A Step Toward the Future of Cinema

There’s a big gamble taking place right now at the highest levels of American filmmaking and it concerns almost every major studio and many of the biggest producers and directors in the industry. Cameron, Zemeckis, Disney, Paramount, and Fox believe they have the future of cinema within their grasp and each has bet hundreds of millions of dollars that audiences will agree. That dream is 3-D cinema, and by all accounts this is not your parents’ Jaws 3 in 3-D. It’s a form of digital 3-D that solves all the past issues, such as headaches due to the crappy cardboard glasses or poorly synched reels. Where available, the films being shown in 3-D have been outselling the non-3-D version of the same pic three to one.

3-D may sound ridiculous as a premise for the future of cinema, but it’s been taking shape for years. Now that the initial test runs like Superman and Chicken Little have shown overwhelming financial results, it’s time for the ramp-up and evangelizing. Along with the release of Beowulf, we have DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg making the rounds of international festivals selling the importance of digital projection, the first step toward making 3-D available outside specialty theaters. He seems to be the prophet for what could be called the cinema of the future. He stated this year at the European Exposition that DreamWorks will be using this technology to make all of its movies starting in 2009.

“This technology” is an odd turn of phrase. Though the final output might be viewed the same way - currently with lightweight specialty specs -- the process of getting there, or production, has at least two different processes. Zemeckis films in much the same way video games input animation. The actors, donning motion capture suits, act out their roles in studio. The captured animation is then “skinned," or, given photorealistic textures along with the environment around the animation. As with videogames, the camera can be placed anywhere. You simply animate the camera inside the digital environment now created. Some might view this as odd, but if you’ve played a game like Halo 3, you’ve already seen the technology in action.

Then there’s James Cameron, always the creative engineer. He’s developed a camera system that films in stereo. With this new set-up he can film outside the confines of a motion capture studio, actually taking the technology out into the field and eliminating the need for his actors to wear the bodysuits with all the ping-pong balls attached for capturing motion.

Speaking at Siggraph this year, Mova founder and President Steve Perlman said he believes that we are moving toward a filmic “theater in the round," by eliminating the single camera viewpoint and providing a navigable experience. If that is where cinema is going, the quickest path toward the experience may be the multi-camera motion-capture process that Zemeckis is working with. The camera systems used by both Cameron and Zemeckis are said to be revolutionary in their final output, but regarding where Perlman says all this will eventually take us, the approach Zemeckis is using may very well have the upper-hand.

Whether it’s a Beta vs. VHS scenario or not remains to be seen. Whether the audience will agree with the studios that this is the future of cinema also remains to be seen. What is known, though, is that there are some very talented filmmakers playing with the most innovative technology available to them, and the winners will undoubtedly be the audience, so long as they get on board for the ride.

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