Will 3-D be a Show Stopper?

"Hundreds of movie industry insiders gathered Wednesday in Banff to watch the future of film. Funny thing was, the guy sitting in the row behind me said he had already seen it, back in 1960.

"It was a western," he said. "When the Indians attacked, all these arrows came flying out into the audience."

The future and past under discussion Wednesday at ShowCanada, Canada's movie industry trade show, was 3-D films. They have been around in various incarnations for 50 years now, but never have they been considered so important to the industry. While talk about the latest generation of digital 3-D films has been buzzing around the industry for years, that talk has now taken over. Insiders say the technology has become viable, filmmakers have bought in to the concept, and most importantly, some think 3-D can save the multiplex.

Even the glasses are cool, as we saw in Banff Wednesday, when 3-D was put on bright, shiny display on a state-of-the-art digital silver screen (yes, it contained real silver, which is more reflective than a typical screen, and cost up to $25,000) that showed the upcoming Brendan Fraser adventure flick Journey to the Centre of the Earth for an audience of more than 500 showbiz types at The Banff Centre.

Gone are those embarrassing red and blue cardboard-frame glasses that make wearers look like a bunch of losers. This year, everyone who attended the screening was handed high-tech specs from manufacturer Real D, a 3-D systems integrator that has emerged as one of the leaders of the digital 3-D movement. Wearing their oversized, horn-rimmed 3D glasses, the crowd at the screening looked more like fans at a Martin Scorsese lookalike contest than 3-D geeks.

"Did you see the glasses?" asked Nathalie de Montigny, a communications consultant. "They looked really really cool."

The new generation of 3-D films are digitally shot, which has produced some interesting challenges. A few years back, Chicken Little was made as a digital 3-D film, but there were only 600 screens in North America that had the technology available to present the film -- including a digital projector, computer server and that hip silver screen. In other words, filmmakers were a little ahead of the tech curve than exhibitors were, mainly due to the cost of installing new equipment.

"Five years ago, new equipment cost $250,000 to $300,000," says technical consultant PA Charron. "Now, a digital projector costs anywhere from $35,000 to $100,000."

Furthermore, digital 3-D is less far less complicated to deal with than 3-D on film, which requires two projectors to operate, creating a diluted image that sacrifices some image detail.

"(Digital 3-D) is easy to operate," says Charron. "You're not dealing with film; you're dealing with hard drives."

In other words, the technology has reached an economy of scale, theatres have begun to roll out digital technology and film distributors, ever in search of the next great idea (and mindful of the overwhelming success of competition from video games and the Internet), have created a perfect storm that may push digitized 3-D beyond its gimmicky past.

"Let me put it this way," says Charron. "Two years ago, there were two to four films in 3-D; next year, 2009, there's 11. That says it all."

For Montigny, digital 3-D represents a leg up for the theatre exhibitor over home theatre systems, which have been biting into business.

"(Digital 3-D) is value added for exhibitors," she says. "Why do we still go to movies, when home theatres can practically replace the movie-going experience? This is the added value that will draw people back to the movie theatres."

At the Banff Centre, the comments about the digital 3-D were overwhelmingly positive.

"I'm blind in one eye and could never differentiate 3-D before," says Donna Janning, a Cineplex theatre manager from Vancouver. "But I could make it out with Real D," she adds. "That was really thrilling for me."

Others praised the technology even as they damned the screenwriting.

"It looked great, but it's not quite the type of film my theatre books," says Uptown manager Selina Clary, whose theatre screens foreign films such as the Oscar-winning Secret Lives of Others and La Vie en Rose.

"The ideal scenario," Clary says "would be for George Lucas to direct a 3-D movie, and have Woody Allen write the dialogue."

By Stephen Hunt, Calgary Herald