typically those that haven't had any EQ or other audio maintenance work done since the sound system was wired together. That may sound a little extreme, but I'll bet there's a lot of booths out there in just that situation.
 

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Posted by Cameron Glendinning (Member # 3516) on 03-17-2007, 01:11 AM:
 
Bobby I really dont understand, ,Would you be suprised if Dolby actually recommend that you try to use eq, and all functions externally from the 650 processer to minimise noise?

mmm why would you change settings per movie? why on earth isnt there a set standard in the mixing suite? Why do 21 st centry technology magically change their settings within weeks not years?

Why did a film producer recently tell me that my large screen has the closest sound to the mixing suite she has experienced so far? out of very many that she has seen it at over the release of her feature (she mentioned over 10 screens and 4 companies), so much so that she held the cast and crew screening here. It has not been eqed for 4 years, (but boy that guy is good at what he does!)
 

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Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 03-17-2007, 04:47 AM:
 
You guys would be surprised at the number of "high quality" sound systems that were never tuned, just connected. (This from me who is a mininmalist when it comes to third octave tuning.) Some were connected, Dolby tone set and the amps adjusted by ear.

This is apparent when I bring in my equipment to a theatre that is 10 years old and the staff, who has been there 10 years, says: "What's all of that?" Louis
 

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Posted by Matt Fields (Member # 3211) on 03-17-2007, 09:08 AM:
 
I saw the demo.

The 3D was good and used mostly to make you feel like you were there instead of stuff flying out at you, which was good.

As a casual U2 fan, this was enjoyable.
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 03-17-2007, 12:20 PM:
 
That's good...I had visions of guitar necks sticking out in your face, things like that.

Will be interesting to see how this goes over, since U2's last concert film (Rattle & Hum) was a flop and no concert movie has ever really been a hit. Maybe 3D is the thing to achieve that...until the novelty wears off, at least.
 

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Posted by Darryl Spicer (Member # 711) on 03-17-2007, 12:54 PM:
 
I'll tell you the most impressive thing I saw was Seeing Kiss in 1998 on the Psycho Circus tour. They had a 3-D set up where on the screens you had 3-D clips and Live clips of the band performing with sequences in 3-D. It was really cool and amazing. You had 3-D polarized glasses and everything.
 

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Posted by Jesse Skeen (Member # 586) on 03-17-2007, 03:53 PM:
 
Negativland is better, they should do a 3-D concert film. These guys are from England and who gives a shit?
 

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Posted by Carl Martin (Member # 1146) on 03-19-2007, 03:08 PM:
 
ha ha
 

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