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July 14, 2008 - We're living in a new golden age of 3-D movies. So far this year, three 3-D features have opened: the concert pictures, "U2 3D" and "Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour" and the live-action adventure "Journey to the Center of the Earth."
Two more 3-D films, both animated, are due before the end of the year: "Fly Me to the Moon" on Aug. 8 and "Bolt" set for November. Next year, at least nine 3-D movies are scheduled to hit the big screen.
And movie screens capable of showing these films are everywhere. "Journey to the Center of the Earth" is playing at hundreds of theaters across the country this weekend, including multiplexes in Gig Harbor, Puyallup, Auburn, Lacey and Yelm.
The reason for the surge in 3-D movie production: Audiences like these kinds of films. They really, really like them.
3-D VERSIONS VS. 2-D VERSIONS
Director Robert Zemeckis' animated "Beowulf," went out in 2-D and 3-D versions when it was released last November. The version playing in 3-D-equipped theaters outgrossed the 2-D version by 15 percent nationwide by the end of its run, said Lee E. Josselyn, vice president of the Los Angeles-based Galaxy chain, owners of the new Uptown 10-plex in Gig Harbor.
The Denver Post reported at the time that while only 20 percent of theaters screening "Beowulf" were equipped to show 3-D, they accounted for 40 percent of the opening weekend gross of $28.1 million.
A similar phenomenon was seen in 2004 when "The Polar Express," also animated and directed by Zemeckis, came out in 2-D and 3-D versions. (Some of the 3-D versions were in the IMAX format.)
"'The Polar Express' was a huge success for us," said Diane Carlson, spokeswoman for the Boeing IMAX Theater in Seattle's Pacific Science Center.
The picture was released in early November, and Carlson said she figured with its Christmas theme, it would likely be off the huge IMAX screen by Dec. 26. But it kept drawing audiences after that date.
"The IMAX 3-D version is what gave that film the life to live on into January," Carlson said. It finally wrapped up its run around the Martin Luther King holiday in 2005.
That long-playing pattern was common at 3-D venues around the country. Hollywood took notice, and the greenlighting of 3-D features began to rise. Theater chains took notice, too, and launched ambitious programs to vastly increase the number of auditoriums where 3-D can be shown.
The Uptown in Gig Harbor, which opened in early March, has two of its 10 auditoriums adapted to show 3-D movies. Josselyn said the chain now plans to convert two more to 3-D. "We have a total of eight locations with 3-D," he said, "and we are building a new 14-plex theater in Las Vegas at the M Resorts Casino opening November 2009, which will have 3-D houses as well."
The Knoxville, Tenn.-based Regal chain, the largest multiplex operator in the U.S. and the largest presence in the South Sound area, has announced plans to install 3-D equipment in 1,500 auditoriums in the next several years. At present, only 136 of those screens are 3-D equipped, said Regal spokesman Dick Westerling.
Regal already has 3-D screens in the Auburn Stadium 17 at the SuperMall, the Longston Place Stadium 14 in Puyallup and the Martin Village Stadium 16 in Lacey. Westerling said installations are planned for the Stadium 15 in Lakewood and the Tall Firs 10 in Bonney Lake, but he said he didn't know when the conversions would be done. The company has more than 6,763 screens at about 550 theaters in 40 states.
Justin Scott, a spokesman for Kansas City, Mo.-based AMC chain, said 3-D will eventually come to Tacoma's AMC Narrows Plaza 8. No date for the conversion has been announced. The chain has plans to install 3-D at all 353 of its theaters nationwide within the next two to three years, Scott said.
1950S WERE 3-D HEYDAY
There hasn't been this much activity on the 3-D front since the 1950s, the decade widely regarded as a golden age for the format.
The basic process used to create 3-D images was hardly new in the '50s. In fact, it dates back to the earliest days of filmmaking. The same scene is photographed from two slightly different angles by two cameras or one camera with two lenses about 2 inches apart, which is the distance between a person's eyes. When viewed through special glasses, the two images fuse into one that brain interprets as being three-dimensional. (For more details, see accompanying graphic.)
The first 3-D feature, "The Power of Love," premiered in 1922, and there were a handful of others made in the '30s and '40s. But it was in the '50s that 3-D exploded.
Between 1952 and 1955 everybody seemed to be getting into the act. That included John Wayne in the 1953 Western "Hondo"; the Three Stooges in the comedies "Spooks" and "Pardon My Backfire," both released in 1953; and Vincent Price in "House of Wax," also released in 1953. Even Alfred Hitchcock dabbled in the suddenly hot format with 1954's "Dial M for Murder."
It was the rise of television in the '50s that set off the explosion and prompted studios to look for ways to entice people away from the little box in the living room and into the theaters. Movies filmed in 3-D provided an experience that couldn't be duplicated in the home. Call it the "wow factor."
