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The imminent full-bore return to 3-D filmmaking, upon which the movie industry is placing many of its hopes, is in danger of becoming Hollywood’s latest flub.

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But analysts are starting to warn that all of that product could find itself sitting on a loading dock with no place to go. Studios, thrilled by 3-D’s dual promises of higher profits and artistic advancement, have aggressively embraced the technology without waiting for movie theaters to get on board. And without those expensive upgrades to projection equipment at the multiplex, mass market 3-D releases are not tenable.

“It’s starting to look like there will be a lot of disappointed producers unable to realize the upside of these 3-D investments,” said Harold L. Vogel, a media analyst and the author of “Entertainment Industry Economics.” Filming in 3-D adds about $15 million to production costs, he said, but can send profit soaring because of premium ticket pricing.

Only about 1,300 of North America’s 40,000 or so movie screens support digital 3-D. (Imax adds 250.) Overseas, where films now generate up to 70 percent of their theatrical revenue, only a few hundred theaters can support the technology. It costs about $100,000 for each full upgrade.

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“The crunch has everybody scrambling,” said Chuck Viane, president for domestic distribution for Walt Disney Studios. “We had expected many more screens to be available by now, no doubt about it.”

Upgrades have lagged primarily because of industry infighting over who will shoulder the cost. Studios expected theaters to take the lead because digital equipment would allow them to raise prices — tickets to the new crop of 3-D movies run as high as $25 each — and lure consumers away from their big-screen living room TVs. Exhibitors, hurt by soaring real estate costs, wanted studios to pay for similar reasons.

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Other participants seem less optimistic. Will the credit markets thaw in the first quarter, as Mr. Katzenberg predicts? “Your guess is as good as mine,” said Mike Campbell, the chief executive of the Regal Entertainment Group, which owns the nation’s largest movie theater chain.

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Meanwhile, the shortage of 3-D theaters is upsetting profit projections at various studios, with three-dimensional movies probably leaving millions of dollars on the table. When DreamWorks Animation releases “Monsters vs. Aliens” on March 27, it will have to settle for half the number of 3-D screens it wanted. While acknowledging the shortage, Mr. Katzenberg recently told analysts there were enough theaters available to “recover our upfront investment and make a profit.”

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The shortage is sending mixed messages to moviegoers, many of whom are already skeptical of the claims about 3-D. Because of a shortage of outlets last summer, Warner Brothers had to scramble to change the marketing for “Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D” — dropping “3D” from the title — and offer a two-dimensional release in tandem. Lionsgate will have just 900 3-D theaters available for “My Bloody Valentine 3D” on Jan. 16, forcing the studio to show a standard version on about 1,600 screens.

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RealD, a California company that is the lead provider of 3-D technology for theaters, last week demonstrated a similar product for televisions at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Michael Lewis, the chief executive of RealD, said in an interview that he expected Americans to own 10 million 3-D-capable television sets within five years.

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Studios expected theaters to take the lead because digital equipment would allow them to raise prices — tickets to the new crop of 3-D movies run as high as $25 each

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People who remember 3-D from the 1950s roll their eyes at Hollywood’s renewed fascination with the medium. They associate 3-D with cheesy films (“Creature From the Black Lagoon”), stiff cardboard glasses and jerky, stomach-turning camera movements.

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Funny, I don't remember cheesy movies (Dial 'M' For Murder, Cease Fire, Miss Sadie Thompson, Kiss Me Kate), stiff cardboard glasses (most of them after House of Wax were plastic frames) or stomach-turning camera movements (which I DO remember in a number of recent 3-D films).
 

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Posted by Brian Guckian (Member # 1678) on 02-07-2009, 10:10 AM:
 
How about traditional anaglyph 3-D prints of these films for the majority of theatres, to accompany the digital versions?

A cheap and cheerful way of making everyone go 3-D!

