Computer Graphics World

electronic hearth—this time with the folks wearing glasses. e studios have gotten to like the extra dollars that DVD sales and rentals provide. e latest rebirth of stereo 3D for enter- tainment might look like a revolution for some, an evolution for others, but there's a population of technologists and artists who have been working away in the niches and who have been exploring and pushing the technology because they are fl at desperately in love with 3D, and most of them have been since they were little kids and put on their fi rst pair of red and green glasses. ese guys are scared, too. ey're seeing the prize right in front of them—3D mov- ies for everyone, everywhere—and they're afraid the same terrible nightmare will hap- pen again. Bad content coupled with bad technology will kill stereo 3D before it even gets started. e problem is, there's not a lot of agreement about which way is the right way forward. The Good and the Bad RealD and 3ality Digital Systems are the Johnny Appleseeds of stereo 3D. RealD is the leading technology company for pro- jecting 3D, and so, in some ways, it is the tip of the spear pushing the technology out into the theaters. 3ality has shouldered the burden of live-action 3D production. e fi rm has been fairly successful so far, pro- ducing the U2 3D concert fi lm—which, by all that's holy, should have ended Bono's career as a result of his earnest histrionics. It didn't, though, because the 3D put audi- ences within Bono's urgent reach and gave viewers the immediacy of being there, if being there means you can fl y all around the theater for the best look at everything. Bono's career chugs on unchecked, and the movie has become a textbook for live-action 3D. e fi lm gets regular the- atrical showings and garners decent box offi ce every time. 3ality followed that tri- umph with Hannah Montana, e Movie, which brought little girls into the theater in droves and got them to pay a premium for watching their idol in 3D. e third of- fering in the 3D rock documentary trilogy, Jonas Brothers: e 3D Concert Experience, tanked, proving that even hysterical little girls have their limits. ere are seemingly no limits to the demand for 3D, however. It has hit its el- bow curve. At NAB 2009, Steve Schklair, founder of 3ality, noted that the demand has outstripped the capabilities of the spe- cialist companies and trained profession- als to make the movies. "We're concerned about the quality," he stated. Demand for product is high, yet almost every director in the world is a fi rst-time 3D director. In an example of what not to do, Fly Me to the Moon, a European production by di- rector Ben Stassen, was not only an unin- teresting (or, cutting to the chase, a lousy) movie in this writer's (and many others') opinion, but the 3D has been criticized as painful to watch. Early in production, the 3D community reached out to Stassen and off ered advice. "Lots of people tried to help him. He didn't want any help," says one 3D expert who asked not to be iden- tifi ed. But even as a failure, Fly Me to the Moon has made money in its theatrical re- lease. Furthermore, it has been re-purposed for theme parks all over the world. So far, Fly Me to the Moon has not killed 3D, but proponents are afraid a few more fi lms like it could do the trick. e problem is there is so much more that can go wrong, and some of it is down- right ineff able. Sometimes, says Buzz Hays of Sony Pictures Imageworks, something just doesn't look right. e problem is more complicated in live-action movies, where the issues might lie with the camera—there might be asymmetry between the lenses— or they might have been introduced in post. " ere's a whole bunch of elements, and something can easily get misaligned," Early in the year, the SoBe lizards went stereo in a TV commercial that aired during the Super Bowl. In the spot, the lizards were joined by some NFL players and characters from Monsters vs. Aliens. This 3D camera rig uses a mirror as a beam splitter so that cameras can be mounted perpendicular, but the image is transmitted as side by side. This arrangement is not pretty, but it allows stereographers to get a closer interocular distance than they could with two cameras side by side. July 2009 73 Stereoscopy ■ ■ ■ ■

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