The "wow" came from scenes showing objects like pool cues or in the case of "Dial M for Murder," an agonized Grace Kelly's outthrust hand seeming to jut abruptly out of the screen. The new "Journey to the Center of the Earth" continues that tradition with a scene showing fanged flying fish leaping fangs-first at the audience. Another scene shows a big juicy gob of T-rex drool plunging straight toward the viewer's face. There are many more such moments.
Carlson, from the Boeing IMAX Theater, has another term for the "wow factor." She calls an "immersive" experience. When the theater opened in 1999, its first film was the 3-D ocean documentary "Into the Deep." The sight of fish swimming seemingly in midair (or midwater) right in front of audience eyes startled watchers, she said. People actually jumped back in their seats when waves broke on a rocky shoreline to avoid the virtual water splashing toward them.
The '50s 3-D craze faded quickly because it was costly, requiring two mechanically linked projectors and sometimes two projectionists to run two prints of the film, one for the left eye and one for the right. The twin strips had to be perfectly synchronized for the effect to work. Too often, they weren't.
And the glasses required to watch a 3-D movie were a pain, often literally. With their cheap cardboard frames and red and blue-green lenses made of a cellophane-like plastic, they didn't do a very good job of helping the eyes foster the illusion of 3-D. People often complained they got headaches from sitting through a 3-D picture.
DIGITAL DEVELOPMENTS
Flash forward a half-century. Special glasses are still required but these days they look like sunglasses, with hard plastic frames and precisely designed and carefully manufactured plastic polarized lenses. And the problem of synching up two film strips is becoming a thing of the past. That's because film itself is becoming a thing of the past.
Welcome to the digital world. Welcome to a world where film reels are rapidly being been replaced by hard drives containing digitized movies. They can be quickly plugged into high-tech projectors.
Farewell to the long tedious process of splicing film reels together. Farewell, too, to the significant expense of shipping all those reels back and forth between distributor and theater.
Two projectors are no longer required for the 3-D effect. A special piece of hardware that fits in front of the lens and customized software are all that's required to convert a 2-D digital projector to 3-D. The upgrade costs about $10,000, said Galaxy's Lee Josselyn, and that includes the price of installing a special silver screen necessary for the 3-D effect. (White screens can't be used with the process.)
In addition to its popularity with audiences, 3-D has another advantage, theater operators say. Movies shown in that format are impossible to pirate, at least by people trying to steal images off the screen with cell phones and other types of cameras, said Josselyn.
A.J. Witherspoon, the general manager of the Uptown, says all that a pirate trying to watch a taped 3-D movie at home will see are "two blurry images that are going to make absolutely no sense."
With 3-D on the rise, is 2-D doomed? Josselyn thinks not. Not only is it expensive to show 3-D, it's also expensive to film in that format. He said an industry rule of thumb is that shooting in 3-D can add $15 million to a movie's production costs because of the special cameras and other specialized equipment used to shoot it. That puts it out of reach of the makers of low-budget independent pictures.
The cost and the "wow" effect of 3-D make it best suited to big-budget blockbusters with lots of special effects. It's a premium moviegoing experience. And even in the age of massive flat-screen TVs, it's an experience that can only be had in a theater.
Soren Andersen: 253-597-8660
3-D movies on the horizon
"Fly Me to the Moon" (Aug. 8)
Three animated houseflies get a ride to the moon aboard Apollo 11.
"Bolt" (Nov. 26)
John Travolta supplies the voice for the title character in this 'toon about a dog who's a TV star who has the misfortune to wind up taking a cross-country journey through the hostile world outside the studio.
2009
"My Bloody Valentine 3D" (January)
It's live action. It's a remake. It's slasher time for the hearts-and-flowers set on Valentine's Day.
"Monsters vs. Aliens" (March)
'Toon time again in a comedy about a woman who grows to immense size after being soaked by some weird alien goo. Next thing you know, she's hanging out with characters like Dr. Cockroach and Insectosaurus.
"Up" (May)
The people from Pixar present an animated tale of a 78-year-old man (voiced by Ed Asner) who get a new lease on life and sets out on an exciting journey.
"Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" (July)
The mammoth, the sloth and the sabertooth heroes of the animated "Ice Age" series cross paths with some fierce dinos.
"G-Force" (July)
Animated animal commandos take on a mission to save the world.
"Piranha 3D" (July)
The title says it all.
"Toy Story" (October)
The beloved Pixar 'toon has been retrofitted for the 3-D age. "Toy Story 2" will get the same treatment in 2010.
"A Christmas Carol" (November)
Jim Carrey stars as Scrooge and the three Dickens ghosts in a new live-action version of the holiday classic.
"Avatar" (Dec. 18)
James Cameron's first feature since "Titanic" is a sci-fi epic set on a distant planet.
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