(Spy Kids 3-D a few years back wasn't that bad in anaglyph 3-D )
 

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Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 02-07-2009, 10:18 AM:
 
Anaglyph isn't traditional. There were around 50 3D movies in the 1950s. Two of them were released (theatrically) in anaglyph in the 70s. Any other anaglyph releases were for either TV, video, 16mm, 8mm, etc.
 

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Posted by Don Furr (Member # 1469) on 02-07-2009, 10:27 AM:
 
If we rely on anaglyph to save the 3D world, we're dead before we even get started. That's the worse crap ever put on a screen.
 

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Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 02-07-2009, 10:35 AM:
 
Anaglyph is a terrible idea and would just kill off any hope of a 3D revival. The only good 35mm 3D system is 2-strip; if they didn't want to make 2-strip prints, then under/over or side-by-side prints would still be better than anaglyph.

Personally, I have zero sympathy for the producers who chose to make films in a format that few theatres can show. Unless they are planning to pay for the equipment installation, then they have no right to complain about a situation that they created.
 

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Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 02-07-2009, 02:10 PM:
 
Like Jack, I agree about 3-D films not being cheesy. Gimmicky, yes but certainly not cheesy. The first film I saw in two projection Natural Vision 3-D was Arch Obler's BWANA DEVIL and that film was full of excellent 3-D gimmicks and it had instantly made me a life long 3-D junkie. Shortly after this release I saw several others that were good standard movies that were shot in 3-D including INFERNO, ARENA", " THOSE REDHEADS FROM SEATTLE" ," SANGAREE", "FORT TI as well as the classics including KISS ME KATE, MISS SADIE THOMPSON, HONDO and DIAL M FOR MURDER. Like I said in a previous post about 3-D films from the fifties, I still consider dual projection of that era so much better than modern REAL D and Dolby 3-D systems which are good but not good enough in my very humble opinion

-Claude
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 02-07-2009, 02:48 PM:
 
Wiktionary definitions:

Cheesy (as applied to movies): Of poor quality through being overdramatic, excessively emotional or clichéd

Gimmick: 1. A trick or device used to reach some end
2. A clever ploy or strategy

So, all 3-D movies are gimmicky. Not all of them are cheesy, although (to me) most of them are.
 

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Posted by Julio Roberto (Member # 4976) on 02-07-2009, 06:29 PM:
 
Every 20 years, when people forget what 3D was "twenty years ago", the same crap comes out: "This is NEW and improved 3D, nothing to do with the old bad system".

In the 50's it was, for practical purposes, NEW, exciting AND PERFECT (when done right). It was dual projection 35mm of the best quality. But 3D died. Why? Well, expensive to produce (two big cameras, dual stock), expensive to exhibit (two projectors, two prints, two lamps, silver screen, glasses) and the public just wasn't all that crazy about it. And keeping 2 projectors in perfect synch, aligned, focused and evenly illuminated and two prints in frame-matching condition in the 50's required some booth talent. No doubts not 100% of the presentations were "perfect". And w/o platters ...

Sure, some 10% of the audience loved it to death. But some 10% hated it. And the rest thought it was cool, but not enough to really be willing to pay the extra $$$$ and put up with the darned glasses unless the film was worth the trouble.

Then the 70's/80's was going to change all that. Now the system only needed one camera (=theoretically less operator/registration errors and cheap film stock/small cameras), so it was cheaper to produce. Also, just one print, so cheaper to distribute also. And only one projector (hooray!!!), so perfect "sync", cheap for theaters. The full frame 4perf area was used, so good illumination and good resolution, although it was then halved (50% to each eye), bad not far from "3 perf" 1.85. Pleasing 2.40 aspect ratio, like scope w/o anamorphics. You couldn't screw this one, right?

"This isn't your father's 3D with the bad glasses ... this is the much better improved single-strip with the good glasses ..."

Right. We know how that went.

