Is James Cameron's 3D movie Avatar the shape of cinema to come? | Film | The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/aug/20/james-cameron-avatar-3d-film

Is James Cameron's 3D movie Avatar the shape of cinema to come? | Film | The Guardian: "Is James Cameron's 3D movie Avatar the shape of cinema to come?

3D films are back - with a vengeance. And some believe they will change the way we watch movies forever

Typical: you wait a lifetime for the future of cinema and then they spring it on you unawares. Tomorrow, Friday 21 August, is officially designated "Avatar Day", although "Avatar Quarter-Hour" would be more accurate. It is the date that sees the public unveiling of a full 15 minutes of teaser footage from the new 3D blockbuster from director James Cameron, playing at hundreds of sold-out cinemas across the planet; the date that could come to define how Hollywood frames the world. "We are born seeing in three dimensions," Cameron proclaimed recently. "Most animals have two eyes, not one. There is a reason." After tomorrow, industry experts predict, 3D cinema will never be the same again.

They call it "the illusion of depth", a conjuring trick on the visual cortex, and it works like this. You take two cameras and shoot with them side-by-side. Later, when the results are projected, the viewer interprets these dual images as a single three-dimensional image. We see (or believe we see) a foreground, a background and, best of all, bulky projectiles that threaten to leap from the screen and land in our laps. This is the USP of 3D or stereoscopic cinema, a gimmick as old as film-making itself. In the past the success of this illusion has likewise proved illusory – but this time, we are assured, the landscape is different.

In fact, this year has already witnessed an unprecedented rise in the number of 3D studio pictures, from Coraline to My Bloody Valentine to Monsters vs Aliens. Elsewhere, Pixar's Up opened the Cannes film festival by playing to a gallery of dignitaries resplendent in their regulation-issue polarised spectacles. The box-office figures have been encouraging (the 3D version of Monsters vs Aliens earned more than its flat-screen counterpart despite playing in fewer cinemas). All across Hollywood, studio executives are now talking publicly about mothballing their conventional 2D productions in favour of chasing after that "illusion of depth".

On a more prosaic note, stereoscopic cinema is also largely innoculated from the threat of piracy, that perennial Hollywood bugbear. You can't pirate a 3D image by smuggling a camcorder into your local multiplex.

All of which leaves "Avatar Day" where, exactly? Is Cameron's much-vaunted blockbuster (which isn't actually released until December) a genuinely revolutionary picture or little more than a gaudy fanfare; a brazen attempt to hog all the credit?

Well, those happy few who have so far viewed the footage certainly appear to be fuelling the hype. Director Ridley Scott claims that Cameron's film is "phenomenal", while his fellow film-maker Jon Favreau describes it as "a game-changer. I think it's the future".

Louise Tutt, deputy editor of the industry magazine Screen International, would go along with that – albeit tentatively. "We are definitely seeing a massive increase in 3D films and 3D film revenue," she says. "The numbers are stacking up and the momentum is building. 3D is a proven concept already. But I think that Avatar is the film that will galvanise 3D's impact on the industry, if only because of its technical values. This is the one that will take it to the next level."

If there is one man qualified to push the medium to a new technical pantheon, it is probably James Cameron, the one-time Canadian trucker who quit his job after seeing Star Wars and promptly enrolled as a model-maker for the fabled B-movie producer, Roger Corman. A self-styled "techno-geek", he is a man fascinated by cinema's pure, nuts-and-bolts capabilities. Before embarking on his first short film, Cameron promptly dismantled his 35mm camera to find out precisely how it worked. Later, he helped pioneer the use of computer-generated imagery on his 1991 action classic, Terminator 2.

Reportedly budgeted at a whopping $237m (which would place it just one notch below Spider-Man 3's record-breaking $258m), Avatar plays out on a verdant alien planet called Pandora and charts the war between its towering, blue-skinned inhabitants and the invading Earthling hordes. Cameron's credits state that this is his first dramatic feature since the record-breaking Titanic back in 1997, pulling in a massive $1.8bn globally, although the director has not been resting on his laurels.

Cameron first devised the concept for Avatar in the mid-90s, but decided to hold off on the actual filming until the technology caught up with his vision. When the technology appeared to be lagging, he stepped in to lend a helping hand. The director worked alongside cinematographer Vince Pace to pioneer and patent a "fusion digital 3D camera system" that he first employed on his 2003 documentary, Ghosts of the Abyss, and has subsequently refined and adapted. He shot large portions of Avatar on a "virtual camera", a handheld monitor that allowed him to move through a 3D terrain, in effect editing this existing, computer-generated universe. The result, he boasts, turns cinema into "the ultimate immersive media".

