Film's Next Frontier
The first films were silent, and black & white. Then came sound followed quickly by color. Over the years picture quality has undergone an evolution as film and color processing have become better understood. Audio quality has undergone a similar transformation moving from mono to stereo to THX surround.
Film making as an art has undergone its own evolution as brilliant directors have shown us the many ways in which the art can be crafted. Part of that evolution has been the growth of the technology behind making films including cameras, camera rigging, set design, effects and so on. The effects department has probably been the single biggest growth sector in the movie industry, revolutionizing the way stories can be told by making the impossible to photograph possible to render.
We have been blitzed in the past decade with movies that have ever-increasing "wow" factor. In recent years, the films that seem to have been working the hardest in that regard have been of the horror genre. What was a tense off-camera moment in a Hitchcock film, can now be a fully visible gore-fest - not with stand-ins or with rubber prosthetics. Oh no. Through the beauty of CGI, we can see Sarah Michelle Gellar's eyeball get drilled out... in slow motion if we like.
But, through the equally rampant growth of the home-movie industry (movie rentals, movie downloads, Hi-Def TVs, 5.1 Dolby home theaters, Blu-Ray, etc.) the theater business in recent years has been in a slump. Hollywood hasn't wow'ed us enough to encourage the sort of profits they would like. And for good reason. Why spend all the money it takes to see "The Queen" on the big screen when in a few short months, you can pick it up for a fraction of the price and watch it in the comfort of your own home theater?
Enter 3-D. Oh, sure 3-D has been around since the 50's, but that was a mere parlor trick compared to the real magic that is about to hit big screens in the next few years. An article by Variety.com says it all: The key goal of 3-D is to "re-establish the primacy of filmgoing". And with the emerging technologies in the coming years, they may just do it.
And we're not just talking about the usual conversion of an old movie to 3-D as has recently been done with "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and will hopefully be done soon for "Star Wars", but they're even talking about cameras that are being developed for shooting movies "from the get-go" in 3-D.
And those cardboard glasses that make you see everything in red and blue for the next two hours after you leave the theater? Those are gone with the wind and replaced with state-of-the-art glasses that are wirelessly linked to the digital projector to create a perfect syncronicity between polarized images, giving a seamless, full color, digital quality, computer controlled picture in a 3-D environment without any of the usual motion-sickness that have typically plagued the old red & blue method. Add what CG and modern sound can do, and we have the makings of a whole new experience that people will easily pay $10/seat to see.
This is big, and I think it may herald the next biggest shift in the movie industry since it went from silent and black & white to "The Wizard of Oz".
At least until the horror genre gets a hold of it.
Film making as an art has undergone its own evolution as brilliant directors have shown us the many ways in which the art can be crafted. Part of that evolution has been the growth of the technology behind making films including cameras, camera rigging, set design, effects and so on. The effects department has probably been the single biggest growth sector in the movie industry, revolutionizing the way stories can be told by making the impossible to photograph possible to render.
We have been blitzed in the past decade with movies that have ever-increasing "wow" factor. In recent years, the films that seem to have been working the hardest in that regard have been of the horror genre. What was a tense off-camera moment in a Hitchcock film, can now be a fully visible gore-fest - not with stand-ins or with rubber prosthetics. Oh no. Through the beauty of CGI, we can see Sarah Michelle Gellar's eyeball get drilled out... in slow motion if we like.
But, through the equally rampant growth of the home-movie industry (movie rentals, movie downloads, Hi-Def TVs, 5.1 Dolby home theaters, Blu-Ray, etc.) the theater business in recent years has been in a slump. Hollywood hasn't wow'ed us enough to encourage the sort of profits they would like. And for good reason. Why spend all the money it takes to see "The Queen" on the big screen when in a few short months, you can pick it up for a fraction of the price and watch it in the comfort of your own home theater?
Enter 3-D. Oh, sure 3-D has been around since the 50's, but that was a mere parlor trick compared to the real magic that is about to hit big screens in the next few years. An article by Variety.com says it all: The key goal of 3-D is to "re-establish the primacy of filmgoing". And with the emerging technologies in the coming years, they may just do it.
And we're not just talking about the usual conversion of an old movie to 3-D as has recently been done with "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and will hopefully be done soon for "Star Wars", but they're even talking about cameras that are being developed for shooting movies "from the get-go" in 3-D.
And those cardboard glasses that make you see everything in red and blue for the next two hours after you leave the theater? Those are gone with the wind and replaced with state-of-the-art glasses that are wirelessly linked to the digital projector to create a perfect syncronicity between polarized images, giving a seamless, full color, digital quality, computer controlled picture in a 3-D environment without any of the usual motion-sickness that have typically plagued the old red & blue method. Add what CG and modern sound can do, and we have the makings of a whole new experience that people will easily pay $10/seat to see.
This is big, and I think it may herald the next biggest shift in the movie industry since it went from silent and black & white to "The Wizard of Oz".
At least until the horror genre gets a hold of it.
posted by AdmiralDack | 4:32 PM
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