'Grease' director goes 3D for mobile phones

'Nightmare Before Christmas' took the honour of first re-rendered 2D-into-3D away from 'Grease', which appears stuck in the Dimensionalization(tm) equivalent of development hell. Yet the director behind the film, Randall Kleiser, appears to have caught the stereoscopic bug (along with Lucas, Cameron and half of Hollywood). The Hollywood Reporter has a story that he and his business partner have patented a technology for stereoscopic display in electronic screens:

Director Randal Kleiser and inventor Michael Mehrle are introducing a technology designed to enable the viewing of 3-D content on such mobile devices as PDAs and iPods without the use of special glasses.

Their startup, Neovision Labs, has developed this unique technology called iFusion, which is patent pending.

In addition to offering a new capability to consumers, Kleiser, whose credits include "Grease" and "Honey I Blew Up the Kid," and Mehrle believe this unique technology has the potential to help forward the 3-D movement by giving the studios a venue in which to repurpose their 3-D-produced content after its theatrical release.

It is not aimed at cinemas, but they are already going digital 3D anyway, but for the great market beyond:

The attachment would be secured over the device screen. Mehrle said the attachment would be marketed as an accessory for hand-held devices and would list for about $50.

This technology does not convert a 2-D film to 3-D; rather, consumers would download 3-D content to the device for viewing. The content could be animated or live-action films produced in 3-D or films that were produced in 2-D and later converted to 3-D (like "Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas"). In addition to features, 3-D shorts, 3-D special-venue films and other such content could be used with the system.

The content has to be specially encoded for this application. "Basically, it's zero added costs. You can do it on a laptop," Mehrle said.

Kleiser said he hopes this development would help grow 3-D production. As a director, he is excited about the possibilities that 3-D offers to filmmakers. "The director wants to make the audience feel visually like part of the story; that's what 3-D does," Kleiser said. "Directors have another tool that they can use for dramatic emphasis. (Images) could come out of the screen into their faces, the way we would use a close-up."

Let's see if 'Grease' in digital 3D comes to a cell phone near you any time soon.

Disney goes very big with Robinsons

Thomson has put out a press release trumpeting just how wide the have released the digital 2D and 3D version of Walt Disney's Meet the Robinsons. This is how many:

Technicolor digitally mastered and distributed Meet the Robinsons for 892 screens worldwide. Domestically, the feature was distributed to 582 screens in Disney Digital 3-D (TM) and 138 screens in digital 2-D. The feature was distributed internationally to 105 screens in 3D and 67 screens in 2D. In addition, Technicolor created all traditional 35mm film prints for the release.

"Thomson is very pleased to have participated with Walt Disney Pictures to the widest digital cinema release to date," said Curt Behlmer, executive vice president of Technicolor Theatrical Services and COO of Technicolor Digital Cinema.

I beleive that the previous record was held by SPE's Casino Royal, done by Deluxe, even though it only went out in 2D and had a limited international play. It is interesting to note how few screens showed it in 2D, with digital 3D ones outnumbering them 4-1. This means that digital 3D will soon be the ONLY way to release (computer) animated films and that children will compain if they get taken to a 2D rather than 3D showing.

I'm reminded of the friend's daughter who complained that the television set upstairs was broken because she could not pause it. Digital changes expectations and consumption preferences.

DCI announces digital 3D specs and certifier

At the second day of the digital cinema summit held at NAB 2007 two major announcements were made by DCI. The first was that there was agreement on a single distribution format for digital stereoscopic films. This is what Variety had to report on it:

The DCI, a joint venture of the studios, did not originally anticipate the 3-D boom that has grown out of digital cinema and was silent on 3-D technical specifications. As a result, incompatible 3-D systems have proliferated.

Studios releasing a film in 3-D have since had to create as many as seven different 3-D digital cinema "packages."

Digital cinema consultant David Reisner said that Sunday's announcement, which is a one-page addendum to the DCI specs, would put the business on notice that there should be "only one format for distribution, not multiple formats for distribution."

Which format wins out, though, remains to be seen.

DCI also announced that Cinecert had been selected as the first testing company for so-called DCI compliance. More from Variety:

The selection of Cinecert as DCI's testing company moves the industry a step closer to answering one of the major questions remaining for d-cinema: Who will decide whether a product can be called "DCI-compliant"?

The question is vital to manufacturers, because there is little market for non-DCI-compliant d-cinema hardware, and exhibitors need assurances their expensive d-cinema hardware will work as advertised.

DCI had contracted with a German research institute, the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits, to develop tests for DCI compliance. Cinecert has a six-month contract to complete the work Fraunhofer started and to develop a set of testing procedures and standard tests. Once Cinecert has finished, DCI will choose testing entities.

In other announcements, DCI has published a list of errata corrections to the original specification and Sony and Warner Bros will take over technical and management responsibility from Paramount and Universal, so expect Al Barton to have even less free time than he already has from October onwards.

At the same event, WB's CTO Chris Cookson gave what sounds like an excellent keynote advocating a baseline capture of 4K for archives.

Disney family believes in 3D

Given that they've christened digital stereoscopics after themselves (as in 'Presented in Disney Digital 3D') it should come as no surprise that Disney feel strongly about 3D. However, not just the company like it but so too does the investment company of Uncle Walt's nephew Roy. Shamrock Capital has invested $50m in Real D, which has been responsible for the majority of digital stereoscopic installations to date. From the LA Times article:

The investment will give Shamrock and its partners a minority stake in the Beverly Hills company. Real D's overall value is believed to be more than $200 million. Neither company would confirm the figure.

"We've been sniffing around the digital cinema space for a while," Shamrock Capital Growth's managing director, Stephen Royer, said. "It's really the only viable mass-market solution."

Based in Burbank, Shamrock Holdings is the investment vehicle for the family of Roy Disney, nephew of the late Walt Disney.

Shamrock's bet comes as Hollywood has become enamored again with 3-D movies, which some cinema owners believe could help smooth their volatile box-office returns.

Given that Real D's installation underpinned the digital 3D, sorry, Disney Digital 3D releases of 'Chicken Little', 'A Nightmare Before Christmas' and the upcoming 'Meet the Robinsons', it should perhaps be no surprise.

But I wonder if Roy has seen Dolby's new digital 3D solution. The technology is far from perfect - yet - but it has an attractive business model, which is buy the server box and never pay any licence fee. Real D has a good technical solution but a licensing fee that few exhibitors are happy with. More about this in my upcoming ShoWest 2007 summary.