Minute44 - Dan Schonhaar

December sees the release of a movie 15 years in the making… well, actually two or three years in the making. James Cameron had the idea for Avatar some fifteen years ago but didn’t make it until now. Why? Because the required technology didn’t exist yet. Hell, it didn’t exist when his patience ran out and he decided to make it anyway. He thought “Fuck it.” and invented the tech himself. With the help of visual effects super-giant Weta, James Cameron is finally releasing a film that, he says, will not only amaze and dazzle audiences but will change the face of cinema forever. The main key to his celluloid renascence; digital 3D.

3D is nothing new. It was tried in the 50s, then again in the 80′s but both times it failed. And it’s not hard to see why. Up until recently 3D has required audiences to wear blue and red glasses that have vastly altered the colour on screen and given some viewers terrible headaches. It was a mess, to say the least. This generation, though, we’ll call it 3G3D, has done away with those awful things. You still have to wear glasses but these are light years ahead of their red and blue counterparts. These slick polarised lenses allow the viewer to experience true colour and a truly immersive 3D experience. There have been a few films released in this next gen 3D format.. mainly low budget shock fests that have allowed studios to test the concept without having to throw too much money away. The word on the grape vine seems to be that as shit as these movies seem to be, the 3D is actually very good. Avatar will be the first major 3D production… well you might call $200,000,000 major.

But will 3G3D ever take off? Will it succeed where past iterations of the technology have failed? Well, I think it stands a pretty good chance. HD has hit and has widely been embraced. The BluRay disc format certainly has the potential to hold the extra data required for digital 3D and peoples’ TVs are certainly big enough now. Neither of these things existed before. And then there’s the glasses. There is rumour going around that opticians will soon be offering polarised prescription 3D glasses, a blessing for people like me who love rich, enthralling movies but struggle with being, as near as makes any difference, blind.

People are skeptical. No surprise, though. I remember people saying DVD would never take off and people are still saying that HD is nothing more than a fad. But with 3D, a whole lot depends on how well Avatar is received. If a $200 million James Cameron film that is meant to be the holy grail for 3G3D tanks, it’ll pretty much make the technology a no-go area for movie studios. No one will touch it with a ten foot barge pole. Hopes are high though. This might be Cameron’s first film in 12 years but you may have heard of his last one; it was called Titanic and it was the highest grossing movie of all time. As well as appeal by association, Cameron assures us that, although technology and visual effects make Avatar possible, it’s the story itself that will give the film its integrity and, seeing as he made Aliens and Terminator 2, I think I believe him.

The hurdles for 3G3D are two fold, though. Even if the cinema market is conquered, the home market will be just as much of an uphill struggle, if not more so. It may require people to upgrade their TVs and/or BluRay players, kit that they’ve not long spent many hundreds, if not thousands of pounds on. In a recession people aren’t gonna be so hot on that idea. Plus, it may not be right for everyone. Sure your TV might be all set for 3G3D but is your home? I would imagine that 3G3D  would be better suited to those flashy bastards who mount their 50+ inch telly on their chimney breast and view it head on from their sofa. Most people’s set ups aren’t like this though. Most people have their TV in one corner of the room or another and view it at a 45 degree (ish) angle. Would the 3D experience be all it could be in that environment? I would wager not. But hey, That’s quite a pessimistic outlook. More and more people are warming to HDTV every day and 3G3D is just the next logical step.

What do you think will be the fate of 3G3D? Would you upgrade your entertainment system to embrace the technology? More to the point, do you think that it’s worth your hard earned cash?