Commentary

Topical Illusion:James Cameron, the SoBe Lizards, Miley Cyrus and Kobe Bryant launch a 3-D renaissance

Are we, at long last, about to step into another dimension? After — no joke — more than a century of development, the media planets are finally aligning to let the illusion of depth creep into tv, movies, games and out-of-home displays. Some stubborn issues remain, but solid, if limited, steps are being taken toward fooling our minds that 2-D media is actually something we can reach out and touch.

“We are getting close to a seminal tipping point in the way we view content,” says Vince Pace, ceo of Pace, the Burbank-based production company that developed the 3-D technology used by director James Cameron in the upcoming film Avatar. “We are just at the beginning of what is possible.”

Mainstream Hollywood theatrical 3-D releases for the right type of content — mainly action and adventure — show a 65 percent increase in box office relative to their 2-D versions, according to The Nielsen Company. And 3-D features are going into wide release. In January, the holiday slasher flick My Bloody Valentine opened in over 1,000 theaters, the most ever for a 3-D film. A total of 68 3-D films are in the production pipeline, according to data from RealD, the Los Angeles-based 3-D technology company, with some major releases due this summer: Cameron’s Avatar and a concert movie from the Jonas Brothers. And, the third dimension is being added into the mix for sports: The nba All-Star Game, for example, was shown in live simulcast in 3-D in February in 81 theaters across America, as was the bcs Championship match in early January.

Video-game makers, too, are finally taking 3-D seriously. Santa Clara, Calif.-based game hardware maker nvidia released its GeForce 3-D Vision combination glasses, video card and software package ($598) in January at the 2009 International Consumer Electronics Show. This essentially plug-and-play 3-D system enables just about any pc owner, with a proper monitor, to deploy the mostly ignored 3-D capabilities built into more than 350 mainstream gaming titles such as Grand Theft Auto.

The old guard won’t be left behind, either. 3-D media is also finding a place on traditional tv. nbc recently aired a test episode of Chuck with the third dimension added in. And not surprisingly, marketers are testing the deep end of the 3-D pool. Much hyped — if a bit visually disappointing — SoBe Lifewater and Monsters vs. Aliens spots ran during Super Bowl xliii (though using old-school methods).

Driving all this sudden love of depth are all-too-familiar content woes: Competition from commodity media like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, along with dark economic times, have made traditional media look, well, a little flat. And new, low-cost, yet advanced, digital technologies mean 3-D media is not the step into fiscal oblivion it once was.

“We are finally seeing the combination of stable technology and real revenue generation that is bringing 3-D beyond the experimental phase,” says RealD president and cofounder Joshua Greer.

The Horror
Despite the current vogue for 3-D, it is critical to understand that this technology has soldiered through one of the longest development paths of any modern media tool — and for good reason.

3-D media in its simplest form is easy to create: Simply place two subtly different pictures — taken roughly at the angles of two human eyes in a human head — near enough to each other and block out enough of the real world while keeping the images discrete, usually by using glasses or some sort of focusing device. And the brain quite handily creates a sense of depth almost unprompted. The trick can be done with moving images or stills. It can be with or without glasses and using literally dozens of technologies from split colors, to pulses, to polarized lenses, to holograms — you name it. And 3-D may be cutting edge, but it’s hardly new: The first 3-D stills were made commercially available more than 160 years ago.

So-called stereoscopes mixed two photographs of, say, Civil War battles to create the illusion of depth. Cinematic riffs on 3-D developed as moving pictures grew, with the first commercial 3-D releases of any scale coming in the 1920s. Early entrepreneurs found the same problems with 3-D that vex modern enthusiasts to this day: What is easy to do in small scale can be brutally difficult to accomplish on a large screen.

Yes, the different images needed for 3-D are subtle, but they are still two different images, which require two different cameras, projectors and distribution infrastructures. Costs can easily double — or triple, for that matter — basic 2-D production fees. Hence, most early “3-D” films only had a few 3-D scenes. Even those are often poorly shot, since few operations have the coin to truly understand how to produce high quality 3-D shots. And then there are the audience struggles. It was never clear when to wear the glasses, which some viewers detested. Others would get dizzy, some disoriented. Still others would just get plain sick.

But 3-D soldiered on. The fledgling technology endured a series of busts beginning with the Great Depression and into World War ii. The ’50s saw another 3-D spurt: House of Wax, Man in the Dark and a Disney 3-D pic called Melody all came to theaters. The technology got a second, albeit low-rent, shot at the big time in the early ’70s and ’80s with “hits” like Amityville 3-D, Comin’ at Ya!, Jaws 3-D and let’s not forget The Stewardesses (a self-rated-X film that only got an R rating from the mpaa — talk about underachieving). But again, high production costs and audience indifference — not to mention the fact that these films were flat-out awful — banished the next dimension from the 2-D media game yet again.

Finally, incremental technological improvements and competition from cheaper media gave 3-D new legs. Name directors dabbled in the medium. In 2002 James Cameron released Ghosts of the Abyss done in an Imax 3-D format. In 2003, Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over grossed more than $100 million, not bad for a cheesy sequel. And suddenly what was once impossible for 3-D producers was now merely difficult.

New-technology vendors, such as 3ality and Pace, brought the cost to produce a 3-D version film into the price range of rational discussion. And 3-D got a major bounce from a streamlined digital post-production ecosystem that flourished around the same time. Fatter digital storage, improved desktop processing, digital delivery both for tv and films, and the move away from analog media made the greater use of 3-D possible.

