Dolby, Real D Taking on Another Dimension in Movies
"For more than 30 years, Dolby Laboratories has enriched the sound of movies. Now, the San Francisco pioneer is looking to revolutionize the visual experience as well, with newfangled 3-D films.
The company is marketing filtering technology that enables theaters to show high-definition, 3-D movies with the digital projectors they already use.
This week will mark the first real, albeit small, deployment of Dolby's new product, with the release of the adventure film "Beowulf." The motion-capture animated film, by director Robert Zemeckis and featuring Anthony Hopkins and Angelina Jolie, is at the vanguard of a new wave of digital 3-D movies backed by some of Hollywood's most talented directors.
Dolby's just getting started in the market, where its biggest competitor is Real D of Beverly Hills. About 80 theaters will be using Dolby's product to show "Beowulf," compared with 1,100 worldwide that will be employing Real D's technology.
Together, the companies and the studios are providing consumers with an experience that promises real visual immersion. It's more than gimmicks, such as objects being tossed at the audience.
"Digital 3-D is like high-definition TV," said Jeff McNall, cinema product manager for Dolby. "Once you see it, it's hard to go back to old TV."
Dolby is not new to images. Founder Ray Dolby started his career making videotape recorders. But his business primarily was dedicated to noise reduction, and later to high-quality audio technology now used in movies, CDs and video games.
A few years ago, the company began manufacturing video servers that allow theaters to store their movies digitally and decrypt them for playback using digital projectors, which started gaining popularity in 2005.
It's these digital projectors that are enabling high-definition 3-D movies to come to life on the consumer end. Instead of lining up two film projectors, theaters can use one digital projector and then convert it to 3-D using technology from Real D and Dolby.
Dolby has created a filter for projectors that breaks 3-D images into red, blue and green bands of light that are recognized by layered 3-D glasses. Gone are the days of the throwaway paper-frame glasses. With the Dolby glasses costing about $50 each, theaters will need to wash them after each viewing, and viewers won't be able to take them home as souvenirs.
The advantage of Dolby's system is that theaters don't have to install aluminized silver screens like they do with the Real D product. And theater owners can move 3-D movies to any of their screens, making room on bigger screens for new releases.
"This allows a multiplex to be able to use 3-D efficiently," said McNall. "They can open a 3-D movie on opening weekend with a large screen and then they can go to a smaller screen later."
The Real D system projects sequential polarized images onto the aluminized screen, which maintains the polarization so viewers can see the images on their glasses. Real D Chief Executive Officer and founder Michael Lewis said past projection systems have never provided a dynamic and consistent 3-D experience. The digital 3-D system, he said, is finally delivering on the original promise of 3-D in the 1950s.
"We're binocular beings. We see with depth, yet all our media is flat. We've tried with red and green glasses, but it's never been good enough until now," Lewis said. "We're using this combination of 3-D science and digital projectors to create a perfect experience every time."
Hollywood's biggest names are lining up behind 3-D. Director James Cameron of "Titanic" fame has been working for the past decade on 3-D cameras that are lightweight, incorporate two lenses in the body and are able to capture big action and close-up scenes, something older 3-D camera setups were unable to do.
The technical advances have excited the likes of directors Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg, who are collaborating on a series of animated films about a Belgian character named Tintin.
George Lucas is intrigued by the potential of 3-D, his company said, and is considering re-releasing his "Star Wars" movies in the format. All of the major studios have 3-D movies in the works, including a $195 million blockbuster titled "Avatar."
The first live-action movie to be shot in digital 3-D, as opposed to being animated or altered from 2-D, is next year's "Journey 3-D," a retelling of Jules Verne's "Journey to the Center of the Earth." Beau Flynn, a producer on "Journey," said Hollywood is falling in love with digital 3-D now that the technical hurdles have been cleared.
"We're able to make a real story and not rely on 3-D gimmicks," said Flynn. "We owe it to the audience because we haven't really changed the theater experience in over 30 years."
For movie theater chains, digital 3-D is appealing on a number of levels. Regal Entertainment Group, the largest in the United States, will charge $2.50 more for a 3-D presentation. And they're popular: "Meet the Robinsons," a 3-D animated film released earlier this year, earned more than a third of its $98 million domestically from 3-D showings, even though only one-sixth of the screens were able to show the film in 3-D.
Dick Westerling, senior vice president of marketing for Regal Entertainment Group, said the company has outfitted 134 of its more than 6,000 screens for 3-D.
But he imagines that theaters could eventually deploy 3-D on about 20 percent of their screens because of its appeal with viewers and its money-making potential.
Chris Chinnock, president of Insight media, a market research firm focused on the electronic display industry, said the next few years will be big for 3-D, as digital projectors become more common and more creators see the potential behind 3-D storytelling.
"There are a lot of titles coming up in the next couple years that will build up to 2009. That's shaping up as a critical year for 3-D movies," Chinnock said. "If we continue to see good returns and enthusiasms from consumers, we should get some good hits from these movies."
Upcoming 3-D projects
- "Beowulf," the motion-capture animated retelling of the epic Anglo-Saxon poem. Nov. 16.
- "U2 3D," a 3-D movie of the Irish band's Vertigo tour. January 2008.
- "Journey 3-D," a remake of the Jules Verne story "Journey to the Center of the Earth". August 2008.
- Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson have plans to direct and produce three 3-D films based on Georges Remi's Belgian comic-strip hero Tintin. Expected 2009 release.
- Beginning in 2009, all DreamWorks films will be in 3-D, starting with "Monsters vs. Aliens," "How to Train Your Dragon" and "Shrek 4."
By Ryan Kim, San Francisco Chronicle
