IBC dazzles with 3D

Oscar nominee and multiple award winner, Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks, didn’t make it to IBC this year, but his holographic image did. From Los Angeles, in stereoscopic high definition 3D, no less.

Katzenberg, one of Hollywood’s best known and most influential figures, is responsible for the animated box office smashes, Kung Fu Panda, Shrek and Shark Tale.

Katzenburg’s preamble said he was about to show the “greatest innovation to occur in the movie business in 70 years,” This innovation is 3D filmmaking. But wait, “Wasn’t that around in the 1950s?” you might say. “This is not your father’s 3D,” Katzenberg stated.

During his presentation, Katzenberg had a giant movie screen wheeled out and asked everyone to reach under their seats. Taped under them were the RealD glasses which he then asked us to put on. He proceeded to show a clip - fully rendered in 3D.

It was amazing.

But Katzenberg wasn’t done. After talking about filmmakers such as Robert Zemeckis, Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson and James Cameron commitment to 3D films, Katzenberg had the lights dimmed again. This time he showed off a new film coming in March of next year: Monsters vs. Aliens.

This animated film was beautiful.

“3D is the next great frontier,” Katzenberg said. The first big transition in cinema was from silent to sound, the next was from black and white to color, this will be the third transition: from 2D to full 3D, Katzenberg stated. He revealed that by 2009 all of DreamWork Animation’s films will be both authored and offered in 3D. And this is where Intel comes in.

DreamWorks (as well as other movie studios) is using Intel’s INTRU3D technology to take 3D filmmaking to new heights. No longer does the 3D experience involve two projectors working in conjunction and those odd red and blue glasses.

Now it’s a single projector doing advanced computing to render an image that is viewed as three dimensional with the much more sleek RealD glasses (think Tom Cruise’s glasses in Risky Business).

Katzenberg said that creativity has largely been something that has only been on the screen. Intel’s work with INTRU3D brings creativity behind the scenes he explained. It’s not just the end product you see that is truly innovative; it’s the way these films are made.

INTRU3D gives animators and filmmakers the tools to render 3D images in real time and manipulate them to make the clip they want. Some will argue that 3D films should stay in theatres as a way to keep people experiencing movies as the filmmakers intended. After all, screens can only get so big when they’re in your home.

Truth is, this technology eventually will enter homes as well. Intel execs didn’t seem sure about how well it will take off there because the format still requires glasses, but said much work was being done to remove that restriction.

While I’m still not entirely sold that 3D is the future of all filmmaking, I do think it is the future of animated filmmaking after seeing demos. The fact that these films can be fully

rendered in 3D yields a beautiful end product.