Companies like RealD and Dolby Laboratories, the San Francisco-based media technology company, developed 3-D tools that could easily work within existing 2-D infrastructures. Figures on the cost of 3-D production over 2-D vary wildly, but a 15 to 20 percent below-the-line increase over standard 2-D production seems a reasonable starting point, according to data from Insight Media, the Norwalk, Conn.–based market research firm. Several players are saying these improved market conditions will bring about the end of celluloid film releases within the next few years.

“There will be very little celluloid left by the end of 2012,” says Jonathan Dern, president of the content and entertainment group for Cinedigm, a Los Angeles–based 3-D content company.

D is for Dollar
Considering 3-D’s healthier outlook, where should the smart marketeering money go in this newly dimensional sandbox? That is far from clear, but certainly not to theatrical films and in-home tv.

Neither media can harness the number of eyeballs advertisers crave.

The effectiveness of pre-roll theatrical ads — in either two or three dimensions — is still hotly debated. And limits on market penetration prevent 3-D films from becoming much of an advertising platform for the near term. Cinedigm estimates that there will be 6,000 digital theaters by the end of 2009. While that is enough to support a theatrical release of a film like Journey to the Center of the Earth, it is barely 20 percent of the roughly 35,000 theaters in America. And only about 3,000 of those digital screens are expected to be 3-D-ready by the end of 2009. That’s just not enough market penetration to command an advertiser’s attention — or pay for 3-D production costs. And the situation will not change anytime soon.

Movie industry insiders like to trumpet the new compromise over something called a “digital release fee,” where studios essentially self-fund theatrical digital upgrades with money they did not spend releasing film prints. But in a quiet casualty of the recent credit crises, banks yanked meticulously worked-for funding between theater owners and distributors that spread release fee money evenly throughout the distribution network. Now only major cities, if they’re lucky, will get the upgrades. And it is unclear where the $100,000 needed for each digital upgrade will come from. 3-D films will be niche stuff, at least for advertisers, for the time being.

In the home, the picture for 3-D is even blurrier. For all the hype of the Super Bowl ads and the Chuck episode, this content was made dimensional through strictly entry-level technology called anaglyph. 3-D experiences that will mimic what is going on in theaters usually require the use of special sync pulse technology that must be built into tvs. Sync pulse 3-D sends, usually wirelessly, a coordinating signal that controls optical glass built into specially enabled glasses.

At most, 2 million, maybe 3 million, sets are 3-D ready, according to Insight Media data. And getting customers to upgrade to new 3-D tvs won’t be trivial. Many consumers remain bitterly frustrated by their current hd experience. hd content is still brutally pricey on cable, satellite and disc, with entry-level disc players costing 10 times that of traditional dvd players. For a little context, consider that many Americans aren’t even ready for a much smaller change: The analog tv shut-off was postponed yet again when government officials realized that tens of millions were still not set to move past their analog rabbit ears.

“There are roughly dozens of approaches to 3-D technology,” says Chris Chinnock, president of Insight Media. “The industry is addressing these organizational issues, and we are optimistic long term, but it will be some time before the market is properly organized enough for consumers to make a rational 3-D tv purchase.”

The Sweet Spot
For all of the concerns about 3-D, flatly ignoring the medium would be a mistake for advertisers. It will be here for the long haul, just not as a mass-deployed medium. So the trick will be funding the pockets where 3-D makes marketing sense.

Already some sweet spots have emerged — one of the more appealing being the live simulcast, mostly of big-name sporting events in a 3-D-enabled theater. These hybrid broadcast-theatrical 3-D products appeal to cutting-edge advertisers on many levels. The bcs Championship, the nba All-Star Game and the rest are based on made-for-television sporting events. So commercials are integral to the feature, which addresses the main issue with theatrical advertising: Chances are very good that consumers will actually see the spots. Also, 3-D feeds are unique for most events. And they represent a high-quality, relatively clutter-free advertising environment. Viewers cannot time shift or control the spots. And even the limited base of 3,000 3-D theaters is not a factor in live simulcast of games. For sporting events like the All-Star Game, just a few hundred theaters represent a reasonable base from which to market. And even better, a live simulcast offers a critical bonus: real value for recession-weary consumers. Ticket prices for the nba All-Star Game broadcast in February varied by location, but $18 to $25 per ticket was the working range.

“Live 3-D simulcast seems to me to be a logical place to experiment with advertising,” says Ken Kerschbaumer, editorial director for Sports Video Group, the New York City–based sports technology association, who has studied 3-D for roughly a decade. “The ads run in the program. The audience cannot TiVo or skip the spots. And, at least anecdotally, we have seen some good retention for commercials in the theaters during games.”

But that’s not to say the nation is going 3-D overnight.

“The transition to 3-D is like silent going to talkies,” says Chinnock. “3-D is such a different medium. It will take about five years to fully work out.”

It is far from certain that the medium can entirely overcome more than a century’s worth of struggles. Scale will be difficult to reach in 3-D. But this time, there’s fresh incentive to keep the market going: Those in love with making films, tv and events in 3-D all agree that their best work is still ahead.

“We have not seen anything close the Citizen Kane of 3-D films yet,” says RealD’s Greer.    

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