One of the most surprising films at the show was Mummies 3D, which I saw at the Singapore Discovery Center in an SimEx-Iwerks theater, which uses their single projector 8 perf/frame above/below 70mm film and 7000 watt xenon projector with their own brand of 20x15M silver screen and CP glasses. Shooting Ramses in 3D The ghosting from the CP was quite bad so I suspect that either the screen was depolarizing a bit or the polarizers on the projection lens were burning out or the glasses were not good or a bit of all 3. Of course I checked with my colleagues and they all said the same thing so I am sure it was not a problem with my glasses. The projection was remarkably steady (i.e., little of the jitter and weave that is universal with film) but brightness, resolution , color, and ghosting were all noticeably inferior to the 3DX projections. However, it was probably similar in brightness, and overall image quality to what the average 3D digital theater will have.

Iwerks uses dual 70mm cameras with about 65mm interaxial, usually with about parallel axes, in a beam splitter (i.e., a mirror box with right angle cameras--similar to what has been done on many of the IMAX films). This led to most of the image being flat when objects were more than about 15M distant. However I was stunned to see something I had never noticed in over 30 years of viewing 3D film and video—perfect dual camera alignment in all 3 axes in every shot! I looked e.g., at the z axis registration in shots with objects near the cameras and others simultaneously as much as several km away without any detectable vertical parallax and with no skew in the x or y axes either.. I have never seen such perfection in live action stereo (in a theatrical film--the Ikegami synced zoom cameras can do it but have not been used for feature films so far as I know). So far as I could tell there were no zooms in any of the films either, which is not surprising since it is quite difficult to perfectly sync a pair of zoom lenses.
However, Anthony Coogan of StereoMedia has made many programs with the Ikegami 3D zoom cameras, which have nearly flawless registration and which, with recording on dual digital, should give excellent quality, especially with image processing and uprezzing that is now standard in most editing programs.

In contrast, there was detectable, but mostly modest, skew in those few shots in U23D, Miley Cyrus, and all the other live action films where the action stopped long enough for me to get a look. The only scene with some version of twin HD video cameras where it was possible to get a really good look at alignment was in a short 3D video message to the conference from Cameron. It was clear that the cameras were skewed a degree or two in all 3 axes. Clearly, with the budget for Avatar supposedly in the $100M range, they have the resources to correct this problem, so I assume they didn’t notice it, or maybe they don’t know to look for it. This is the normal, almost universal, situation—huge efforts with dozens, even hundreds, working on 3D projects but nobody minding the store—i.e., no well experienced stereoscopist overseeing all aspects from planning thru projection. They just assume that they will kind of pick up the stereo art as they go along and everything will be OK. It never is. As in nearly all human endeavours, the guiding lights in media need not achieve perfection as they can get away with it, whatever they do.

With some 40 titles big and small coming for 2009-2011 from Hollywood alone there is a huge 3D blitz developing. Theater owners pay ca. $30 to $80K over the costs of digital itself to convert to 3D, but, based on recent USA results, they can recoup this with the extra revenue from 1 to 3 films. The world box office for all films is ca. $25 billion and the cost to convert all the world’s 100K theaters to digital is about $8 billion. It is likely that 50K screens will be digital by 2013 and 1/3 of these or ca. 16K will be 3D. Now (Jan 2009) 7% of the worlds cinemas are digital.

A short clip of Cameron’s “Titanic” converted to 3D showed the joys and sorrows of this process. There was depth for sure and better than seeing it flat, but the people and objects were flat, most parts of the background were flat, and there were many, many problems which got worse as the scene got more complex. Just what one would expect. I would anticipate a serious headache well before the end of a feature converted to 3D like this. Supposedly Lucas is converting the Star Wars series to 3D, but I think it would be a much better idea to spend the money on new films. I’ll bet neither he nor any of the others who rave about this process have ever tried to loop the short clips available and watch it for 2 hours. That would likely be the end of it. If they must convert, then set up a lab in China and hire some real experts to oversee it. This way you can throw ca. 10X more resources at it than are feasible in the USA . Assuming a huge amount of effort is spent on reducing the eyestrain, how receptive audiences will be is likely to depend on how much real 3D they have seen recently. It is likely to be counterproductive to show the solidized stuff along with the real stuff.

Masterimage Bipolarized: Masterimage Bipolarized Projector attachment for 3D CinemaMasterImage of Korea, who has resuscitated the spinning bipolarized disc placed in front of the projection lens, an old method patented long ago for 3D movies, claims to have 140 installations (20 in China) and that they get about 19% light transmission. They charge about $32K for an installation. In the theater they were provided, it had bad ghosting, but they said this was due to the very steep projection angle necessitated by the theater. It is true that light depolarizes more as the angle of projection and viewing increases and their system is apparently certified by the studios for use without ghost reduction, so I think this is true. So far as I know, only Real D is required to use ghost reduction. However, like Real D, they must use CP and this gives more ghosting than LP, with shutter glasses having less and Infitec least of all.

In this digital era, every projection setup (2D or 3D) must be studio approved before they will certify the theater and ship them the hard drive with the movies. This means the projector, server and 3D equipment must be DCI (Digital Cinema Initiative) compliant. Since the actual DC organization has faded away, this seems to mean whatever Christie/AIX, Dolby, Barco, the studios and the SMPTE say it is. Presumably they would approve a dual polarized setup but it would still require DCI qualified projectors/servers. I am not sure what the cheapest DC compliant setup costs, but I assume at least $50K each, so it appears that small theaters with less expensive equipment are just out of luck so far as first run releases of Hollywood 3D (or 2D) movies are concerned. The dominant force is Christie (owned by cinema giant AIX who has 4600 screens worldwide) which claims 80% of the DC projectors installed. They say that their 3 chip, Tripleflash (i.e., 144hz), Brilliant3D, 17K lumen (with max. brightness option) CP2000-ZX is the most cost effective for digital cinema with up to 15M wide screens, with the top of the line (for 2008) CP2000-SB delivering 14 fL (foot lamberts) on up to 33M screens. Two of these were used for 3DX.

Apparently, Disney (and others?) have been subsidizing the cost of the CP (i.e., Circular Polarized plastic) glasses for their Real D theaters (i.e., Disney’s Shamrock Holdings invested at least $50M in Real D), but one expects that this cannot continue. The president of Disney gave the opening address, which makes it all the more odd that Real D did not show their system here.

Next: 3DX Singapore Part 5 - Summary and Predictions for 3D Projection
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