If true, Cameron has hit upon the holy grail that has eluded film-makers for generations, fulfilling the quest to manufacture a truly visceral, immersive film-going experience. Think of all those previous cheap tricks that were doomed to failure, from Smell-O-Vision (which involved pungent odours being wafted into the auditorium) to "the Tingler" (seats wired to provide a mild electric shock). Think also of the earlier, non-digitised version of 3D cinema, which famously withered after a brief heyday in the early 50s. After shooting his stereoscopic Dial M For Murder in 1954, Alfred Hitchcock was unimpressed. 3D, he concluded, "was a nine-day wonder – and I came in on the ninth day".

Is the current incarnation destined to meet the same sorry fate? Industry experts insist not. CGI and the arrival of digital projectors has allowed the creation of better-looking, more reliable 3D production. But there are risks, too – such as the cost to the punter (tickets for 3D films usually retail for a few pounds more than tickets to their 2D equivalents). This is in part to meet the extra production costs of a 3D film, but also because there is an extra cost to exhibitors. The vast bulk of cinemas across the planet do not yet possess a digital projector, and without a digital projector there can be no 3D screenings. Assuming that 3D is not a passing fad, this inevitably spells trouble for cash-strapped independent picture houses who may not have the funds to upgrade their equipment, and now look likely to lose yet further ground to the mainstream distributors on both sides of the Atlantic.

In the UK alone, only around 320 out of 3,600 cinemas are digitally equipped, while in the US the ratio is even worse (2,500 out of 38,000). "So there is a big problem looming," admits Peter Buckingham, head of distribution and exhibition at the UK Film Council. "You are looking at about a minimum of £80,000 to get yourself into a 3D position. Even with the hike in ticket prices and the potential hike in audiences, that's quite a stretch for the smaller venues. The danger is that, in this digital switchover, a number of cinemas may well be left behind."

Perhaps this is all part of the remorseless march of progress, which has always had the tendency to leave casualties in its wake. The silent-screen cinemas of the 1920s had to adapt or die when sound rolled around, just as today's non-digital venues face an uncertain future as the marketplace turns stereoscopic. For his part, Cameron likens the new breed of 3D to the arrival of colour; a tidal wave that could not be ignored. He points out that in the first few years colour cinematography was the preserve of the largest, most expensive productions. Then, as the costs came down and the technology improved, it was rolled out to pretty much everything. The same, he claims, will be true of 3D.

"Actually, I think he's right," says Buckingham. "3D is a step-change for the industry. It is the future. I think that 20 years from now, almost every film will be in 3D. We see the world in 3D, so it therefore follows that we would want to see our films in 3D. Unless there is a specific creative decision to revert to a different way of representing reality – like Woody Allen using black and white – I can't see why you wouldn't embrace it."

Over at Screen International, Tutt is not so sure. "It seems a little overambitious," she says. "A little over-enthusiastic. I mean, take a film like 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days – who needs to see that in 3D? So no, I don't believe it will happen." She sighs. "But then who am I to contradict James Cameron?"

For the time being, there are few people prepared to contradict Cameron. The director is poised to tour the globe, blowing the bugle for 3D cinema in general and Avatar in particular. This, remember, is the man who conjured the reputed disaster of Titanic into the most successful film in cinema history. If he says that this is the future, who are we to stand on the shoreline and rage like Canute?

Even so, I keep coming back to that pesky technical definition – "the illusion of depth". Unintentionally, it seems to highlight some crucial problem with 3D and the hype that surrounds it. What are we seeing when we sit down to watch a 3D movie? The movie or the 3D? The depth or the illusion? What, in other words, is the point of it all? According to the US film critic Roger Ebert, "Every single frame of a 3D movie gives us something to look at that is not necessary."

But could it be that this failing has as much to do with us, the audience, as it does with 3D? No doubt the first viewers of talkie cinema were so occupied by the sound that they neglected to follow what was actually being said, and the first viewers of colour so enamoured of the palette that they forgot about the picture. This is the state that 3D finds itself in today. It needs to lose its novelty before we are able to judge it for what it is; before we forget about those snazzy polarised goggles that are perched on our nose, and allow ourselves to be truly "immersed" in the medium. Until then, Cameron and his ilk risk being distractors as opposed to directors.

To his credit, the Avatar director seems to be aware of this. "The irony with Avatar is that people think of it as a 3D film and that's what the discussion is," he told an audience at last month's Comic Con festival in San Diego. "But I think that, when they see it, the whole 3D discussion is going to go away . . . That's because, ideally, the technology is advanced enough to make itself go away. That's how it should work. All of the technology should wave its own wand and make itself disappear." Or to put it another way, the illusion of depth is no substitute for the real McCoy •

Avatar is released on 18 December