Last week saw Vision+Media’s Visionary Sessions series come to Salford for the third instalment - 3D: The Future is NOW, focusing on the impact that 3D technology is set to have on the Film, Television and Games industries. Prior to the event at The Pie Factory my experience of 3D across these industries was practically zero: I had never seen any 3D television, had never played any 3D games, and had only seen two and a bit films in 3D – Avatar (obviously), Toy Story 3 and that bit in Harry Potter: The Order of The Phoenix where all the prophecies fall off the shelves (if you’ve seen it, you’ll know what I mean!).
Representing these three sectors was an impressive line-up of speakers including Jim Spencer, Line Producer of Street Dance 3D from Paradise FX Europe and Alex Stolz from UK Film Council representing Film, Brian Lenz, Director of Product Design at BSkyB representing TV, and Mick Hocking, Senior Director (Studio Group) at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe representing Games. Also on the bill was David Close of Digital Projection providing a technical perspective of 3D exhibition.
All of the speakers were, understandably, firm believers that 3D has an important part to play in the evolution of digital entertainment content, the main reason for which is that 3D creates a heightened sense of immersion. In Film and TV storytelling this can act as a tool to support the suspension of disbelief. In Games Mick Hocking explained that 3D provides an enhanced sense of speed, depth and scale which can give hardcore gamers a competitive advantage. Sounds great in theory, but the success of widespread adoption is dependent upon 3D technology convergence between display, content and affordability.
In terms of display, figures are quite positive: Alex Stolz explained that since the end of 2009 the number of digital cinema screens in the UK has almost doubled, 80% of which are 3D-ready. Sales figures are similarly positive for 3D films; Avatar tops the table as the highest grossing film of all time at the box-office, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland stands at 5th (!) and Toy Story 3 looks set to break into the top 10. In the UK film industry Street Dance 3D has been a tremendous success story produced on a budget of around £4.5 million and grossing over £11 million in the UK alone. 3D TV is a little further behind however by 2014 over half of TVs sold, it is estimated, will be 3D-ready. One of the main issues with 3D display is the fragmentation in the market of techniques to encode and display 3D; left/right, up/down, checkerboard and 2D + depth are encoding options, anaglyph, polarised and active shutter are glasses solutions, and autostereo is the glasses-free solution. On top of this, with the new terminology that 3D production and exhibition brings – parallax, disparity, interaxial, interoccular, image fusion, ghosting, etc. – it is little wonder that many production companies (and indeed end consumers) see 3D as a confusing landscape to navigate.
Blog continues with Part II
Videos of each of the speakers can be viewed on the Vision+Media Vimeo Channel or downloaded as a podcast from iTunes.