Now, it's the same again. Once again they insist the past systems were "bad", and somehow digital is "perfect".

But then they give us a flickering 3.5fl image with a 100:1 crosstalk ratio (ghosting). I'm talking RealD here ... which until recently was what the industry referred to as the "new 3D". Thank god other systems appeared and improve this a bit. And they are all less than 2K (for older non-triple flash projectors) and half the color resolution and 1/4 the color depth compared to 2D 2K digital even for new ones.

In so many years studios are going to upgrade all this to 4K, 8fl minimun, full 4:4:4, full 12 bits for 3D, so at least it matches 2D 4K which you can do TODAY (with Sony).

And what happens to all those "4fl", non-triple flash installations in 10 years?

I think we can all guess ...

For producers, it's peachy kin. New 4/6K cinema cameras cost PEANUTS (i.e. $20.000) and are small, so two of them can be used w/o problems to produce 3D films. Even a monkey could do it.

http://fullres.blogspot.com/2008/05/can-you-make-live-action-3d-movie-on.html
http://news.creativecow.net/story/859547

[These articles talk about the movie Dark Country, finished last year with two 2K miniscule cheap digital cameras for $5m total (the reported budget of $7m in the article is wrong) ... the whole thing weighted like 10lb and was put into a really weird steadycam that could literaly do "anything" with them.]

Today you could shoot and edit a full quality DCI 2K movie with equipment PURCHASED (not rented) worth LESS than $100k w/o ANY compromises to quality or flexibility (i.e. much better than Lucas used for the digital Star Wars new trilogy). Really. Of course, if you want to have 10 lenses to choose from or tons of lighting or audio equipment, you are going to need a bit bigger budget .... but you get the point when even a stupid movie has a budget of over $15m today and renting is the way to go, no need to purchase the equipment, of course.

So, again, even a monkey could do it. For peanuts. All this talk that a 3D version is costing Dreamworks CGI $15 million more to produce is ... well, true for the first 3D movie they make (Intel InTrue software development), but after that and as techonology progresses, this cost will diminish to only a small fraction of the movie's budget. And to real-life movies 3D adds very little cost. Just use 2 cameras instead of one. Period. Same actors, same set, same everything. (Not exactly, of course, as editing and special effects would cost more, but you get the point).

Computers/storage today are much faster and cheaper so it takes the same cost to edit/DI 2x2K (two 2K images) as it took to do a single 2K image three years ago. In a couple of years, 4K 3D images will cost the same computer $$$ to "process around" as 2K 3D images do today.

So cheap 3D movies, cheap distribution (a hard drive, same cost as 2D) and ... cheap exhibition? (RealD royalties ... Dolby filters+glasses ... new screens ... $100k digital makeovers ... large lamps)

Studios want to make gazillions of $$$$ and leave theaters with the bill. I've said it over and again. If they want digital exhibition ... they better start to SERIOUSLY pay for it. Quick, before something else comes along, like 3D-at-home or whatever.

[ 02-08-2009, 12:22 AM: Message edited by: Julio Roberto ]
 

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Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 02-08-2009, 08:39 AM:
 
Top 10 3D myths
 

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Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 02-08-2009, 01:43 PM:
 
Thanks for the excellent link, Mark

The 2006 digital 3-D remake of George Romero's THE NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD is now available on DVD in anaglyph 3-D and I have it. The 3-D effect is not bad at all and almost as good as the recent JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH.

-Claude
 

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Posted by Brian Guckian (Member # 1678) on 02-09-2009, 10:46 AM:
 
Thanks too for the link, Mark

quote: Don Furr

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If we rely on anaglyph to save the 3D world, we're dead before we even get started.

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I know, but look how much money it would save
 

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Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 02-09-2009, 03:03 PM:
 
You're welcome, gents! The "Hondo" link on that page is a pretty interesting read too.

Hopefully you guys clicked on the "Board" link. You should recognize some of the names.
 

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